Monday 7th November - Windsurf ** River Orwell at Levington – cloudy with light rain:(.

Foil – 18.53 knot max, 16.64 knot ave., 10.94 knot hour, 15.60 knot mile, 40.03 km., 14.8 knot alpha.  

Starboard Freeride 150 and a Evolution Freeride foil with a Thunderbird Thunderbird 6.5.

After missing a couple of breezy days over the weekend due to it being very wet, there is nothing worse than windsurfing in the rain, I was keen to get out on the water today. I arrived just after 9 to make the most of high wate at 10.30 with Robert and Michael already there with David and Ian coming a bit later. There was loads of water but the wind looked fairly light, Robert and Michael had rigged 6 and 5.8 as the forecast was for winds gusting to 30 knots! I set up my foil board and took a chance with 6.5 which was fine when the wind was up! When I launched I se off towards Pin Mill in good wind, in fact I thought it was going to be too windy for my 6.5! I ran out of wind down towards the trees and set off back flying towards the marina in really smooth water getting my best speed of the session, then I hit something and went over the front, it must have been yet another poor fish, I have hit several sadly here on the river, luckily no damage done. I then had a good spell on the corner slowly beating down towards Felixstowe docks. The wind was not constantly strong enough to get upwind well with the short runs against the tide not helping but I was enjoying myself getting some OK gybes despite the gloomy poor weather with light rain too:( I got half way to the docks but progress was slow so switched from gybing to tacking and eventually made it to the container ship in the last berth where I stopped to take some pics. Sadly, the tide was now going out and the wind went really patchy and I only got flying for short bursts on the way back, it had chopped up too so from an OK session it quickly turned to crap, in the end I was pleased to get back at 12.45 and was packing up when Mag arrived on her bike with lunch. I finished de-rigging, biked to the shower block before returning to the van for a yummy roll.

Neil had also rung to make arrangements for another trip over to Point Clear tomorrow as it is supposed to be pretty breezy but maybe too much south to be ideal?

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