Owner:
Harry
Member
Member#: 186 Location: Registered: 14-04-2003 Diary Entries: 418
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18th October 2005
Windsurfing: Tiree Wind Direction: SE (onshore) Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Flat Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Sunny spells Max Speed: Distance Covered:
Gott Bay again. Wind was massively up and down all day today, making all the sailing very frustrating. Grrrr.
Morning - pro Super-X was being run in front of the hotel so Martin and I drove round the bay to launch a bit further upwind. 5.2, Bee,
perfectly powered up at the start. Duck-gybe practice, but they were all crap, dunno why my duckies have got worse recently.
The wind dropped after about 20 minutes leaving me underpowered and drifting towards the Super-X course. Only occasional planing runs
after that. We went to watch the pro Super-X and I agreed with one of them to use his F2E and 6.7 for my race in the afternoon,
assuming the wind would continue to be light.
Afternoon - Super-X!
The wind had picked up a tad but still looked good for a 6.7. Turned out my F2E 103 was actually a 115, grrr....but fortunately had
just enough time to fit it with double back-straps.
Got helmetted up and ready to go before my race, bring it on! But then the wind really started to build...and by the time our race was
about to start it was practically 5.2 weather. Oh Shit.
The prospect of being massively overpowered, combined with the expected pre-race excitement, meant that the adrenaline was really
flowing. 7 in my race (the whole amateur fleet). I was drawn in position 6 (7 was the furthest upwind position). Long wait on the start
line holding our kit...then finally the quad bike whizzes across in front of us....go!!!
I had a crap start. Trying to wrestle my huge kit into the water at high speed in such strong winds was not easy. But once I got
going...ridiculously overpowered...no-one could touch me! I hooned past two people and was catching up fast with everyone else...until
the first sausage appeared. I hardly cleared the water. SPLAT. Managed to keep my rig flying, and drifted round the sausage, where I
saw Gregg and James having a little mother's meeting... (apparently Gregg had landed right on top of James' sail, completely trashing
it). By now of course the leaders were way ahead so I had no chance of winning the race, just had to try and get round on my
ridiculously too big kit. Next sausage I managed to get on top of, but comically I just rolled back off it onto the same side.
Inevitably I dropped my duck-gybe, and by now I was absolutely SHATTERED. Thought about sailing around the last sausage, but no, I gave
it a go, but like the first one, just crashed straight into it. I managed to push my kit under it and summoned up my last reserves of
energy to somehow sail stupidly overpowered back to the beach, way behind everyone else.
We had a 2nd race but I needed smaller kit. There was no time to run back to the van to rig up smaller. Tried desperately to beg borrow
or steal someone elses kit but with no joy. So had to sit out the 2nd race, and annoyingly the wind dropped just after they started, so
I would have been fine on the 115/6.7...GRRRRR.
After this race had finished I had a quick blast on the 115/6.7, until the wind picked up again 5+ knots. Although it was only
mid-afternoon I couldn't be arsed to rig up my 5.2 again so just de-wetsuited and had a quick spin on a Blo-Kart, which was good fun
for 10 minutes but the novelty soon wore off.
Frustrating day. Wish I had kept my 5.2/Bee rigged from the morning and left it on the beach for the Super-X. I had been so looking
forward to doing the Super-X, especially on small kit, and for the first race the 5.2/Bee would have been just about perfect. But
instead I was ridiculously overpowered on the 115/6.7 and it was not fun. No more Super-X likely to be run, I had missed my chance to
give it a proper go, was so looking forward to it. Bollox.
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