In all honesty I was fine. After years of wave sailing one thing you learn is not to panic in these situations. It’s best to let the waves smash you around until eventually you wash up on a beach somewhere! Sounds unbelievably straightforward but when you’re surrounded by massive surf in the middle of a full-force, mid-December storm, somewhere a long way out-back and unsure which way the beach is; things can get a little interesting.
Back on terra firma a kitesurfer came to alert me that my gear was washing up on the Bantham side of the bay. Simple, I thought, just a quick hop, skip and a jump across the river to fetch it. I was wrong! Although the estuary was now only about 20metres wide it was far stronger and faster-flowing than I had guessed. By the time I had reached the middle (where I thought it would be about knee-depth) the water was racing around me and was over chest deep. It wasn’t long before I could no longer resist the flow of the river so I decided to make a dash for it, swimming the last few metres. Even with the correct swimming path across the rip current I got swept back out into the breaking waves from which I had just come having to be tumbled and pushed back to the beach once more.
When I finally made it back to Bigbury with kit in-tow, myself, Muzza and JC had all made the resounding decision that maybe the café would have been the better idea after all!