With no wind I spent the morning chatting and picking people’s brains, particularly Pete and Zara Davis. I have known them since I first started windsurfing on Brogborough lake at 13 years old, and they were incredibly open and helpful. To be honest everyone at the event was the same. Being new to this world it was fascinating talking about which board/sail/fin combos people used, both for the previous day, and for the real speed days at places like West Kirby/la Franchie or even Luderitz.
Also I spent some time studying my tracks on the computer and this turned out to be very useful. It was pretty clear I was always losing speed in the middle of the course. There is a gust at the beginning and a gust at the end, with a lull in the middle. The best speeds I had were always when I could keep a good speed through the middle. I also noted that actually all my best runs were a little out to sea. I had spent the previous sessions trying to get as close to the beach as possible, onto the flattest water, but actually the wind and times were better 20m out. Armed with this info I opted to put a bit of weight on my shoulders to help carry me through this lull and not worry so much about getting close to the beach. Plus having seen the consistent speeds of Roberto Hoffman I also opted for an asymmetric fin in my speed board.
Finally the wind came in very late. They started Round 2 of the Canaries leg and the first 10 minutes was really windy. I set 2 pretty good speeds of over 32kts on the 7.8/90 combo, and then came running in to the beach to grab the speed board. That turned out to be a total disaster. Firstly in the rush to rig, I hadn’t closed the clip properly on one side of my boom, so as I entered the course and sheeted in, the boom shortened and I had to abort the run. After sorting that out I made 2 more runs, but it quickly became clear that the asymmetric fin I had was too small in these conditions.