WINTER WARMER
As usual I was in between boards and only had a fairly skinny quad in the back of my van, needless to say Timo had a full armoury of Starboard carbon in the back of his van, hum, a bigger size would have been better. After a quick chat on the beach the word was solid 4.2m weather. Before long I was skipping down the beach with a 4.5m and my skinny quad. I knew a warm up sail was out of the question today, (I’d only get colder anyway!), so I wasted no time and headed straight downwind to the river mouth where the waves were head high to logo. The tide was dropping which made the waves a bit bumpy but they were steep and had a bit of punch to them, chunky enough to make sailing interesting and take my mind of my freezing cold hands. Pretty much as soon as I got downwind the wind picked up and I was stacked. Timo was firing and nailing some solid back loops on the outside bigger lumps during the squalls. I managed to score a few solid turns and also stuck a few loops and hoped JC captured the evidence! Before long my hands had gone and the wind turned a tad gusty; my time was up and the school run was fast approaching. I strolled back upwind just in time for a quick chat with JC, before long I was doubled up, flapping my arms about whilst chatting, there’s nothing like the pain barrier to stutter the flow of conversation. When I left Timo was still sailing, the wind had picked up a little, hum I think next time I will chuck the palmless mitts in the back of the van when I sail during January!
“ Make a trip down to this beautiful part of the country if you can, trust me, you won’t want to leave if it’s going off ! ’’ Dave Ewer
