STEVE THORP
The Bluff was super hard because it was so dumpy, closing out with lots of cross chop and the odd rogue logo high sand dredger thrown in, so really hard to keep up the speed to get out. Getting knocked sideways by the whitewater would take all the wind out of your sail and bring you to a standstill. After the Cornwall event I have a whole new respect for the guys competing in Sylt!
It was pretty windy on the Sunday so I had the Ezzy 5.0 Taka 4 and an RRD Wave Cult 82 V7 set up in Thruster with 18 Flex/10 Ezzy which is what I usually sail with. I made no changes and thought my setup should be fine for onshore and I am definitely not blaming the gear! Well, I can tell you exactly what I should have been doing during my heats! I’m so disorganised it’s a joke though. I always seem to arrive at contests last minute and with no time to be prepared, and the Cornwall wave classic was no exception. This year I managed to not find my timer, didn’t check the heat duration, forget my rashie, only rigged one sail and thought it was 2 jumps and 1 wave for the first heat not the other way round. I actually had 4 hours sleep on the Friday night, so the first thing I did on arrival was try to get 2 hours sleep! I woke up to find out my heat started in 10 minutes! I’m usually a lot better on the second day but I still never quite seem to get my act together.