SICK
Christmas had taken its toll on the Motley Crew with the ‘Aussie Flu’ virus taking down Timo Mullen and Jamie Hancock for a large part of the holidays. Both were keen to get back on the water but at the same time were supposedly not ready to go full power! I had made a plan to head to the mainland at first light, ferries permitting, to catch the outgoing tide at Highcliffe from noon onwards. I had left the research to Paul Hunt who had come up with the plan and trusted his judgement on a forecast of west winds and an 18 foot swell all along the south coast. What we had not counted on was the storm surge. High tides, huge swell and gale force winds meant that on arrival at Highcliffe the conditions looked insane! Waves were crashing against the cliffs and refracting back out to ‘mushroom’ with the incoming swell in the impact zone. Upwind we could see sails flickering in and out of pluming waves at Avon so we headed up there to check if it was any better. Meanwhile Timo had ventured up to Kimmeridge to check if the wind had any northwest in it and see if the ‘Bench’ was sailable in the wild storm. At least by now we had all the possibilities covered.
