MISSION ONE!
It’s early spring, a stunning sunny day with force 7 plus westerly winds blowing right down the English Channel, the perfect forecast to head to Brighton and capture the rusting girders of the remnants of the infamous West Pier. Leaving the Isle of Wight, the Solent is awash with whitecaps as yachts crawl back into Portsmouth with their sails reefed due to the high winds. A few hours later I arrive in Worthing and we head down to the Baker Academy so Nik can show me around his latest enterprise that he runs with his brother and former PWA world cup star Anthony.
It is an impressive centre they have set up, right on the water, all the toys and of course two of the best sailors in the country to promote it. Out in front a few guys are blasting around on 4.2’s, so with a building forecast it should be perfect a few miles up the coast in Brighton. We hook up with Fanatic young gun Sam Latham in Brighton and pay the extortionate parking fee to have the van right on the promenade. To cut a long story short, despite the most glorious of afternoons, the wind never blew above ten knots around the piers. We waited, and we waited, and we…I guess you are getting the picture, but that darned wind never blew. Fair play to Nik, he was quite calm and composed about the situation, joking and laughing during our frustrating three hour wait. Eventually we were forced to call it a day and wrote it off to bad luck. Despite a pleasant enough afternoon in Brighton wandering up and down the seafront, I made my way back to the Isle of Wight totally dejected. The weird thing was, just about every spot along the south coast that day scored force six winds and above; even a mere ten miles down the coast they were still out on 4.7’s in the afternoon!