With Spring tides on the cards Blacky had called to be at St Ives for around 11 for the push. We headed round to his pad in Hayle to confirm plans and rather than ring the door-bell Timo called Blacky from the van. Lo and behold Blacky appeared in his porch with a red phone in his hand. The ‘Red phone’ has always been jokingly reported as our method of sending the signal when any big forecast is on the cards but to actually see Blacky taking matters seriously and having one for real did make me laugh! With an hour or so to spare before the optimum tide, Timo and I decided to take a quick look at Praa Sands just to check out options if the harbour wasn’t working. With the north shore so onshore, surely the south coast of Cornwall would offer clean waves and more side offshore winds? From the top of the road Praa looked epic, the swell looked solid and huge plumes of spray were blowing off the tops of the waves. Down at the beach we hooked up with Steve King who had just come in after being flattened on his 3.3m. He reckoned it was too windy to even bottom turn and after four or five waves had come in with his tail between his legs. Even so it still looked epic to me and I could tell Timo was tempted to head out. If we sailed here we would most likely be ditching Blacky who was adamant he was going to sail St Ives. With that in mind we decided to leave Praa for later, which was a tough decision since it really did look tasty, especially for photography.