COME ON DOWN
Determined to dig deeper on how Fernandez has become a shredding machine – on both tacks – I sent him an e-mail, pretty much inviting myself to come and visit on the next decent forecast! Less than ten minutes after the mail had pinged into cyberspace, Victor’s reply was back with me bearing the news that the forecast was epic for the coming weekend, starting on Friday, peaking on Saturday and slowly fading away Monday afternoon. Darn it! My wife had already planned a trip to London on the Saturday, but Sunday and Monday still looked decent if I could source a flight that would deliver me on time.
Too be honest, I’d not been expecting such a prompt response literally half an hour after sending my message on a longshot. All of a sudden I’d landed myself in a situation where I had to make a decision to follow through with my initial request. Another ten minutes of research passed and I had dug out a flight with Easyjet departing from London Gatwick at 6.20am Sunday morning. This would land me in Almeria less than forty minutes from Victor’s front door by 10am. There was also a return flight on Tuesday morning which would give me two whole days and evenings in sunny Spain, allowing plenty of time to explore the area and maybe even to sneak in a couple of cheeky beers après the action? By this time I was running out of excuses not to pull out. My kind wife had granted me permission, the flights seemed tailor-made for my demands and the forecast was calling for 35 knots all day Sunday with three metre waves. Without further ado I clicked the button and booked!
It’s been a while since I’ve flown with Easyjet and I was initially a bit worried about baggage and all the extra hidden costs they seem to hide on the web site. But to my surprise the online booking was relatively simple, the price was what had quoted in the first place aside from fourteen pounds each way to check a twenty kilo bag. There’s also an option to check in sports equipment for around £35 as long as the total weight of your luggage doesn’t exceed 32 kilos, so taking your own kit is easily doable.
It’s a strange feeling when you actually commit to a trip like this. First of all there’s that initial panic that you’ve messed-up the dates and you spend the next half an hour in a state of shock looking back at calendars, emails and forecasts – just to make sure you’ve not accidently booked for the wrong day, month or even year. Once you’re sure all is correct then, as a photographer, there’s the excitement of heading somewhere new, the challenge to capture fresh exciting images from your trip and hopefully bring them back and show them off to the world via the pages of a magazine. Obviously it helps to work with a sailor with the level of talent of Victor Fernandez. He has the ability to make average conditions look awesome, so if the wind and waves are off-the-hook then who knows what is possible!
