Monday 7th July  – Windsurf **** River Stour at Wrabness –  sunny periods.

Foil – 19.01  knot max, 17.74 knot ave., 14.46  knot hour, 16.11 knot mile, 55..02 km (year PB)., 14.65 knot alpha. 

Starboard Freeride 150 and a Evolution Freeride foil with a Tushingham Storm 6.5.

With the wind forecast to reach 20 knots from the North a trip over the border into deepest Essex was called for and with high water at 10.15 an early start was required! We left home at 7.15, it is always great comes with me and we were soon caught up in the queue to cross the Orwell Bridge which has a long term contra-flow due to roadworks which held us up for 20 minutes! We arrived at Wrabness at 8.30 so I set-up my foil board and took it too the beach, the tide was already high and a winger had just launched up the Stour at Bradfield, in fact about 4 were out and later 4 more launched from Wrabness including the lovely Shaun Cook from F-hot and we had a lovely chat when I had finished! It was not overly windy to start with so I rigged the biggest sail I had with me, my 6.5. Launching just before nine in lovely sunshine I was under-powered for a few runs before the wind filled. It took a few runs to get past the point where the beach bungalows start due to the patchy wind but as soon as I made it into Holbrook bay the session vastly improved with the wind really increasing and my 5.5 might have been better but I stuck with the big sail and had some great long runs through the boats in super smooth water before gybing and sailing 3 miles back to Bradfield, nothing really fast but great fun with some nice gybing. The only time I went in was pushing too hard and my foil left the water! I was getting tired so had one last long run from way beyond Wrabness and back past Bradfield before returning to the little beach which is when things went wrong, I slowed down when getting near to the shore but my foil hit the bottom which put me in the water hard trapping the fingers of my left hand between the harness line and boom which was very sore, in fact they are really swollen now and I can’t move them much, fingers crossed they are not broken, luckily there is not much wind now for a few days with sadly another heatwave on the way with a run of 30 degree days:( I had a yummy cheese roll with pate and learned about Mags day, she had been on the usual nice walk, she had to help me load the van but I managed to drive home. We mad a small detour to Sutton to check the plant stall, sadly nothing but parked at the end of the lane for a quick walk at Alton Water to see about ten lovely highland cattle, saw a muntjac too and managed to get over the Orwell bridge with no delays, so a great day out sailing a years best of 34 miles, just a shame about the swollen fingers!

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