Saturday 17th September - Windsurf **** - River Orwell at Levington – sunny.

Foil – 18.80 knot max, 17.97 knot ave ., 10.87 knot hour, 15.26 knot mile, 23.05 km ., 16.34 knot alpha. (PB) :)

Starboard Freeride 150 and an Evolution Freeride foil with a Tushingham Thundebird 6.5.

The wind continues to blow from the north but after yesterdays gusty session on the Stour I hoped to save some miles today and head over to the River Orwell at Levington and hope the wind was NW! With high wate today at 5 I was in no hurry so did my exercises in the warm sunshine in the back garden, sheltered from the keen breeze which was now coming from the NW, making Levington doable now:) Mag did not come today and I arrived at the marina around 12.45, the river looked ideal, loads of water with a good breeze, cross off from the right, sunny and feeling much warmer than yesterday so I quickly set up the foil board. With the wind in this direction sail choice is a bit of a guess work but I again took a chance with my favourite Thunderbird 6.5 which proved ideal for most of the session. I launched and quickly waded out to deep water sailing out of the channel, then hit the wind line and was quickly up and flying. The session then turned into a gybe feast having great fun in the sun doing short runs down towards Felixstowe docks where I did run out of wind so started to beat back. It was probably one of my best gybing sessions ever not dropping one, in fact I was out over two hours and did not come close to falling in and am verry pleased how the gybing is coming along, not all flying but I quickly got going again if the wind played ball, also fantastic to be out with loads of yachts making the most of some top sailing weather:) I then had some nice runs diagonally across the bend in the river nothing overly fast because the water was a bit lumpy. With the wind going patchy I decided to end the top session so headed in. While packing up Simon Chippington headed out in a rib to give someone a winging lesion so I decided to stop and take a few pics before heading to the 5 star showers and home, might be the same again tomorrow? On checking my gps I found out I got a PB alpha of 16.34 beating my previous best by some way, am well chuffed:)

I had a message from fellow foiler Mark Smalling telling me about his day on the gusty Stour yesterday, he said that Michael Galbraith had an accident getting a nasty cut in his head, hope it is not too serious and it heals quickly!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set?vanity=stephen.squirrell.1&set=a.10224094620605938