Session Details

Saturday 17th October – Windsurf **** River Stour at Wrabness – sunny periods and squally showers.  

Foil – 20.90 knot max, 19.22 knot ave (year PB)., 11.86 knot hour, 17.91 knot mile (year PB) , 44.48 km.,15.03 knot alpha.  

Starboard Freeride 150 and a Tushingham Bolt 5.75m.

Woke to a lovely day with blue sky and Autumn sunshine so had a quick drive round at 8 to take a few weather pics, first stop Brackenbury for some colourfull leaves ending up at the cliff top car park for a walk out onto the shingle bar for some beach hut reflections.

There was a fresh breeze from the north forecast for today meaning only one venue for me,, Wrabness on the River Stour but with high water at 4.45 we were in no hurry to go. So breakfast and exercises in the sunny back garden before I made a chicken sandwich for lunch and we set off for deepest Essex arriving at Wall Lane around one and were the only ones there :) Sadly the fly tippers had been back with some old asbestos roof sheets in the ditch, the world is full of idiots! It’s difficult to judge the wind in the sheltered rigging area so set-up my board and took it over the sea wall to the beach where the tide was still pretty low but the river looked promising with the breeze gusting to 20 knots so I took a chance with my 5.75m. We ate half our lunch, I then suited up and was on the water after a bit of a wade out just before two leaving Mag for her walk to the Nature Reserve. The wind seemed to have dropped as I wobbled out but did get flying down to Bradfield and back as a few were starting to wade out down there. It was a little patchy to start but it looked windier in Holbrook Bay so I made my way there and ended up having some cracking long runs across the bay down towards Parkstone in lovely sunshine but with some cool clouds building. The squalls started to arrive as the showers moved in and we were treated to several rainbows, at one point I was flying flat out well powered up straight to the base of a rainbow, it was fairly quiet in the bay but was joined by a long board, a wind foiler and a winger. After a good hour plus the wind dropped very light and I was slowing making my way back when the squalls returned and I had a few interesting runs down past Bradfield way over-powered at times, I saw David out on his 9.5 race sail get wiped out but I managed to stay onboard just! For once the windsurf foilers seemed to outnumber the wingers, rare these days but after the best part of three hours out it was time to call it a day and returned to finish my lunch with a cuppa and hear about Mags day. So not a bad day on the Stour, got a couple of year PB’s best mile and average with some OK gybes too!

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