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| Member Details | Session Description |
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| Owner:
mas Member Member#: 7693 Location: Registered: 29-06-2008 Diary Entries: 381 |
19th September 2020 Windsurfing: Bradfield Wind Direction: NE Wind Stength: 15-25kts Surf / Sea State: flat Air Temperature: warm Sea Temperature: warm Weather: Sunny Max Speed: 18.91 (knots - unless stated otherwise) Distance Covered: 21nm (Nautical Miles - unless stated otherwise) Another fantastic day on foil at Bradfield on the River Stour. A road closure on route made me 30 mins late but on arrival, I have never seen so many sailors there with a mixture of fin and foils, as it was very windy. The campsite next door was almost full + fitness classes on the beach, with Sup’s, canoeist and dinghy sailing going on. It was blowing around 20kts and after a quick chat with the guys going out sail sizes varied, with the foil racers going 8M and lesser folks around 6M. Fin guys were also varied up to 7.5 – 2 Gaastra slalom racers from the North were practicing, racing each other around a yellow buoy. They were very quick, also laying down gybes every turn, def worth watching and made me think go fin, as it was a great fin day. Stayed loyal to the foil to iron out my downwind sailing. Its not as good or comfortable as my upwind game. Foilers headed up to Wrabness whilst the fin goes were blasting across the river towards Mistley, the opposite direction. Rigged 7.8 Goya rotational sail + Exo RF91 with the Slingshot 76. Went straight into flight but straight away I noticed the difference between my normal 3 cam sail (North S type) and this soft sail. It felt wrong, too soft out in the beating straps, not locked and stable as I am used to. When the wind dropped slightly, the rotational sail didn’t glide at all. Def prefer the pull of the cam sail for my weight anyway. Joined Graham heading up to the oil refinery and docks. At Wrabness the wind was now howling thru very strong and it was game on. Graham using his Starboard 177 with the 800 front wing was miles faster than the slingshot, pretty much buzzing me at will. To make matters worse he nicked that board for sale with a mate just be4 my offer. The board is very quick upwind. As I have no phone and radio, nor did Graham, I really got jumpy going so far from base, which was out of sight, so shouted I was going back. He wasn’t happy and carried on almost to the docks be4 he turned. As always I had a hell of a job going back downwind in the big gusts, always having to head back upwind, to stay on deck when it’s windy. The board nose dive quite a lot if I go max broad, so gave up and reached back, which is OK, but it wasn’t downwind foiling. Both Colsey, Nick and Graham, coming back pi**ed pass me foiling very deep. Thankfully the wind eased a bit allowing full downwind foiling, which was brilliant as I foiled all the way down nearly reaching Mistley, but the wind there was too light there. Most of the guys stayed near base at high tide reaching across the day, with some very nice runs. Ian looked great on his new Starboard / Slingshot combo, the 2 James were killing it, and Lord James has only been foiling recently. Think he also went out later on fin. Had another long chat with Nick and Dave about technique. They both agree my Slingshot kit will never match the SB IQ stuff up or downwind, but at the end of the day, so long as I was going off wind, it didn’t matter. Problem is I sail so high at the start; coming back reaching takes an eternity. On one run back I thought I was pretty much max downwind angle perfect albeit extremely slow, when both Dave and Nick sailed another 20 degrees deeper over taking me downwind! Brilliant day and will be doing it all again Sunday! Max HR today was 141 (after a mighty wipe-out) but averaged HR 105 for the 3 hr session, covering 21nm, max spd 18.91kts, so a decent workout burning 1974 calories. |
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