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Harry Member Member#: 186 Location: Registered: 14-04-2003 Diary Entries: 418 |
17th August 2004 Windsurfing: Galicia, Spain Wind Direction: Cross-off to cross (SW-W) Wind Stength: Proper windy! Surf / Sea State: HUGE waves + shorebreak Air Temperature: Warm Sea Temperature: Tad nippy Weather: Sunny Max Speed: Distance Covered: Martin woke me up early, as he said he would the night before - conditions were looking good. Mr Keen boy had already got his kit out and wasted no time in getting on the water. I thought the wind looked a bit light so minced around having breakfast, rigging up etc. Martin was scoring some epic conditions - huge waves, great cross-off down the line riding. Just as I was going out he came in, with a big grin on his face. Thought I would get some of the same, but the tide was now dropping off and shorebreak was getting HUGE. Made several attempts to get out, but no way it wasn't happening, just took some more proper munchings. We all minced around some more waiting for the tide to come back up again which would reduce the shore-break. Meanwhile Al had found a 50m long pond on the beach formed by this river which ran along the beach. The pond was lined up perfectly cross-shore with the wind, and it was perfectly flat on it (obviously...), so was great fun trying to get planing on it and pull off moves and gybes. It was so small and narrow it made it very difficuly to do anything, but was great fun taking it in turns trying. Nearly got round a gybe on my wave board on it, carving as hard as I possible could, but had to bail out as I realised I was heading rapidly downwind towards the sand....! After lunch we tried once more to make it out. Tide was coming up now but still the shorebreak was mental, just walls and walls of white water. Amazingly though James made it out - jammy git managed to time his run with a brief respite in the madness. He charged out to a huge wave, went for a back loop.... The last we saw of him was him fully inverted with his mast pointing down towards the water, as he disappered into the void behind the other side of the wave. He came back in 20 mins later, with his sail destroyed, having swam for ages apparently after losing his kit, in order to catch up with it again. So....it was just too mental here at Traba so we decided to up sticks and go to this flat water area which Adam and Al had been to yesterday. (Adam had hurt his ankle, and Al isn't good enough yet to sail in the waves, so they had gone to this place on the west coast where it was flat water and mentally windy apparently). Was looking forward to a solid proper windy flat water session. BUT at the beach/harbour type place we went to wind was offshore and really gusty :( Martin and Al launched from the beach on their bigger boards, but I thought if I was going to get out on my own kit (wave board and 5.2) there was no way I would be able to launch from the beach, since there was no wind on the inside there. So I launched from rocks further downwind which would get me straight out into where the wind was best. Launching over the rocks was interesting.....took a while but made it in the end. Was very annoying watching Martin sailing just meters away from me, having launched successfully from the beach and sailed downwind....maybe I should have done that in the end. Anyway made it out alright, and had some OK flat-water blasting. However the offshore wind meant I was just always trying to stay upwind, so didn't feel confident going for lots of gybes. Wind was gusty as well so was often blobbing, and hence drifting. Had to go for loads of tacks though so was good practice for them. After an hour or so on the water, realised I was losing too much ground downwind, so decided to cut my losses and sail round the back of the rocks where I would be able to land quite easily. There was no wind round there though at all so lots of swimming took ages. Then had to de-rig and tie all my kit to my boom so I could walk back up the road to the beach and the vans. When I got there somehow jammy git Martin had managed to sail all the way back upwind to the beach, despite being on small kit as well and the wind being very dodgy right on the inside. Grrrr I don't know how he does it - always gets way upwind no matter how marginal it is and what size kit he is on. OVERALL THOUGHTS ON THE HOLIDAY Had a great time with Martin, Adam, Al and James; roughing it on the beaches was good fun, evenings were always a great laff and we even cooked up some really good meals with our limited resources, not just beans from a tin, BBQ'd trout one night, steaks another - always was good. Did the tourist thing as well in Santiago, and a Spanish all-nighter in this town Noia near Santiago :) Unfortunately didn't get any really good sessions on the water which produced an ear-to-ear grin on my face - most of the time the wind was too light and the waves/shorebreak too big. But we had a good amount of wind and TOW, and I feel I learnt loads about sailing in big waves, getting out through the white water, how to take the munchings, etc etc. Plus - unlike all the other guys - not a single bit of my kit got broken!!! :-> A great holiday in an amazing place. Would love to go back there when the thermal north-easterly wind is blowing and a good but slightly less mental swell is rolling in. |
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