Monday 6th – Windsurf ***** - River Orwell, Levington – sunny.

F2 Zantos 310 with 44 fin and Tushingham Lightning 8.5.

Fin – 26.20 knot max., 24.56 knot ave., 15.04 knot hour, 20.32 knot mile, 62.30 km., 15.78 knot Alpha.

2020 just keeps on giving and with a good SW wind I again headed to Levington, my go to venue especially in the winter where you have safe sailing with good parking and launching. Again the tide was not really on my side with high at Harwich at 7.35 and I am not usually keen on sailing here with the tide going out but with the wind SW it doesn’t really matter :) So after doing my exercises and breakfast, Mag had agreed to give me an hour and then head over to the marina and join me for lunch:) I arrive at the marina at 10.30 and the tide is already fairly low and there doesn’t look a huge amount of wind out on the Orwell so I quickly set up my big Zantos and rig 8.5 which I know can handle a lot of wind. I had to climb aboard someone’s yacht to get the owner to zip me into my winter wetsuit and headed down to the small beach by the marina entrance. I had to do a couple of tacks to get out as it was pretty shallow close in! Once out in the main river and with the onshore wind you had plenty of water to sail and it was great fun doing long two mile runs from Levington Bay nearly to Pin Mill where you lost the wind! The wind picked up and in the end I might have been a tad fast on smaller kit but the big board and sail handles 25 knots of wind fine but going really fast was difficult as you had to beat both ways to stay in the deeper water, I tried bearing off a few times and had some good 25 knots peaks but couldn’t hang on for longer runs in fear of running out of water! The wind was particularly strong in the bay where it chopped up a little again past the marina by Levington Creek where you got the best water conditions:) I had to avoid a couple of ships heading out to sea but was out the best part of three hours covering 38 miles with an OK hour and alpha in lovely winter sunshine too, not cold at all. I have learned that foiling would be difficult here in this direction with the tide low as there is a huge amount of shallow water! With the tide now completely out and the windy going a little patchy to decided to call it a day and ran into the marina channel, jumping off on the launching beach and straight into two feet of mud but I was close to the shore that was not a problem:) Mag was relaxing in the van after biking over and had only been there an hour and twenty minutes wondering if I would ever come in! I then had to wash the mud off my wetsuit and at least Mag could undue my wetsuit! I was soon warming up with the lovely diesel heater while having some yummy lumpy soup! Might get out again this week and Saturday is looking promising for a session at Point Clear:)

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