Saturday 14th November - Windsurf ***** - River Orwell at Levington Marina – mainly cloudy and mild.

Foil – 18.79 knot max, 17.34 knot ave ., 12.19 knot hour (PB), 15.97 knot mile , 55.60 km ., 11.40 knot alpha.

Exocet RF AST 91 with Slingshot Hover Glide 76 with Tushingham Lightning 7m.

The second early start in a row as I head to Levington Marina arriving at eight with super keen Andy M already there, rigging his 6.6 for a trip to Mistley! Amazingly we are treated to a brief glimpse of sun but it does not look very windy, so I set up my foil and watch Andy set off. He is way underpowered and does not get flying so I hold off rigging to see what happen as James and Robert arrive. There is talk of rigging 8m but with the forecast of 35 mph winds we give it a few minutes, then the wind arrives and Andy sets off again and is up and flying straight away. I then take a chance with my 7m again and by the time I am wading out I am beginning to think I should have rigged 6m! I need not have worried because the 7m handled winds with solid 25 mph gusts so well, helped by the flat water. I started off heading towards Pin Mill as Andy went the other way to the docks but the wind was particularly strong that way so I stayed between Levington bay and Pin Mill and ended up having one of my best foiling sessions on the Orwell:) I hoped to get to the Orwell Bridge but ran out of wind in front of Pin Mill so gybed. You had the best of both worlds today a broad run to Pin Mill followed by a top nearly three mile beat back with the big gusts keeping you on your toes! Jamie was out on his foil, the first time for ages and as a lightweight did very well to hang onto to his 6.9!!! Foil racers David and Nick arrived but I don’t envy them using their really big boards and sails! I tried a few fast runs but ended up in the water a couple of times so eased off and just enjoyed the long runs, flying most of the time:) I was out well over two hours covering nearly 35 miles and despite no sun it was very mild and no rain ending up with a PB for the hour with loads of nice miles, foiling doesn’t get better than this:)

PS – while checking what was happening this afternoon on the North Beach webcam, a large number of kitesurfers out enjoying the flat water of low water in the River Deben. I then spotted the lifeboat of Bawdsey beach with a couple of ambulances on the cliff top car park, finding out that they were rescuing a windsurfer, fingers crossed there is nothing negative in the local press as accidents do happen and pleased no one was injured!

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