Saturday, December 16, 2006

Friday December 15th















Pagham, Guerrilla 78 and 5.0. More wind than we were expecting so got to try out new board, which is exactly what I wanted. Much more loose in onshore slow waves, and a nice freestyle feel when just blasting. Seems like it will take a 5.4/5.5 so will be expecting to use it a lot.

Small waves but coming in lines so plenty of jumping, and a bit of frontside riding, but wasnt quite enough wind, so it was tricky putting more than a few turns together. At first, only me Pete and Bill, then Bill went and John Hibbard turned up, but basically we had the place to ourselves.

(The pic above was taken in front of Rich's house and not at the spit where the waves are)

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Thursday 7th December


DSCF1369, originally uploaded by andytedd.

Overcoombe, Weymouth. 4.2 and waveboard - ridiculously overpowered, gusting over 50 knots. Took about 2 hours 20 minutes to drive there, so its doable for a day trip. If it had been a nice F6 this would have been a great day, Overcombe has long lines of fun sized waves with good shape and the wind is nicely sideshore. There is a nice cafe with no hangup about wetsuits and a shop with spare UJs etc. Its all very convenient.

But the wind was gusting F9, and only a few guys were sailing well. They guy in the picture is Steve Thorp who was totally ripping the place up, more aeriels than the rest of us did bottom turns - put together!

Monday, December 04, 2006

Monday 4th December

Littlehampton 95l FSW, 5.0 and 5.8m

When we got there at high tide it looked pretty windy and there were decent (looking) waves coming well spaced in sets, over head-high.

A couple of locals were rigging 4.5s which looked optimistic so we rigged 5.0s (heavily downhauled out of respect) and watched. There was quite a big dump, but plenty of space between waves so not a bad launch. Its years and years since I sailed there, if I ever did (would have been with a tiga 280) and I'd say its the easiest S Coast shingly launch other than West Witts.

Anyway they went out and we went back to the cars to get FSW waveboards... The waves, and even the occasional bit of whitewater were head-high, but there was not much wind. We then sailed planing in the gusts for a couple of hours, I changed up to 5.8 which improved things a fair bit.

Quite a nice setup for backside riding but it has to be the slowest wave Ive ever sailed - it makes Pagham look fast. Got a few frontside turns but unless you are fully powered on a 5.0 or less I cant see people stringing consecutive turns together. Its a wave that needs to be sailed rather than surfed.

Got a bit of a shock when I fell in the first time, but after a while not too bad, probably could just about have managed without slippers, but didnt fancy adding cold feet to the list of woes.