Thursday 12th November

After a week in the Alpes-Maritime cycling and eating cheese and drinking wine I returned to find October style low pressure in charge of the weather and the forecast looking mild and windy FOR WEEKS :)

This session was a quick warm-up at Shoreham on 5.0 and 78, bit of a rip running and SSW very onshore there, but some fun backside riding.

Forecast for loads of wind and accompanying swell.

Bring it on!!

Friday 22nd May

Second instalment of the looping coaching with Ant.

Went back to my Mach 10 blasting habits, but was finding it difficult to jolly along as the wind was a bit marginal for 5.4 and waveboard so was having to hang off the rig to get going, and that really puts in the wrong body position for looping. Which (apparently) is much easier from an upright front-footed stance.

Spent a bit more time practising the sheeting in - which i finally get - back hand has to go waaaaaay down the boom - right at the end of the main arm for me and then you really have to yank it - it is not like being sheeted in when sailing along. If you do that then you get a nice floaty catapult and dont hit the water nearly so hard as if you had been a bit half-arsed sheeting in.

Managed two observed attempts before the wind dropped, got everything right, but didnt sheet in on one so a bit of a splat, the other fully rotated, but left board behind as took off too close to the wind.

Next time...

(Didnt I say that last time?)

Monday 18th May

Went for a looping coaching session with Ant Baker. Decided during session 8th May that I was doing something fundamentally wrong and sure if within 15s of us leaving the beach Ant pointed out that blasting out at World Cup slalom speed was no way to go about it.

Some adjustments to my rig, and after introducing a generally more relaxed vibe to my sailing and it all seemed a lot less scary. After a fair bit of sailing one-handed, to get used to sheeting out and getting my weight more on the front foot, and quite a bit of chop-hopping really off the wind, we were ready to have a crack.

First go, take off and initiation all perfect according to Ant, forgot to sheet in, head hit mast and split ear open :)

Fortunately one of the guys I was with, Gareth, lives on the beach and his wife is a nurse so she cleaned it up and put some steri-strips on. Didn't hurt at the time (although it did a bit the next day) and I was still psyched for it, but it just wasn't sensible.

Anyway, it feels really close now. Ant, being a gentleman, says the session is unfinished and is to be continued next time it is windy...

Thursday 20th September

First time on the water since moving - and it took a month (although nowhere near as long as it took to get broadband). Takes about 35 minutes to get to Shoreham, where I sailed with 5.4 on the Guerrilla 78. It was OK, cross-on small waves, couple of decent jumps and turns, just good to go for a sail and spend more time sailing than driving :)

Wednesday 27th June

Fun 4.2 session on the Guerrilla Wave at Shoreham. Decided to take a half day, finished at work at 12.45, got home 1.09 and was on the water at 2.45 so although it doesn't look it on the map it would seem it's the quickest beach to get to from TW7.

Also had some small waves at low tide when everywhere else would have been flat or too onshore to be fun. Although the wind looks reasonably sideshore on the beach, and is a great angle for jumping, the way the waves come in means it is quite onshore when you are trying to ride them and it is easy to get backwinded - it requires the full onshore technique. Still got a couple of smacks I was reasonably happy with.