Clive & Tobys Trip
We had been talking about a trip to the coast since the end of last summer without actually getting round to doing anything so when my Email inbox pinged and there it was, all booked -a neatly packaged weekend trip to the South Coast Windsurfing course in Christchurch- I was very happy.

Although the journey was no huge meandering trip Toby did managed to blow the simple enough M25 /M3 directions off course and into random parts of Dorset. Of course all roads south eventually lead to the sea and after a spot of coast hugging we finally hit Christchurch and Steamer Point.

Having painfully watched the wind stats for 7 days leading to our grand tour it started to look as though the forecasts for Saturday were fortunately wrong and the predicted lack of wind had manifest into what our instructor Ian Hunter casually described as perfect conditions!!

8 Guys of similar standard (various intermediates) had made it down from various parts of the country with Brogborough being about the furthest. Most turned out to be Lake Sailors and were equally anxious about splashing around on the salty stuff.

However after a reassuring briefing Ian set us up on a grassy patch just above the beach to get rigged.

Now Brogborough, our home lake is a natural spring and exceptionally clean having more in common with Evian than the salty stuff. So launching into some pretty choppy (to us) brownish water was not instinctive but felt much warmer than the lake at this time of year.

The solid force 4 gave us some great planing conditions and the sun shone all day. It soon became obvious to the ‘Lakies’ that the footstraps are super essential in even moderate sea blasting and Ian was on hand to coax everyone to go for it.

After a full day of action we retired for some r&r in the town.

Sunday saw a serious drop in wind and made planing very unlikely. However this turned out to be a great day as Ian introduced some light wind freestyle exercises and had us all trying some pretty cool stuff. Eventually the wind just about gave up around 3.30 which was perfect timing to allow us to pack up and get away before the rush.

Thanks to Toby for actually arranging something and of course to Ian Hunter at Southcoastwindsurfing.com for kick-starting our season.

CliveB

You should really look into what other people said about this...