Life Begins at 40 (knots) – The Tools

As you should know by now, it the big 4-0 for me this year and I’m trying to hit 40 knots on a windsurfer.

The first stage is to get the right tools for the job so I’ve been doing my research and have come up with a list of kit.

The Boards

Mistral SL Red Dot

I couldn’t decided between a dedicated speed board and a small slalom board. The dedicated speed board is very small, narrow and the fastest thing in a straight line under the right conditions. They are also pretty challenging to sail and don’t cope well with choppy water, gusty wind or poor technique. The slalom board is still quite a small board but being a little larger and slightly more user-friendly it is the fastest thing on the water in a wider range of conditions. It copes better with some chop and gusty winds and is a little more forgiving. Both are really fast in comparison to the wave boards that I usually sail. The slalom board is likely to be the fastest in most conditions, but when the conditions are perfect the speed board would be considerably faster.

Unable to make up my mind I decided that the only option was to get one of each! The speed board I’ve picked is a Fanatic Falcon Speed (242cm long, 48cm wide and 68 litres), which Boardwise in Cannock are getting for me. The slalom board is a Mistral SL Red Dot Team Edition (240cm long, 55cm wide and 80 litres) which was delivered on Sunday night by Jim from Puravida Boardriders.

The Sails

The boards are crucial for top speeds, but the sails are just as important. The wave sails that I usually use are designed for ease of use, to feel light in the hands and be manouverable. Perfect for the jumps and gybes and general hectic sailing in waves, but lacking the power, stability and aerodynamics needed for top speeds. New sails were therefore needed too. I’d need a couple to cover a range of winds and my engines of choice ended up being a 6.3m North Warp and a 5.2m North Warp. These are stable, powerful sails that should be capable of speeds in excess of 40 knots.

North Warp 5.2

North Warp 6.3

Both arrived last night and I’ve just rigged them in the garden.

The 5.2m rigged beautifully but I wasn’t able to get the 6.3m rigged very well. Either I need a better mast for it or more strength to add more downhaul. The former is probably the case!

The Fins

Fins are probably the most crucial part of a speed-sailors equipment. Top sailors will have loads of them and will fine tune them for the board and conditions in order to get maximum speeds. The shape, stiffness, size, foil-profile and rake are all important. I don’t have the time (or money)  to bother with all of that, so a couple of speed fins will have to do. So far I have fins, Fanatic Falcon fins in 28cm and 30cm.

Other bits

This windsurfing malarky isn’t cheap! New sails require new masts. All of my wave masts are RDM’s (Reduced Diameter Masts) which are stronger and therefore better able to cope with the demands of jumps and crashes in the waves. Speed sails however all have camber inducers in them which provide an aerodynamic, wing-like shape to the leading edge of the sail. These are designed to fit on Standard Diameter Masts (SDM’s) as the larger diameter mast improves the foil shape, so at least one new mast was needed (North Viper 380cm) for the smaller sail. Since rigging the new sails though it looks as though I may need one for the bigger sail as well.

Similarly the booms I have are designed for wave sails and would be a little too small and too flexible for use with such large powerful sails. A new Simmer Silver Series boom was in order!

The Cost

This really is getting expensive now, and all to eek out a few extra knots of speed, I hope its worth it!

Windsurfing in the estuary at Ynyslas

I’ve just got back from a nice little windsurf session in the estuary here at Ynyslas. Ivor, our local katabatic wind was up to his usual tricks with a decent NE wind funbelling down through the valley at up to 25 knots. And this was  despite the fact that the forecast was for winds of 5-6 knots. Lovely.

The wind wasn’t quite up to its usual strength, but it is still pretty early in the year so I think Ovir was just warming up. Hopefully we’ll get some really good winds in the spring.

With the sun shining it was pretty warm out there as well. I had my 5/3mm wetsuit on and boots and a hood but if anything I was a little too hot whilst on the water.

There was something going on at the visitor centre car park though. Four police cras were in attendance and the car park was closed off with ‘Crime Scene’ tape all around it and a police officer at either end preventing anyone from entering it. Anyone know what’s happened?

Morgans school was closed again due to the snowy weather so I decided it wasn’t fair to make him stay at home whilst I worked. If school is closed due to snow then it should be a law that the children have to go sledging.

Unfortunately my car is broken and Anna had her car at work. However as the weather was bad and Anna didn’t want to get stranded at work she decided to work from home in the afternoon which meant Morgan and I could head off to find a suitable hill. We didn’t go far, just into Bow Street where we played for most of the afternoon.

I was on my snowboard and Morgan on a sledge, although he did use the snowboard as a sledge in the end as well. If only every winter was like this. Great fun all round.

After riding in the Forest of Dean on Saturday, I had an easy ride around the Summit Trail at Nant yr Arian on Sunday morning and then met Anna, Morgan, Jo, Danny and Kai at the visitor centre to make some Christmas decorations aout of things found in the forest.

I obviously needed a shower after my wet, muddy ride, but the first shower didn’t work and the second one was cold as the eco-friendly wood-chip boiler was playing up. After a quick cold shower I was soon fit to make some decorations.

Thankfully we didn’t have to wander around the forest in the rain looking for suitable pine cones, moss, ivy etc as they had already sourced all of that for us so we soon sat down and made wreaths, Christmas cards and decorations. Morgan seemed to like it, and I think Anna was secretly quite proud of her ‘owl’!

We then had lunch in the visitor centre before heading home after another good day in the forests of West Wales.

The clocks have gone back, the evenings are darker and it feels as though Winter is properly on its way. A depressing time for many, but I really like it.

It isn’t very cold at the moment but there’s nothing nicer than snuggling up indoors in front of the fire whilst it’s cold and miserable outside. There are also lots of parties and celebrations to look forward to. There always seems to be lots of things happening at this time of year and Christmas isn’t far off too.

This weekend we have the annual Ynyslas Bonfire party to attend at Dave and Sarah’s house. Its a nice community get together with a bonfire, fireworks and of course lots of delicious food to devour. Then Saturday evening is the annual lantern procession and light display in Machynlleth. We went last year and had a good time, so shall be there again this year. Morgan wants to make a lantern too, so we might have to actually join in with the parade this time. Apparently if you have a lantern you get free admission to the light show after the parade which will be a bonus.

If that doesn’t take your fancy then you could brave a night in the woods with eerie sights and sounds and ghostly goings on at Nant yr Arian. Then head back to the visitor centre and indulge in some supernatural snacks.

There is also a firework display in Aberystwyth on Bonfire Night itself.

Don’t let the short days and dark nights get you down, get out there and enjpy them.

Finally after a couple of months off I got out for a windsurf session at Ynyslas today. Conditions were good as well with a 25-35 knot wind and some nice little waves. There were plenty of kite-surfers out as well and four windusrfers in total.

I took my waterproof camera with me as well and tried to get some shots, but it is surprisingly difficult when getting battered by the waves.

Those of you who know Aberystwyth will know that it isn’t always the most up to date place, but we had promised Morgan we’d take him 10 pin bowling. Unbelievable there is a choice of two places to go, one in Llanbadarn that I’d been to a couple of times before and one in the holiday park at Clararch.

None of them are what you would call state-of-the-art facilities. The bowling place in Llanbadarn has about 10 lanes and although I haven’t been there for a few years, it was the only bowling centre I’d ever seen where the pins are held up by bits of string. That was until yesterday as the 4 lanes at Clarach also have pins held up by bits of string.

It took us (and the staff) a while to get the lanes working properly. First, after putting our money in the slots nothing happened. Once that was fixed we had a couple of goes and then realised that the balls weren’t being returned so it took a while to get that fixed as well. By now the place was filling up a little and despite the fact that it was only about 10am we had a couple of drunks in the lane next to us. They weren’t being abusive or anything so it didn’t really matter.

All was going well, I’d had a bad start because I missed my first two balls because the system was tricked into thinking I had had them by one of the staff passing under the sensor whilst trying to fix something, but it looked as though it was all working now and Morgan was enjoying himself. I was trying to catch up with the scores when I noticed that the computer hadn’t added my last score of 9 to my total… Oh, well it wasn’t really important and after the initial system failures it was pretty much what we expected. Anna was next up while I was still complaining about the lack of updates to my scores. She got 6 pins down and the computer subtracted 2 from her score!! Excellent, not adding mine on was annoying when it started taking points off it was just funny.

I wouldn’t recommend coming to Aberystwyth to go 10-pin bowling!!

Bowling at Clarach

Ten Pin Bowling

Fun in the sun

I can’t believe this weather. Yet another beautiful sunny day yesterday. In a way we had hoped for some wind as it was the Boardwise Windsurf Demo weekend in Aberdyfi, but as there wasn’t a breath we decided against driving all the way around just to look at some expensive boards that we can’t afford. If there was wind and we could have used and abused them free of charge then that would have been a different matter!

Instead we decided to save some fuel and head across to Aberdyfi in the canoe instead. Steve was here so I let him borrow my racing ski. After a little bit of attention with some duct tape it was ready to go and I warned him that it was a little unstable, but super effiecient.

I was taking Morgan with me so had the much less effiecient but more comfortable inflatable canoe (that we bought from Lidl a few years ago).

We drove to the estuary at Ynyslas, pumped up the canoe and were ready to go. Morgan had his little wetsuit and float coat on. I put my wetsuit on just in case I had to go in after Morgan and Steve put his on because he was very likely to fall off the racing ski! As we were about to enter the water the warden came running up to us to make sure we knew what we were doing. She was very polite about it though and not at all condescending, so we reassured her and before long we were on our way across the waters of the estuary. It soon got pretty hot paddling though. Steve was OK as he kept falling in, Morgan was OK as he was just sat there enjoying the view, but I was paddling away against the current in the blazing sun!

Steve did OK, I expected him to fall off quite a bit and he did, but we all soon made it across the estuary. It was pretty busy all the way acorss really. Jet ski’s and waterskiers on the Ynyslas side, groups of Outward bound canoeists and then lots of boats on the Aberdyfi side. Despite the lack of wind the Windsurf slalom races were still being held, although it didn’t look too exciting without any wind.

Once on the beach at Aberdyfi we had a look at a few of the boards and could see people out playing on the Stand Up Paddle boards (SUPs) at Graveyards. I did want to see if they had any of lats years ex-Demo SUPs for sale as I’m thinking of selling my kitesurf boards and buying one, but there wasn’t really anyone around to talk to and Morgan was a little bored of the boards and just wanted to play in the sea. We did see a tiny little 1m windsurf rig though that was just the right size for him. This has made me want to get a SUP even more now as they have fitting for deck plate so he could use on along with a tiny rig to learn to windsurf.

We then got back into the boats and headed for the shade of the jetty where we got the crab fishing line out and went crab fishing for a while.It didn’t take too long to catch a crab before we headed back across the estuary to Ynyslas where we found Anna waiting on the sands with a much needed picnic.

We played on the beach for a while before heading home. I didn’t envy Steve having to drive all the way to Birmingham though!

If the weather continues like this, we’re going to have a gorgeous summer and I can see plenty more days playing around on the water. Morgan seemed to have fun, and he still doesn’t realise how lucky he is to have all of this on his doorstep.

Anna with the picnic

Collecting water!

Playing on the beach

Busy day in the estuary

More fun in the sun

Looks as though the weekend ahead should be a scorcher. It hit 24.5ºC here today according to the weather station and looks set to continue throughout the weekend.

Still not sure if there will be a katabatic wind in the morning though, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go windsurfing, but I should be able to fit in a bike ride and some playing in the canoe and on the beach with Morgan. Maybe even another BBQ.

So, what have you got planned for the weekend?

I know it makes a change, but we’ve just had a lovely sunny bank Holiday weekend… One to make a note of as it usually rains on bank holidays! What’s more, we had visitors and had the day off so managed to enjoy the weather as well.

My parents arrived early Sunday afternoon, with my niece Kia and nephew Shaun, so we had a full house. After a BBQ in the garden which went well, we headed across to the beach for a walk. Morgan was on his bike as he wanted to show off his bike-riding skills! After a bit of bike-riding we ended up on the sands and before we knew it the children were getting wet and very sandy!

Monday dawned bright and sunny too so once again, after eggs and bacon for breakfast, it was off to the beach, this time with a wheel-barrow loaded up with stuff ready for a full day there. There was even a little bit of surf so I had a quick surf session before taking Shaun and Kia out in the inflatable canoe. Shaun was a little reluctant to go too far, but Kia seemed to enjoy it, even if I did make sure she got a soaking in the waves!

We played on the beach and in the dunes for a bit more, but by lunchtime it had clouded over so we headed back for lunch and then played in the garden. I set up a hammock between two trees which the children liked and we did a bit of gardening too.

Unfortunately Anna and I are back to work today (Tuesday), but my parents are here for a couple more days so Morgan will be kept fully entertainedf and will have Kia and Shaun to play with too. Shame Anna and I can’t join them.