Last day of the Holidays

It’s the last day of the school holiday today and the weather is gorgeous. Ynyslas doesn’t get much nicer than this.

Anna has started her new job today so I’m at home with Morgan and we’ve just got back from a wander across to the beach for some Dune Jumping.

Lazing on the beach with views like this – What better way to spend the day?

I was supposed to be mountain-biking at Afan today, the place where last year we went and ended up calling the air ambulance for Jon and I spent most of the night in casualty at Moriston with him!

As my family were still here and the wind was blowing I decided to have windsurf instead of making the long drive south the Afan. It was pretty hectic out there with a 4.5m and my little JP Wave board. I was the first out on the water with the tide a little too high. The others were pretty hesitant about going out because of the conditions but once they saw me blasting around out there started rigging up.
My Dad came over to watch with the video camera so hopefully I’ll have some good footage soon. It wasn’t easy out there early on with some pretty big waves and bumpy conditions but I was having a whale of a time. Well powered up and having fun. Simon and Andy joined me after a while but struggled to get out and ended up downwind after a few rinsings each time.

Simon - Off to Casualty

Then Simon managed to smash his head somehow and came wandering up the beach a little dazed and disorientated covered in blood. A quick look and it was obvious he was going to need stitches so I sent him off to our house with my Dad whilst I secured his kit and then headed across to the house as well.

After a little first aid, some photos and the odd bit of poking and prodding by the whole family Anna took him to casualty at Bronglais whilst I went back out for a a bit more of sail and the rest of the family came over to watch.

Once back at home Anna and Simon returned from casualty where Simon had had 3 stitches and a couple of steri-strips to keep his head together. He looked a little better by now as well.

A great day on the sea and a bit of excitement too.

September is only a week away but it looks as though autumn has arrived early.

GPS Windsurfing

It was pretty windy yesterday and my windsurf session on the seafront did have an autumnal feel to it. The sun was shining but the sea felt as though it meant business. Although it was a nice easy sail there was just something a little more menacing in the air. It dropped off a bit after a while but I did manage a nice long run to Borth and back. Then last night it arrived properly The wind filled in to 30 knots, with the weather station measuring gusts to close to 40 knots. That’s Gale Force 8.

The sea now DOES mean business and I can’t wait to get out there. I knew this would happen though as I’m working at the university this week so don’t have quite so much time to play and certainly less flexibility. It is forecast to drop this afternoon, just about the time that I’m available for a windsurf – Typical.

It is however forecast to come back from a NE direction tomorrow afternoon which could give me chance to finally use my speed kit in Ynyslas estuary for an attempt at my ‘Life Begins at 40 Knots’ challenge. The tides won’t be great for it but I may be able to squeeze a bit of a session in if I’m lucky. Fingers Crossed.

It was one of those days today where I spend much of it wandering backwards and forwards to the beach waiting for the wind to pick up. It was forecast to swing to the SW and maybe pick up a little later in the day, but then that forecast changed and it didn’t look so good.

By 4pm there still wasn’t any sign of wind – well, not enough for windsurfing anyway – so I decided to jump on the Turbo Trainer and do an hours ‘recovery’ session to burn off some calories and make me feel as though I’d done something.

The turbo trainer session went well but as I got off I realised that the wind had finally picked up. I checked the weather station and sure enough it was now 20-25 knots with the odd 30 knot gust and looking good.

It didn’t take me long to decide that it was time to go windsurfing so I loaded up my wheel-barrow and headed across to the beach. I rigged my 5.6m sail and Naish Hybrid Freewave 86 board and got out there. My ribs  were still hurting from my crash a couple of weeks ago so I took it easy, but still managed quite a few nice jumps and some decent wave rides.

After blasting around in the normal spot and playing in the waves for about an hour I decided to finish the session off with a nice blast out to the buoy on the Dovey Bar and back.

It may have been a long wait for the wind today but it was worth it when it came!

It was pretty windy last night. We’re used to the wind here and it is quite often windier than you can imagine but it’s been so long since we’ve had any proper wind that it actually kept us a wake last night.

According to the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station it hit 46.9 knots which is the biggest gust so far this year. Still quite a way off the 62.2 knots recorded on 12th Mar 2008. It’s nice having the weather station there so that I can check these stats and historic records from time to time.

I should really go windsurfing this morning to make the most of the wind that’s left, but I hurt my ribs whilst windsurfing yesterday and don’t think I’ll be able to manage it. The wind is beginning to ease a little now, once it’s dropped off properly my next job will be to get out in the garden and and check the damage done.

It was a fairly windy weekend here and with rain overnight on Saturday, I didn’t put the moth trap out, but by Sunday evening the wind had dropped off so it looked good for a moth-trapping attempt.

In the end it was fairly breezy but the temperature only dropped to 14.4ºC so it wasn’t a bad night. This morning the trap had 126 moths in it from 30 different species, 6 of which were new garden records.

• 9x    Lackey
• 9x    Large Yellow Underwing
• 40x   Dark Arches
• 22x   Heart and Dart
• 3x    Flame Shoulder
• 8x    Flame
• 3x    Elephant Hawkmoth
• 1x    Garden Tiger
• 1x    Buff Tip
• 2x    Bright-line Brown-eye
• 1x     White Ermine
• 1x    Rustic
• 4x    Smoky Wainscot
• 1x    Small Seraphim
• 4x    Scarce Footman
• 2x    Oligia sp.
• 1x    Archer’s Dart
• 1x    Clouded-bordered Brindle
• 1x    Middle-barred Minor
• 1x    Buff Ermine
• 1x    Setaceous Hebrew Character
• 1x    Willow Beauty
• 2x    White-line Dart
• 1x    Common Rustic
• 1x    Uncertain
• 1x    Single-dotted Wave
• 1x    Galium Carpet
• 1x    Small Square Spot
• 1x    Cloaked minor
• 1x    Ruby Tiger

Here are the new ones.

Phew, at last I feel like a windsurfer again.

So far this year has been pretty pathetic wind-wise. its been good for the garden and for cycling but I’ve barely been out windsurfing – Just 21 sessions so far according to my diary entries. Yesterday was good though with a 25-30 knots wind all day. I went out at around 9am just in case the wind eased off and spent 3 hours on the water, covering a distance of over 40 miles.

The weather wasn’t great whilst I was out with cloudy skies to start with and then rain, but the wind was perfect, I was perfectly powered up with a nicely rigged 5m sail and my little JP wave board and the waves were nice too. Nothing too big as far as the waves were concerned but some nice waist to shoulder high, steep faces to act as ramps on the inside and then some bigger rolling swell out the back. As well as loads of big jumps I made one fairly convincing back-loop attempt and had a few nice wave rides on the way in. A perfect 5 star session.

Of course, once I got off the water the sun came out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky for much of the afternoon, and the wind kept blowing too. I was half-tempted to go back out for a second session!

This is what it looks like from a satellite above the earth – I nearly coloured a whole section of sea in red!

After an excellent day looking through the contents of my moth trap and geeking out on invertebrates on Cors Fochno (the bog behind our house), the sun was shining, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, there was no wind and we were all starving. I therefore fired up the barbeque, picked some salad leaves and chives and watched over the charcoal whilst Anna rustled up some salads, including a potato salad made with our own potatoes.

Half a hour later, just as I put the meat on the Barbeque, from out of nowhere (and later than usual) the NW seabreeze kicked in. Before long it was 25 knots so I ate my dinner pretty quickly and got out there on the sea for a sneaky little windsurf session on my Naish Hybrid Freewave and a 5m sail.

It was the Boardwise Demo day in Aberdovey and I feared that as the wind had come through so late in the day they may have packed up and missed out on it. Luckily though I could see scores of sails sailing out from Aberdovey into the sea towards the bar so everyone over there obviously did manage to get out.

I had a good sail whilst Anna and Morgan had a sleep in preparation for our Nightjar and Glow Worm walk later that evening. It wasn’t particularly fast and no records were broken in that respect but it was good to be out on smaller kit in the sunshine. There weren’t really any waves either so it was just general blasting around on blue seas. Perfect.

The wind this year has been terrible so I’ve hardly been windsurfing. I nearly managed a session on Thursday night but the wind dropped so I blamed the lack of wind on the “curse of the new kit“.

Since then I’ve had a little more luck.

On Friday I managed an nice late afternoon windsurf session thanks to the sea breeze. I’d been for a cycle and a run before but the wind picked up so after the frustrations of the day before I just had to have a sail. I ended up Nicely powered with a 6.7m sail and my S-Type 104 – The biggest kit I have. The wind did drop after about half an hour on the water, but after the year we’ve had so far, half an hours windsurfing felt good.

Saturday was much better. There still wasn’t loads of wind but the sun was shining and a nice NW was blowing. At first it was only just enough for my big kit again so I went out on that, but the wind gradually filled in the whole time I was out there so that by the end I could easily have changed down to smaller kit. I didn’t, as I had to get off the water at 1pm in order to take Morgan to a birthday party, but I managed a good sail.

The sea was quite choppy and I wasn’t on my speed kit, but there weren’t any waves so blasting back and forth as fast as possible was the order of the day.

I’d noticed on one of the sites that I upload my windsurf GPS tracks to (SportstrackLive) that I was getting close to some of the records for the longer distance speeds. My top speeds are nowehere near the records, but my average speed over 1 nautical mile or more is good. This is probably because most people using these sites upload data from pure speed attempts and then have to get back upwind before doing another pure speed run. Their trip back upwind is slow, giving them a slow average speed.

In contrast if I keep blasting back and forth on long runs and don’t fall off then I can get a good average speed. So, that’s what I was going for and I managed to beat quite a few of my Personal bests. Here they are:

Admitted it’s not the 40 knots top speed that I’m after, but that was never on the cards whilst sailing such big kit on the sea.