A Windy(ish) Day in Wales

The forecast was for a lovely sunny day with lots of wind yesterday (Easter Monday). Steve had planned to come to Borth and we were expecting to windsurf all day.

Steve turned up around 9am, we had a coffee and it wasn’t looking particularly sunny or windy but we headed over to the beach anyway. There was a little bit of wind so we decided to give it a go despite the fact that it didn’t look great out there. That was the plan afterall and hopefully it would fill in.

I loaded up the wheel-barrow and headed to the beach, rigged my biggest board – a Starboard S-Type 104 – and biggest sail – A Gun Jam 6.7m and got out on the water. There was just about enough wind to get going and up on the plane but with only a 28cm fin staying upwind wasn’t really an option so all we could do was a few runs followed by a walk back up the beach. We tried again, but the wind was dropping if anything so we called it a day and headed back for a hot chocolate and to watch windsurf videos instead. Not a great session, but better than doing nothing.

GPS Track from windsurf session

We walked back across to the beach a few times during the afternoon to check the wind and will it to fill in and at about 3.30 pm it did. With the wind now averaging closer to 20 knots we headed back across. I didn’t even take the bigger sail this time, just my 5.6m, 5m and two boards. It still wasn’t howling so I rigged my 5.6m and the S-Type to start with but once on the water, with the gusts now hitting 30 knots this was a little too much, especially as the waves had increased in size quite a bit as well. I had a couple of runs on this kit and then changed down to my Naish Hybrid Freewave board for a while. It was nice to be out on the smaller board again, but there was the odd lull in which it wasn’t quite enough and with the waves threatening to flatten me now and then I changed back up to the bigger board. It’s better to have too much power in such conditions than not enough.

The wind continued to build though and we had a good session blasting about amongst the now quite large waves. In the end Steve got munched by a big one and destroyed his sail (all in a days sailing), so we called it a day, suitably tired and glad to have got some wind in the end.

Once back at the house and changed dinner of salmon, roasted vegetables and new potatoes was waiting for us.. Not bad!

It was a good way to round off the Easter holidays. I still haven’t had chance to try out any of my new speed kit yet, but the NE’s have to arrive soon.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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