Windsurfing with my own ‘mini-drone’

The wind was supposed to be blowing on Saturday, but the tides were high around midday which kind of made it difficult to get out on the seafront. As it happened there wasn’t much wind in the morning anyway so I jumped on my turbo trainer for a nice little sweet-spot ride instead. I say ‘nice little ride’ but you know that’s never really the case on the turbo-trainer. It’s always, hard, hot and sweaty!

Once off the bike and showered I had a message from Simon saying that the wind looked OK for him to head to the estuary with his wing-foiling kit. The wind had indeed filled in. I was now fresh out of the shower though with achy legs and felt like chilling. Chris then said he was going to join Simon in the estuary as well. That was more than I could bear. My FOMO kicked in and before long I had the van loaded up, my wetsuit on and was estuary-bound too!

Not only that, but I had a new toy to play with. I’d plucked up the courage to try my Insta360 camera out in the water.

It wasn’t too windy on the beach in the shelter of the dunes but it looked as though there was enough for a 5m on the water so that’s what Chris and I rigged, along with 100ltr boards. I attached my Insta360 to a pole so that it was mounted about a foot from my head and off I went. I was of course a little wary of the safety of the camera which is why I’d waited for a relatively easy session in the estuary. At least on flat water there wasn’t too much risk of getting tumbled around in the waves. Although, if it came off or wasn’t waterproof then it wouldn’t really make much difference on flat water either.

It was blowing a hoolie once we were on the water with 30-35 knot gusts. The 5m’s were more than enough and the boards a little too big. Although, there were some holes in it too where the bigger board was useful. It was quite hectic at times. Here are a few stills from the video below.

As for the footage from the camera, I’ll let you make your own minds up but I think it’s pretty cool.

It looks as though I have a mini-drone following me at all times. The ability to re-frame the footage afterwards and essentially look at whatever I want from whichever angle I fancy is pretty cool too, especially when sailing with others. I therefore got a few shots of Chris and Simon, both of whom were having fun out there too.

Tags: WindsurfingYnyslas