Burrow Beach Saturday 6th June 2009

The day finally came where we could check out Burrow Beach with 30 knot + winds from the ENE. All the speed sailors turned out for the day. Myself, John Kenny, Steve Flannagan, Barry Whitelaw, Ryan all arrived at midday to coincide with a falling tide so the sand bank was exposed and Keith Gorman, Guy Molynoux and Martin Waldron arrived later around 5pm. I rigged up my Lorch Division S 83 with 28cm Vector Maui EX Speed and 5.8m KA Koncept but once i got onto the beach i couldn't walk down the beach carrying the sail so went back to the car and rigged my 5.0m KA Koncept which was the perfect size for the day.

I hit the water and sailed over to the sand bank and once i bore off to about 130 degrees to go down the course the acceleration was amazing and on my first run i clocked over 30 knots and when i was coming back up the course i had a big catapult and tweaked my back so had a quick rest. While i was off the water Barry Whitelaw had easily the biggest crash of the day when he bore of to go down the course he got catapulted and ended up tearing his boom in half.

Once the tide turned the water got alot flatter and this is when the biggest speeds were recorded with alot of the lads doing over 40 knots. John Kenny managed to clock a 500m run of over 40 knots for the first time on Irish waters and Steve Flannagan managed to beat his old personal best 500m speed and also his previous personal best, congratulations lads. Every one who sailed today broke their old personal bests. I managed to equal my personal best max speed of 35.84 knots and broke all my other personal best so am stoked with my performance on the day. You can check out my speeds here on GPS-Speedsurfing

http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/?mnu=user&val=46056&uid=1898

I ended up having another big crash later on in the day so decided to call it a day myself but we have now seen the potential of this place and we are now expecting big things the next time we get strong winds from the ENE.

Check out the video below of us sailing at Burrow Beach that John Kenny made, Cheers John. There's clips of me of the video at 52 seconds, 2 minutes 17 seconds and 3 minutes and 6 seconds in so keep an eye out for me. Hopefully we can get to try it out again soon before i move down to kerry in 2 weeks but it won't take much persuation for me to drive back up to sail here on a decent forcast

Enjoy the video

Burrow Beach Friday 5th June 2009

After quite a few weeks of not enough wind on my days off it was nice to get a bit of wind today. Myself, Ryan and Steve Flannagan headed to Burrow Beach in Dublin as the winds were forcast 12-18 Knots NNE and as we have never sailed here in this direction we decided to check it out. I checked the wind with my wind meter when i arrived and it was showing 14 to 17 knots so i decided to rig up my Lorch Thunderbird 110 with 34cm Vector Maui Rockit fin and 7.5m KA Koncept. Once i got on the water though the wind got very up and down so spent most of my time underpowered while dodging all the kitesurfers here. Had a nice session on the water and found out that when you get close to high tide here the sand banks that were exposed are now just under the water so it gets a bit sketchy as you have to try and remeber where they are so you don't run a ground so we came off the water. Also in this wind direction it is dead square to the main sand bank so you have to bear away into the chop so not really ideal for getting great speeds but nice to find out the wind has to be more from the east for this place to reall work. Managed a 27.76 knot peak and the session was a good warm up for the forcasted 28-35 knot ENE winds forcasted for Saturday