Burrow Beach, Dublin, Ireland Saturday 27th November 2010

I again made the long trek up the Burrow Beach as there was 30 knot winds being forecast from the North East as i wanted to try and improve my GPS ranking for the Irish Speedsailing Championships. Low tide was at 8.30 so again it was an early start and when i woke up to leave at 3.30am it was -3 degrees which made me question what i was doing this for but the forecast was looking so good i decided to head up anyway. The drive up was interesting to say the least when not long after passing Portlaoise on the N7 it started to snow heavily which again made me question my sanity for wanting to windsurf in this but i pressed on as i had come this far. Eventually at 8am i arrived at Burrow Beach where the snow had disappeared :-) and to see Gildas Bechet and Oisin Van Gelderen already there and rigged so i checked the wind strength and as it as blowing 18-28 knots so i decided to use my Starboard I Sonic W53 Speed Special with 28cm Vector Maui Fins Ex Speed fin and 6.4m KA Koncept and headed out on the water.

It was cold, around 2 degrees and past minus degrees in the wind chill so 5mm boots, 3mm Hat and palm less mitts were called into action for the first time this year and once on the water it really wasn't that cold. It was a great session with the water perfectly flat near the sand bar until the wind started dropping after a couple of hours so i decided to call it a day.

Getting a bit more used to the W53 now and it suited the 6.4m Perfectly. Managed to get a peak speed of 34.62 knots but just missed out on moving up a place on the 500m raking in the Irish Speedsailing Championships by 0.02 of a knot after recording a 32.4 knot 500m run which sucked a bit but still a good session on the water and hopefully will get more at Burrow Beach before the end of the year and see if i can improve my speeds to move up to 3rd overall for the end of year ranking.