Burrow Beach, Dublin, Ireland Tuesday 9th November 2010

Haven't had the chance till now as i have been away for a few weeks but on the 9th of November the forecast was looking epic for Burrow beach with up to 35 knot winds being forecast from the North East which is the optimal direction for the location. As low tide was at 6am it meant an early start and i left Kerry at 3am, getting to Burrow Beach just after 7am and seeing the Steve Flannagan, Keith Gorman, Gildas Bechet, Oisin Van Gelderen and Garath Nihill were already getting rigged in the dark so i quickly had a look to see how windy it was. It was 28 knots gusting 35 knots so i decided to use my new Starboard I Sonic W53 Speed Special with 23cm KA Starboard Asymmetrical fin and 5.7m KA Koncept and quickly got changed.

At first light we all hit the water as we would only have just under 2 hours before the sandbar got covered over and everyone had a great session on the water. At times i was absolutely stacked and massively overpowered on my 5.7m and could have easily got away with my 5.0m but really just had to get on with it as i didn't have time to re rig another sail

I managed a peak speed of 35.18 knots, improve all my PB's for the year and move up to 4th position overall for the year from 7th in the Irish Speedsailing championships.

Loved using the new I Sonic W53 speed board for the first time. I bought it as i wanted a board to fill the gap between my I Sonic W49 and I Sonic 86 and this board does the job brilliantly as i was finding the 86 a bit to big at times but the W49 was too small is similar wind speeds when the 86 was feeling big. I also wanted a light wind speed board for flat water that would be quicker than the 86 which I've been using as my light wind speed board till now. Once i get the new W53 dialed it's gonna definitely be quicker than the 86 and hopefully help me to improve my speeds in lower wind strengths