Dungarven, Ireland Friday April 1st 2011

I'd been watching the forecast all week for Dungarven and on Thursday evening it was still forecasting winds gusting over 40 knots from the South West i decided i would head over. As low tide was at 11.40 it was going to be a morning session to mid afternoon as you really only have decent flat water conditions for 3 hours after low tide so i got up at 5am and left Kerry arriving at Dungarven just after 9am. When i arrived the wind was alot more west than forecast making the speed strip pretty much unsailable as it was way too broad and also the wind was around 15 knots. I decided to wait a while and see what the wind was going to do before deciding what to rig. After about an hour the wind started swinging to the South with the wind direction now S - SSW and picked up to about 18-20 knots but gusting up to 35knots.

With such big gusts equipment choice was going to be hard to choose where i would need a 7.3m in the lulls and 5.7m in the gusts so i decided to rig up 2 sets of equipment and use boards with a bit more volume to get through the lulls than being hammered in the gusts on my 7.3m , my Starboard I Sonic Speed Special W53 with 25cm Vector Maui Fins Delta Speed Fin with my 5.7m KA Koncept and my Starboard I Sonic 86 with 29cm Vector Maui Fins Delta Speed Fin with my 6.4m KA Koncept and got into my wetsuit. The wind was still the same so i grabbed my I Sonic 86 and 6.4m and went out on the water. This proved to be a good choice but i was still underpowered in the lulls and stacked in the gusts but it's still better to have both than be only underpowered or overpowered all the time.

The new Delta Speed fins from Vector are awsome :-). This was the first chance i had to us them since i got the fins earlier this year and once up to speed they provide loads of lift to get upwind and then once off the wind don't overpower the board at all and you can push against the fin with confidence that it will not loose grip. Can't wait to get to try the smaller sizes if the performance of the 29cm is anything to go by.

Unfortunately the wind direction was pretty square to the speed strip all day so only managed around 28 knots on my GPS but it was great to finally get some speedsailing in and blow of the cobwebs. Here's hoping that the wind is now finally back for a while so i can start to get decent speedsailing sessions in