In the week leading up to the weekend of the 29th & 30th of September it was looking like it would be another speed session and as i was working nights all week, i checked the forecast when i got up on the afternoon of Friday 28th it was forecasting 20-30 knots Westerly going WNW mid morning but the tide was going to breach the wall at around 11am so it was definitely gonna be a another dawn session. As i had to be on the water at first light I drove up that evening arriving at 11pm, parking in the usual spot in Morrisons and went to get a couple of pints and relax before heading back to the van to get some sleep.
I didn't get too much sleep and when Mark Bailey woke me up just after 7am i was pretty tired but itching to get on the water. The forecasted wind strength was spot on so it was an easy choice to rig my 6.6m KA Koncept and got my Mistral Speed 73 ready with a 21cm Vector Maui Fins Delta Speed Fin which i've been wanting to try, got into my wetsuit and hit the water. Shortly after my first run the wind switched round to WNW earlier than expected which made the speed course very broad and also brought the dreaded death chop. It started to get hard getting long runs in when the wind switched direction, because when you bore of down the wall you ran out of power quickly but myself and Mark kept trying to get decent runs in. I managed a couple of 36 knot peaks, but the one good thing i learned from the session is the 21cm Vector Maui Fins Delta Speed Fin worked very well in the Mistral Speed 73, being rock solid and giving me the confidence going broad through the chop that was building knowing the fin wouldn't loose grip causing me to crash.
As it was a pretty high tide and the wind direction giving a bit of a tidal surge the tide started breach around 10am so myself and mark came of the water and got changed and went to get some food at Morrisons and wait for the tide to recede.
Shortly after the tide to get back on the receded enough to get back on the water just after 1pm the wind dropped off to around 10-12 knots but i decided to hang around to see if the wind would pick up. Luckily i didn't have too long and it picked up to around 12-16 knots so i rigged up my 7.5m KA Koncept got my 2013 Mistral Slalom 112 ready with a 38cm Vector Maui Fins ZX Fin and got back out on the water. I've had this board for a couple of weeks now and a board of this size is my most used board as they have such a big wind range. I managed to get a few runs down the wall on it and my first impressions of the board are good. It planes pretty early with a couple of pumps and the volume distribution is pretty even throughout the board so slogging off the plane is easy, unlike my old iSonic 111 which had hardly any volume in the nose. Having volume in the nose makes it easy to tack and it's also pretty easy to gybe, it's definitely gonna be a great board to have in my quiver :-D
We both came off the water late afternoon knackered but stoked to have had a good sail, packed up and i headed to a mates house where i was staying, got some food and had an early night.
The next day most of the boys headed out on the tide but i didn't have wave kit with me so i hung around to see if i could get out on the lake but the wind never really filled in enough to get out speed sailing so i headed back home to Solihull early afternoon hoping that it won't be too long before i get back here for a sail.
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