My Best Session ........ so far!

A week ago we had one of the best speed sessions I have ever had. Tide, storm force winds and free time all combined to mean I got the chance to up some of my PB's for top speed and average. I upped my top speed slightly, from 35.5knots to 35.8knots but significantly upped my average to 33.8knots. I thought that would be it until the Autumn gales.

For the first time in real speed conditions I felt in total control, able to read the water and use the wind better than ever before.

A different perspective on the famous West Kirby day.

Norman Petty (aka Normski), a windsurfer that many people in the UK will have been on the water with and may have the fortune to know or chat with at the beach, sent me his perspective of West Kirby , 6th October 2011. Normski invited me onto the GPS Team Challenge and I feel forever in his debt as without that none of this website would exist. 

He is a 'Legend' class windsurfer who is just as comfortable in logo high waves as he is on the speed course. He certainly showed me how it was done in my first month on the GPS Team Challenge when it was our job to go for distance, I managed 79nmi while he carried on to over 100! Here is his bit, I did not want it to get lost in the other article that a lot of people have already read. - 'The Bus'

Great Start to September, awful end

The last GPSTC report about the first half of September was full of great results for the northern hemisphere, including a national record. As for this second half I am really finding it hard what to write about. There has been no wind, or rather none worthy of mentioning. The British teams scored the odd session, but only one or two sailors managing to catch it before it blew through. 

The Dutch appeared to get a little more, due to more wind in the East  side of the North Sea than the West but again nothing much to speak of (Forgive me if I missed a great session and do let me know). Like I predicted (in fact the day after I predicted it) The Portland Pirates were knocked off the top spot by the Grevelingen Chop Team, but our boys scores held fast due to the lack of wind for the rest of September, giving us our best finish for the year in second. Great team effort by the usual suspects and as for the rest who sailed but did not post see the captain for some deck scrubbing duties, he is the one on the crutch again, argggg.

Trying out new camera functions.

Some big news for Redsurfbus.com is we now have confirmation from Surfkraft who is the UK agent for Exocet boards and XO sails to do some testing and reviews. In the next couple of weeks we will start a full review of their SL Sport boards (some of the best looking boards on the market, we are looking forward to see how they perform) and their Freerace twin cam 'Silverline' sails.

For this I have been out practising my novice photography skills. Some of you regular readers may have also noticed I have been editing a bit with a photo editor as the header has changed a couple of times, this one at the top now is my favourite but am open to advice and help with it.

These are a few shots from the weekend. Portland Pirates machine The Matrix can be seen in the top two. He had already been sailing over 4 hours none stop in these to aim for some distance for the team. Unfortunately no one else in the team put that much effort in so although we are second for distance for the month thanks to his efforts, we are quite easy to catch.

The following photos were taken by Portland Pirates team captain Swagger. It is Kev Greenslade the current Speed Week champion and Simon Pettifer, it is one of many where they were doing the most fantastic synchronised laydown gybes. I think they scared a few of the less confident sailors as they flew past them at over 30 knots into their gybes.

Jim at PuraVida Boardriders should feel proud of himself. Look at all his sails and boards on Portland Harbour.

I was leading into the gybe and trailing after it, must work on my gybes, I can see from this one photo that the gybe masters have their sails far more upright than mine. It was great to get a few minutes on the water with lots of people around who were checking I was okay. I certainly felt it afterwards and will do for a few days yet. I think this was my shortest session since I started windsurfing, it was probably good that I didn't get wet.

Here the Matrix clearly was trying to get the two posers to do some work for the team by spoiling their fun.

By 'The Bus'
Pictures by 'The Bus' and 'Swagger'

Portland Pirates Have a Shocker!

This is the worst months results I have seen since joining the team back in September 2010. It only seems like Normski and The Matrix got any time on the water at all with 11 sessions between them. The Matrix even went on holiday which as usual delivered the good wind from the right place with water in the harbour on Wednesday the 10th, this gave Camel a chance to get top points for the team at Portland, coupled with Jim Crossleys efforts from Langstone Harbour.

I do not know what has happened to the rest of the team, with a couple of others posting once and over half not posting at all. I have my excuses and hopefully am now fighting fit ready to start posting results again. Cap'n Swags will be preparing his motivating stick next month and there will be deck scrubbin galore for those non posters. With a finish at 23rd place for August it is just fortunate that this will count as a discard so does not yet affect our results for the year unless we have a few more shockers.

As for the rest of the country Team East finished just below us in 29th place. Mike G and Ben Tilston got top speeds for the team while Stephen Squirrell and Tris Haskins completed their distance. Most of their month had Steve Carter and Stephen Squirrell posting their longboard sessions, and in fairness it has been a longboard weather summer here this year. Last year was consistently windy in the second week of August through to the end of the month.

Up at West Kirby, the WK Speed Warriors only managed to get out on the water to get a score once in the month. Howie Rowson and Mark Hayford scored good speeds in what turned out to be an average West Kirby wind, however it was their other results that let them down with an hour average of 3.18 knots and a NM of 6.48knots. All other postings for WK Speed Warriors were only single man sessions so cannot count in the challenge.

This is not good enough England! Lets hope for some good autumn gales, the weather has certainly felt autumnal for the past few days down here in Weymouth.

Late edit - It appears Swagger managed to back The Matrix up yesterday with a bit of distance and a nautical mile in what was quite easily described as marginal wind, this moves the Pirates up to 22nd. A nautical mile on Portland Harbour is very tricky in low winds as the wind tends to be weak at either end, often its good to get out in the middle when it is like that, but then the worry is getting back to shore if the wind drops off. Great Effort ;-)

Portland Harbour Weds 24th August

I was willing but not able today still. I went down to the harbour for a quick session, my first in 5 weeks (longest time off the water for 18months!). The wind was a bit fickle, it would have meant some pumping and working the sail after every gybe, or at least slogging and watching for a gust. I still do not feel fit enough for that so sat it out, next time I will take my bigger board and at least get wet.

It was interesting watching one of the Portland Pirates, clearly bored just cruising with his massive kit doing downwind 360s. Just how anyone can do a 360 with a 9m fully cambered race sail is beyond me........

35knots in Speed, one goal complete. 23nmi sailed, 957total

Yesterday evening I completed my goal of getting 35knots this year. Every run was over 30 even in the low tide chop, then I changed down a board size to my Tabou Manta 54cm (74l). It was like wearing a comfy pair of shoes and I got on with it straight away. Far easier to use than I expected, easier than the Mistral SLRD 95l to be completely honest. It glides through the chop and is easy to get upwind with a small fin/big sail combination (too easy at some points that I went too far into the wind). What it did though was give me more runs over my PB than I expected. The first downwind run was 33.5knots, then a few more at 33, then one at 35! I got a little over excited at this point and couldnt get going again. Then I had a 34knot run which gave me my fastest 10secs and 500m.

All in all I learnt that I can compete against/train with some of the best speed sailors in the country and now get a respectable score. I think I could have got more yesterday as well if I had been a little more patient and not rushed onto the water at low tide. Today I am aching more in my arms and shoulders than I did after sailing 109nmi, but only managed 23nmi giving me a total of 957nmi. Hopefully I will get to 1000nmi in the next two sessions (maybe even tomorrow)

The Portland Pirates, a thank you to the team

If it wasn't for the support from the team, especially Mr Motivator - Pete, I would not have made it to an official distance of 201.44km or 108.76nautical miles on Saturday 28th May 2011.

I sent an email the night before saying I wanted to get to 100nm, for a result to score on the GPS Team Challenge it must be the average of 2 sailors results, so I needed someone else out doing distance to back me up. Swagger (Mark) was up for the job even though he had a hole in his arm from a knife wound a few days earlier. Swags is our chief and captain, if we don't follow instructions he can have us on deck scrubbing duties, or some say offered insertion of a mast extension, and his is the longer SDM chinook version. 

On the day The Matrix (Pete) was going for an average Nautical Mile of 30knots, to put this in perspective my top 2 second speed is only 0.4 knots faster than his average over a whole 1852metres. He was being supported by Camel (Steve) who does like to show off amazing gybes in front of the car park rather than go for the distance. They both delivered the goods which opened up a gap between us and the Pit Crew - an Australian Team who used to be top dogs on the challenge. They were only one point behind at the start of the day. Swags and I made the gap even wider giving us a whole 12 points lead over them. 

There are 54 teams in total from all over the world and it adds so much more to a windsurfing session. Windsurfing is quite a selfish sport, you are only reliant on yourself unless you suffer kit breakage and often just blast around or try different tricks and moves. With the  challenge you have an objective or a reason to be out on the water, especially on days like Saturday with it being the end of the month and the need to secure more points. 

The Portland Pirates are currently 5th overall for the year, with a few good months in the bag if we suffer a real wind drought. Many of the southern hemisphere teams are now entering their winter and will not score as well as the start of the year so this stands us in good stead for the rest of the year. The teams we will struggle to beat are the Dutch ones, who are full of professional sailors that often can get out when the rest of us are working. They also have more flat water options than most other accessible places in the world. Portland Harbour was the home of speed sailing in the 80's but now there are many other places that have been found to have better conditions. Portland though is good for the range of disciplines we need, and with skill and good winds we can stay in the top rankings in the world.

I was a competitive swimmer in my youth so never really participated in team sports at school, only basketball which from memory was just a bunch of ego's all trying for a glory shot and not really a team. As I was approaching 80odd nautical miles it was the team that kept me out there sailing even though holding the boom was painful and carving upwind with my toes was agony in my shins. Thanks again to the rest of the team and well done to all, they were tricky conditions and often a game of dodge the tourist for most of the day.

100+Nautical Miles in a Day!!! New total of 619NM

Awoke to drizzle but did not even notice it.....the goal for today was to get some serious mileage, both for my challenge and the team effort on GPS Team Challenge. This has secured our place as 4th in the world, ahead of all countries apart from the Netherlands who just seem to have too many locations with perfectly flat water and a lot more wind than us!

Mid morning and I was barely holding on to such a big sail.

After about 70nautical miles I had a break and changed kit after warming up for an hour.

All the time now I was really forcing myself not to break out the smaller slalom board, I was tired approaching 100nm but the conditions were perfect for some speed runs, I knew I would not get quite as many miles on the smaller board though so kept at it with the bigger one.

The wind was perfect for me to cruise close in to shore at high tide, meaning no hard work getting upwind in the chop further out.

I learnt a lot today, was planing out of some gybes and now understand more what I need to do to get this consistent. I also proved a few things to myself that I had the determination to go on, even after a bit of chest pain. I knew the pain was more in my head than physical though and would not let it beat me. I will expand on this post further in the week. 

GPSTC reads 201.44km or 109NM at the end of the session, which is less than the sportstracklive data but more accurate. This makes my total now 619NM.

First time blog

Where do I start?
Up until last year I enjoyed windsurfing a lot, having tried to do it for about 4 years with not much time on the water. Last year I got bitten by the bug and managed nearly 60 sessions on the water, only stopping on December 27th due to frozen toes.

I had the intention of starting again this year as soon as the water was a bearable temperature, so mid Febuary seemed a good target to get wet. On Febuary the 13th I had a large heart attack lasting from about 3am to 11am. I recovered my physical health quickly and got back out on the water by the start of April. Mentally it has been harder, there is not much support for those of us who are younger and suffer from heart problems. Although the NHS does a good job with their heart attack conveyor belt recovery system, they dont have any answers to satisfy my curiosity as to why! As the months have rolled on I have found my solice on the water which at least puts the negative thoughts out of my mind.

Spring and early summer were not good for wind, but I went out as often as I could even if it was just learning new moves with a big board and small sail in light winds. Summer itself was mixed, with a couple of great weeks at the end of August. Since then I have been out about 5 times every week, with a total session count of 53 including a few times on the stand up paddleboard through the wind drought weeks.

At the start of September I joined the Portland Pirates Speedsailing team and now have clear targets to beat every session when the conditions are right.  I am almost certainly the weakest link in the team at the moment, but the scoring system takes the best two scores for that day. The way I see it is if I get out on the water then on occasion my times may count, and over time my skills will get better, and I will upgrade equipment to speed sailing kit over time when I can afford it.

My goals for 2011 are to get 100 sessions and 1000nautical miles under my belt, with a max speed over 35knots. I am going to try to get sponsored to complete this with all proceeds going to the British Heart Foundation.


After each session if I have the energy I will post on here, I used to write a diary in my iphone which was lost as apple upgraded the software, at least on this I will be able to keep a log and share it with anyone interested.