W4CR

What a week, had a little luck on the trip home, even made it in time for my wedding anniversary, not that the rest of this week helped to keep the wife calm. OK, she loves a wedding and Shaun’s fitted the bill on Friday but the last dance had hardly finished and I was off again. Windsurfing 4 Cancer Research or Sunrise to Sunset, whichever way you call it I had to be in Hayling Island.

Having sailed all the daylight hours last year I figured it would be interesting to drop in on a couple of other venues, after sailing with everyone on Hayling Island that is.

With the rain rattling the van roof I’ll confess to having negative thoughts about getting out of bed, its not like I was asleep as jet lag made sure I couldn’t get any.

Everyone started to rig around five to be ready to hit the water at 5:23am, while I was ready to go I was the last on the water as I spent the first half hour wading around in chest deep water with my camera. After a few hours I headed up to Datchet on the out skirts of London to find a hardy bunch drifting around in the rain.

I joined them for a quick sail before heading over to Kent where the best of the wind was awaiting, 5.4 and comfortably powered felt a lot more enjoyable that the drifting around on an 8m, not that the rain had eased any, if anything it felt worse with the wind blowing directly onshore.

Alton Water was my last stop but by the time I reached the waters edge there was a lone sailor coming off the water, looks like the cold beat them away from seeing the sunset arrive, but then it would have been hard to call the ever darkening sky a sunset.