It’s always nice to get a bit of a suntan going but I’d take a rainy summer anytime so long as it was windy, fortunately we didn’t have to forgo the tan when the wind kicked in this week. With the whole country firing it would have been a perfect opportunity to head off and find another story for my “Home Ground” in boards, but bigger things were calling.
Reece has not only grown another inch taller than me but also turned eighteen this week; to call it a messy night would have been an understatement. With several of his cousins having passed that age and the initiation in to manhood its getting ever harder, maybe a little too hard as I had to stay up with Reece while came back down to earth.
With the promise of a big winds I’d left the demand drink alone which was a good job as Steve Thorp called just as my head was about to hit the pillow, “whitey, I’m at Southend and got a sail with your name on it all rigged and ready to go”. OK it wasn’t a total surprise as he’d given me the heads up the day before but his call was more in response to my text excuse “don’t think I’ll make it, Reece f***ed and I haven’t made it to bed yet”.
Bastard new I wouldn’t be able to resist, ninety minutes later and I was walking my kit down to the Ray, it’s been a couple of years since I last did this walk and it hasn’t got any shorter. To be honest thought of a mile walk as a warm-up is worse than the reality, plus you only need a second with your feet in the straps to forget it, though that second took awhile to come.
It’s been so long I had to wrestle my speed board from the vegetation that had overtaken my speed rack in the garden, guess that says a lot about the weather we’ve been having but the biggest shock back to reality came when I stepped onboard to sail away.
How easy we forget, the board headed swiftly to the seabed as soon as I stepped aboard, it took me awhile to get the speed board water start technique back but once up and going I realized just how much I’d missed that exhilaration that only speed can bring.
Unfortunately the wind didn’t fully fill in until my last runs, if only the tide had been later in the day it could have ranked up there with the best of them. It wasn’t that the wind failed to come in, I was hanging onto a 4.7 later, should have got the 4.2 out but this time I was back on home ground of Point Clear with my home boys.
Summer seems to befinally starting, Friday gave similar condition; even Saturday delivered more than forecast for the ION man event in Eastborne. As for Sunday, well I can’t really say as most of it was spent at the airport, yep, it’s that time of year when I head off to visit the crew as ClubVass.
