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| Into the Arc two by two |
Cor dammy la! It’s wild out there. My next door neighbour's fence (which has been in his garden at least five winters I know of without so much as a wobble) has blown over in the last hour, the crossbeams snapped and the posts up-rooted so it truly does seem to be quite windy. The clouds are racing each other in the sky. A bird trying to fly into the wind has just been blown back and so seems to be flying backwards. The lamp post looks fragile like one of mother's daffodils.
Very very very windy gusting to very very very very windy. Lamp post now wobbling like a man forced to leave the pub after a works Christmas party, when the pub owner has put the theme tune for the Littlest Hobo on, to encourage people to make their way home.
For almost a week I am listening to the winds whilst sitting inside my house. Today, I just thought it was time to take time out from work and capture the windy weather.
Due to some rather crazy wind we are experiencing in little old Guernsey, its time to hit the water. I think for all of us the weather has been challenging this year - to say the least. Here in the Channel Islands we had some truly alarming windless days. Windsurfing came alive after the worst October wind drought in recent memory. The Atlantic front’s strong westerly winds started in the dark early morning hours. After the rain squalls cleared 43 knot peak WNW gale force gusts came across the west coast to greet 8 happy, wind starved Guernsey windsurfers sailing off Vazon and Pembroke beach. It's time to head out to the water again. There’s more folks out on the water today probably as conditions are approaching gale-force at times. Fantastic! But the wind direction has changed from yesterday more on-shore than cross-shore, which put a few people off sailing at Vaz due to low tide and pretty much dead on-shore conditions. Starky and I decided to head North to see if Pembroke was working in this wind direction and to our surprise when we pulled into the car park it looked like it was going off, the bay was picking up a small ground swell (5-6 foot) rapping around big bill with cross-off 35 knot winds. I've not really sailed in cross off conditions here before but this looked sweet. Depending upon the size of the swell, low to mid tide can offer some relatively good wave sailing in this WNW direction. For those sailing in front of the car park, when the tide touches the rocks it is time to head more West back to Vazon to catch Centers at high tide. Had some awesome wave riding absolute flat out through the bottom turn then all onto your heels to avoid going off the back . It was just a race track on which the board was super smooth, with 2 to 3 bottom turns. I just could push my luck on each wave breaking the fin out at that speed meant I skimmed the top for 50 metres before re-engaging and then smashed a few aeriels before lunch. Two hours of side-shore, down-the-line joy. Super stoked now.
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| 4.2 ready for action |
I try not to look at the forecast each week until at least Thursday however for some reason last week, I couldn't resist and I booked today as holiday in the hope the purple crayons would actually appear on wind guru and for ounce the forecasts were right..
A short 15 minute drive up the road and a hour break to meet Matt in the cafe for a brew and bacon sarnie. It was time for a jumping marathon, high tide session at Centers and what an opener, logo+, cross-on, 4.2 weather. Luckily while the sets were big they were pretty well spaced with a decent break to get out. The only problem was sailing around mid tide, the waves were tending to close out on gnarly suck ups. Atlantic logo+ waves closing out on the shallow reef are mast breakers. I saw Matt chicken out on a few runs out and not going for the lip opting for the chicken jibe instead of a busted mast. Probably the first 90 mins or so were beautifully powered with some great waves for jumping but then it started to pickup and it was a real struggle to bottom turn. At its windiest (40 - 45kts) the boom would be pulled out of my back hand on the top turns, it didn't matter, all I had to do was just give the boom a little tweak with the back hand to set up the next bottom turn and could let go until the next bottom turn, I think there was enough wind on my back to keep me going at mach 10 without the sail.. After about two hours, I called it quits as my body was starting to hurt after a days sailing in gale force winds.
All too soon the sun went down, and the show was over for the day.
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| gnarly suck ups |
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| Told you it was windy |
While we were having fun wave sailing fellow sailor Martin Ogler flew up Tuesday night to West Kirby for a spot of speed sailing. Check out his video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omZVNSkdH_Y
49.43 Knots
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