Last night I was like a kid on Christmas Eve. - Total 40nmi

I set off to the harbour before 8am, on arrival it was clear that the forecast was a bit optimistic but there was enough wind for a good session. Possibly better with a bit less than 40knots, its not much fun in winter with winds like that. The wind was up and down all day from 18ish to 25ish knots so made for hard work at first with dedicated speed kit that likes to be powered up. I even rigged a sail 1m+ bigger than everyone else there, but then did a bad waterstart and used my harness hook to redesign the monofilm, so couldn't use it any more as it was too damp for the tape to stick. Most of the day I was out on the Mistral 95l SL-RD which is my dedicated slalom/speed board, with a 6.3 simmer race sail. I was leaving most others standing with this setup, the only ones keeping up were team mates from the Portland Pirates (number 5 in the world rankings and moving closer to top spot I think after this weekend).

At 11ish I had a break and went back out, but soon ended up with frozen toes and cramps in my legs. The cramps were a bit scary out in the deep choppy water when trying to waterstart. Even manoevering the rig was causing them to cramp up so I lay in wait for a big gust to lift me out like a beginner and managed to get moving, once stood on the board my legs were fine. I decided for safety reasons to call it a day and did one more speed run back to the van, this was my fastest run.

I learnt a lot today, it was the first day I have tried the speed runs and felt comfortable with the kit. I know now what I need to do for better speeds and will break the 5x10seconds average of 30knots very soon. I got 29.78knots average which is a bit frustrating.

The data on Sportstracklive seems strange. I know I did not do 29nm, the GPSResults software gives 22nm, which corresponds with the data on the GPS unit. I changed the settings to not read until reaching 5knots and after a quick calculation I think the live data has taken the 5knots minimum while I was refuelling and resting and included it in the results. So using the lower amount of 22nmi puts me on a total now of 40nmi, only 10 to go to hit my target for January. I never thought I would get this in January, I was expecting some long sessions in March but this is great!