BSA Hayling Part 2....one hour of training

Tuesday afternoon I was very lucky, the wind showed a gust on the Harbour wall at 16knots so my kit bag was dusted off and thrown in the van along with my biggest kit. I got there and the wall was now showing 12-13knots, we only get about 60-75% of the wind that reads on the wall, due to the height of the anemometer and Chesil Beach which is a tall shingle bank in the way of the wind.

I rigged regardless, just hoping for a few seconds of planing bliss. As I down the slipway the wind picked up, it was around 12knots on the water I reckon, the very occasional tiny white cap could be seen if you looked closely. This meant I could find a solid gust and get going most of the time with my 8m Hot Sails GPS, 45cm Black Project TypeR fin and Exocet SL Sport 78cm board. This is only the second time I have used the kit and need more sessions to get the tuning correct, I could see some wrinkles in the sail that I wasn't happy about, but it worked well.

There was not enough wind to come out of the Gybe fully planing, most were half planing with the odd slog and wait. I got the chance to 'chase buoys' (Ahem, I don't like the sound of that!), and estimate the time to reach each one. This was my pathetic ploy to still avoid properly learning the Slalom start, but it was a first step, meaning I could reliably judge 20,30,40seconds from the bouy/start line in marginal conditions. I am not really sure if this will help, but then the forecast at the moment is poor, it is changing every 6 hours though, this being the current forecast about 60 hours before the first race!

I did get to use my new GoPro, and am very happy with the results, but not happy that my laptop struggles to handle 1080 HD files in any editor. Here is a mini clip, I tried many times to cut the sequences short, about 10 seconds each, to add variety. Each time I was nearly finished the application crashed. I tried Windows Live movie maker, Lightworks and a demo copy of Sony Vegas which looks great but no good until I get something that will handle the files. 

Good Speeds and winds
The Bus