Breakfast - yeah, made it. What's breakfast? A plate of bacon, scrambled egg, egg and ham thing, and some cachupa rica, a thing made with chickpeas that is really tasty, two slices of toast, a glass of amazing red orange juice, at least two cups of tea, and the last two days half and orange and half a grapefruit, cuz the Vit C is a Good Plan apparently. Then collect some rolls, cheese, cake, biscuits, anything I fancy as a snack or lunch, and wrap it up in the paper place setting before scurrying out, hampered by lappie and tucker/snap/McDonalds Happy Meal/<insert local lunch package name here>.
And today was bigger than yesterday - more wind, bigger waves, huger shoredump. BUT, determined to slough off the brain-deadening mush, and buoyed by a gram of paracetamol and 400mg of ibuprofen, not to mention the usual ounces of glucosamine and fish oil, Ricky N decided to Head Out. Yay!! Took a while for chief rigging guy, Caloo, to sort a 4.0 sail, and Luca to deliver another board from the other Mistral station, but eventually I was at the beach edge, primed.
And the fun started. There is almost a queue to get out, since the gap between the under-surf rocks is quite small, and you don't want to be arsing about in the seriously chunky surf with others, thereby increasing the comedy value for the slackers in the relative safety of the shack. The guy in front of me got a bit munched, but managed to get away. Ricky N, however, spotted a potential gap and went for it, on the strange board, in an extremely offshore gusty wind, with a small sail, sized for the honking 30 knots out the back and not the light wind on the inside, with the boom lower than usual thereby reducing waterstart-ability, and got completely munched. Pants. And we are talking munched, to the extent that I was face down under the sail facing up the beach, breathing sand and water while my hands were being lacerated by the newly discovered purest Sandpaper, of approximately paint-stripping grade.
But Gabrie was there to help, one of the surf shack guys - grabbed the gear, asked I was alright, sorted it out, asked if I was alright, and then told me when to go. Another attempt, and I made it!! More used to the board after a few seconds of trying it, slightly more wind, slightly lower break, whatever it was, it worked. Great!! I just wished my arms hadn't felt like lead, and my general enthusiasm been drained so deep by the attack of the munchies...
Now what?? I headed out to sea, eventually getting this fairly small and banana-shaped wave board to plane, and finding the footstraps. Big Wind. And not just in the wetsuit. Hammered out the back, and cheated on the gybe, just fell in. Argh!! And the usual doubts flood in - the board won't lie on the water, the sail's not playing the game, I'm maybe 1km offshore, the swell is Huge, to the extent that it causes a wind-shadow when you're in a trough... But eventually it all lines up and I charge back down the swell heading in again. Try a gybe? Why not?? And the Mistral Beast does its thing - zooms round in a perfect arc, I ride the rails and flip the rig, and I'm heading back out!! Amazing! How does he do that??
This performance (usually without the effective gybe, but hey, once is good in a hefty sea and a wind gusting 11-35 knots as measured in the lower conditions on the beach) was repeated a number of times, with increasing confidence. Excellent!! I'm not rubbish! Ricky is banished! Life is good!! Windsurfing is fun/scarey/hard/life-enhancing etc etc. And some 40 minutes later (since I want to get in through the shore-break with some strength left) I zoom into the crunch zone and manage not to fall off, riding the back of a wave to the beach, remaining standing up and picking the kit up nonchalantly out of the surf like a True God. Brill.
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