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is a dangerous thing!
Not only can we now check the forecast for the
weekend with the wonders of t'inernet, we can also get egged into massive road trips at the last
minute when top sailors from abroad post up their intentions to score
mega conditions -especially after 2 bottles of red wind on a Friday
night hey Lance!
And basically that's how we ended up driving to the South of France on
Saturday morning...
Up at 6am, Channel tunnel for 12, 100mph for 10hrs (had our picture taken 4 times.. oh dear) and arrive at La
Franqui for last orders, bed without food as everywhere was shut and up at 7am to score a full
days speed sailing..
Now this La Franqui place is becoming
quite a phenomenon in speedsailing. The Dutch guys have been hammering
it and have scored 25 days of well over 40knots this year. Including
Jacques van der Hout's 46knot+ average day which has put him second in
this years ranking (second only to speed legend Chris Lockwood at the
legendary Sandy Point).
It's a 5mile long straight strip of sand with
an uninterrupted howling offshore wind, you can sail within a few feet
of the beach... or at least that's what the brochure said.. it's next
door to Leucate.
Throw in the forecast of 39Knots Sunday (without
the local effect), and more on Monday and we just had to go. Could be
the day to break the big 5 0.. I might actually get to use my 5.0.. or
even my 4.6.. maybe get a decent Nautical mile.. if you don't go you'll
never know..
Frantic phone calls were made, much begging to
other halves and piggy banks were raided. Out of 5 or more possibles, it
was Lance Newbury and myself that overcame adversity, sweet talked our
good ladies and picked up the gauntlet. The rest were gutted! and stuck
in Weymouth looking for 30knots if they were lucky, very lucky..
So what happened and why aren't we shouting about our epic weekend and smashed PB's.?
Well
take another look at the pic at the top, all is not quite as it seems,
under that lovely pueta sea it's rather shallow, dry in places! La
Franqui was all time, the all time skunking!
A
couple of weeks back La Franqui had a massive onshore storm which
unbeknown to everyone (including the Dutch guys Jacques, Hans Kreisel
and Ben van der Steen who had also driven 10hrs) had completely
desimated the speed course. We arrived at the beach on Sunday morning
wondering where the hell everyone sailed, but we were in exactly the
right spot.
Luckily
the Dutch guys turned up and we had a good couple of hours sailing in
the sun. nice! Except that Lance's back had been playing up, and 24hrs
sat in a van, followed by hanging on to a 5.5 fully overpowered perhaps
wasn't such a good idea.. 10 minutes in and it was game over for Lance.
Thanks to Lance for the following pics...!
Ben van der Steen
Jacques van der Hout
Me..
As it happens, we got bit of a schooling by the Dutch guys! They're a lovely bunch, very friendly and very fast!
Ben
and Jacques won the day, barely seperable with 43.5 averages and 46.5
peaks, very impressive considering the zig zag course through the
shallow sand bars! It was actually far scarier than it looks, as when
you headed into the beach for a run you couldn't actually make out the
sandbars very easily.. a twig marked the spot!
I couldn't
understand why I was so far off the pace. I expected my peaks to be
higher as in places it was fully windy and mirror flat (if only for a
few feet), but I never really felt quick, like I just wasn't getting up
to speed and then the gusts were going thru me. In hind sight and
looking at the pics, less down haul and a wider board would certainly
have helped with much needed acceleration -the needle really didn't like
the kinks and I had to back off to get it to turn. Full respect to Ben
and Jacques though, 46+ knots through a 2m gap is pretty damn
impressive, most of us hit the sand and got spat over the front at least
once..
So the decision was made to try and get home for Monday
morning, and that's exactly what we did. I made it to work for 9am after
14hrs driving and no sleep, full mission! Thankfully Lance was great
company, it wasn't a total disaster and hopefully when La Franqui is
back to it's former glory we'll happily head back down for another go.
Full results are HERE (although there were actually loads of French/German speedies there)
Tracks are HERE
Facebook pics by Hans HERE
In other news...
*Voting closes for the UKWA windsurfer of the year tomorrow. Well chuffed to be nominated and even more chuffed by the description!
*No pics from last weekend, but I had a good one. It was a light Easterly wind. I sailed here
got a bit greedy and got a right good pasting. I was kind of looking
for it and the first hour was sweet until the tide turned things a bit
sketch. Trying to launch off reef into head high waves with no wind was
tricky to say the least. Pin balling through the rocks and gullies was
fun -glad I'm in a double lined suit! Remarkably I still haven't broken a
mast or boom since I moved onto Simmer/technolimit around 5yrs ago? I'm
still Steve McQueen ..!
*The ASP Quiksilver Portugal event has just started.
*This weekend is the BSA slalom final round and piss up, and the forecast is looking good!
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