| |
 |
 |
| |
 |
|
 |
 |
| |
June 2007 - Andy & His Bank Holiday Cornish Experiences... |
|
|
 |
| I received this email from one of our friends, Andy Robins, telling me about how he was going with his new Combat 5.2m and Radical Wave 69...I found it a rather amusing story so thought you all may like to enjoy reading it too... |
 |
| Hi Rik, I went for a wild weekend down in Cornwall for the bank holiday and used the 69 and 5.2 combat in anger – and boy was it angry.Drove down Saturday night then (unintentionally) went clubbing in Truro till 4am so Sunday was a late start only getting on the water at Daymer by midday. |
|
| Massive hangover, 5.2 combat, 69 RW and 30 knots slowly growing to 40 with horizontal rain and big swell. I found you can really flatten off the 5.2 and still keep some trace of control to the point that when I changed down it was to the 4.2 combat and that felt almost as overpowered as the 5.2. Despite the awful conditions, the 5.2 really did impress at the top end. |
|
| Quieter night with a meal at a friends place and Monday dawned with an earlier start, glorious sunshine and nice 20 ish knots, more cross shore wind and nice rolling 10 foot waves at Daymer - 69 RW and 5.2 again please. Set at the numbers it was perfectly balanced with great jumping and backside riding on both tacks (Daymer has separate beach breaks at both sides angled together to make this possible). As the day went on, the wind was slowly backing off but with a bit of tuning, the 5.2 just kept performing until I found myself on the far shore with no wind to speak of at all – oops. |
|
|
 |
| I tried and tried with high tide approaching to get anywhere with my 83kg now very firmly submerged (close to waist deep) but the waves were still big and I was getting drawn to the cliffs. A split second decision as I spotted a 10 foot square piece of sand and a cliff that looked just about climbable and I swam for that. No time to relax though as I had no more than 5 minutes to derig and tie all the kit together before the beach was gone and I was perched on a big rock with the kit under my arm. Managed to do my best mountain goat impression up the flint cliff and I was safe, albeit on a cliff some half hour drive away from my van with no wind! I’d even considered dumping the kit at one point so it was fairly serious. |
|
Anyway, having scaled the cliff I decided that it wasn’t time to give up yet so I tucked it all back under my arm and started walking, and walking, and walking and somewhat luckily I arrived down from the cliff, through the dunes back to the far beach where the drama first started. I talked to a kite surfer who was camping there and found there were only 2 real options, wait to see if my mates came to get me or wait for a bit of wind and try to sail back again. After deciding that waiting for my mates was the only real option, a few gusts came through and I decided to try again. This time with the tide on the turn and a couple of gusts, I got out into the channel so was at least safe from the waves and the cliffs – mood improved a lot. A few more gusts and I was nearer to home than from where I launched so mood was much better then one more gust and I even managed to ride a wave back in with almost no wind at all - drama over.
|
|
As it turned out, my mate had the binoculars on me the whole time and was p1ssing himself laughing with a beer in his hand! He was ready to drive round or call the lifeboat as required which was nice. The important thing though was that despite all the grief, I still came away loving the board and the 5.2 combat which I think must have the best range of any sail I have – truly a jack of all trades and certainly better on the 69 than I could ever have expected. The next job must just be to lose some of this weight to make such incidents less likely to occur.
|
|
| Cheers, Andy R |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
