It started well enough. Wednesday evening I stopped in to see if the predictions were correct and saw that they were. I had to leave for Plymouth at 2am but couldn’t resist and with permission surprisingly granted to cut out early before the children were in bed Steve and I went and surfed for a couple of hours until we couldn’t spot the waves any more. It was fantastic and I had my greatest ever ride, one which I thought was going to result in injury…quote from straight after:
“Oh man it's brilliant out there, me and Steve have been playing tonight amongst the boardies. I've just replaced snot with brine for two hours into the darkness. Had the sickest ever ride, a 5ft wave, a 300 yard run and an imminent 6ft drop straight onto sand and shingle at the end of it that was cushioned as the wave spewed out from the inside and gave me water to come the rest of the way in. Plymouth and back tomorrow and Friday then straight into the water at dawn on Saturday...”
Well, dawn came at coffee time and then I headed down, arriving at the same time as Steve. I unloaded and got kitted up as he bitched that it was small, messy, blown out and every other excuse he could think of to stay dry…but it was on the flood and I knew it was going to build. The wind was going to be the problem though, onshore and very strong, circa Force 6 onshore. It was short too, only 3 or 4 seconds between waves. We went anyway.
We were soon joined by my mate Liam and his brother Richard along with Paul who’d come to see us in his normal clothes. We sent him home for his drysuit ;D Last to arrive was Tim who joined us on the water. We had a varied selection of yaks out, mine and Liam’s Yakboards, Steve’s Cobra Strike, Tim’s Mysto and my newly acquired Yahoo which had been turfing me out constantly the previous afternoon…this proved quite a hit with everyone loving it but boy does it like to spin sideways! A Fijian surfer was down with another girl and for a while we had it to ourselves before more and more boards and kayaks turned up, including a tandem kayak that was quite a sight. I have to say it was the hardest water I’ve been in to date and after about 3 hours I found it a struggle to even walk to my van – one ride in took me almost half an hour to get out in the first place as an idea of what it was like. Wednesday night I wiped out on a wave once. I wiped out on a large percentage of these as did we all – they were a mess. The bottom is now undulating and the waves just change all over the place; a right mess. We loved it.
Anyway, the pics, in no particular order other than chronological, can do the talking – the day captured brilliantly by Onmas, our (semi!!!) retired buddy ;) I really can’t spend anymore time to edit them down to a small amount so forgive the repetition…
