The last couple of days have been windy. Really windy. Like smallest sail you can find windy. And it has rapidly dawned on me that I am not as fit as I used to be. Truth is that I have done very little windsurfing since my accident a year ago, and what I have done has been in reasonably benign conditions.
All this is an excuse for the panting, wrecked individual that crawled out of the sea yesterday. She who must be obeyed was there to video me collapsing onto the beach, a piece of footage which will never be published to a wider audience if she knows what is good for her.
And of course high winds, choppy seas and an unfit sailor can only result in one outcome; an accident. My lovely new board was propelling me at a healthy pace across the water, until one particular wave launched the front of the board into the air, the wind inserted itself below the board, and the entire contraption, including me, was airborne.
The normal reaction to this event is to bend the legs, sheet in the sail and perform a neat jumping action before landing safely. But my reaction was to think “I don’t know where, and I don’t know how much, but this is going to hurt”. And it did. My head hit the mast, my legs hit the boom and my arm hit the board. The first two resulted in an ache for a while, but the latter was more messy.
New windsurfing boards have their decks treated with what is known as “non-slip”, which means sprayed-on, industrial strength sandpaper, extra coarse grade. This is great for giving grip to your feet, but it is also very effective at removing all the skin from other body parts should you be foolish enough to drag them across the board. And I was, and if you bother to look at a recent tweet you can see the result, a bit of a bloody mess which is refusing to stop being bloody; yuk
Never mind, the sun was spectacularly elegant on the way down to the horizon this evening.
Comments 🔗
2009-11-25| Mike saysWhy are you wearing a mask? this must obstruct the vision and make you easy prey for those nasty waves. Your not still playing that pre mating game of masked marauder crawls from the surf and ravishes young innocent bystander who just happens to have a video camera at the ready! , are you?
2009-11-25| Spike saysYes. What mask?
2009-11-25| Mike saysThe mask that is still on my pre edited copy!
Most wave experts recommend a softer mast for heavy conditions just incase this happens