thought i'd post a story as there is no wind.
met my mate pete up the sunny coast for some wave sailing. thought i'd share.
bom forecast was for 15-20knots SE... excellent.
6.4 kult, check. 95lt nxs fish, check. harness, check. um. beter take the formula gear as well just in case.
as normal, got to the beach and there was no wind. we rigged up a 8.5 formula sail each, bolted on the 70cm fins and headed out into the surf on the formula gear. was about 8 knots so some fun could be had.
pete hit the water first. although older he has more energy and can rig quicker. as soon as he got onboard he was planing.
cool, houston we have lift off. i wasn't far behind. and was planing as well, getting dialled in and checking out the wind.
now the thing with the caloundra bar is the waves are always bigger than they look and there is never any wind in the impact zone. why those thoughts didn't cross our minds at the time i don't know. plus, we vowed never to sail there on an outgoing tide as we have both done the swim of shame many times. by the way, the tide was outgoing. was supposed to be low tide but it was definately still outgoing. i said to pete. we'll be right mate. what trouble can we get into on formula gear.
famous last words...
by the time i gpt across the passage pete was allready running back and forth looking for a way out through the break, he is a better sailor so normally i follow. this occasion i thought to go it alone, so i lined up a path and took off.
as i headed out i noticed that the waves were bigger than first thought. what seemed like 1-2 foot was actually 2-3 foot. i hit the first wave. bugger, that was a bit hard to handle. then the second, then the third. I decided as the fourth approached, next face i'm gybing. think i may have made a bad decission.
gybed off on the nrxt face and headed back in to watch pete have a go... i decided to stand on my board and wait to see what would happen and then follow him out.
pete was cruising, first wave, second, third, all looking good. at this point the wind decided it didn't want us having fun and decided to call the whole thing off. that left pete, dead still, with a 4 foot wave bearing down on him and nowhere for him to go. subsequently he got cleaned up. i then watched him trying to uphaul with wave after wave knocking him about, still no wind.
eventually he dissapeared behind the waves and i couldn't see him anymore. i started to get worried.
after a while i noticed his board getting washed in with no-one onboard. i started to think, this is bad. pete always taught me, never leave your board. it is your flotation. so to see a board without pete was a concern.
i decided to head out into the break to see what was happening. got about half way out and noticed pete swimming back in against the tide. i dredged over to him. yelling out, what happened... then following it up with,
pete, where has your bloody rig gone. at this point he yelled something back and waved his arms frantically in the air at me.
ok, i guess i won't mention that again... i eventually got to him so he could grab the back of my board and then towed him back to his board.
all was ok, but a very expensive full carbon formula rig was MIA.
We headed back in to pack up, figuring we would go look for the rig a bit later after the tide changed and pete had warmed up again.
about an hour later a guy comes up to us and says, hey did you guys loose a sail. petes face lit up. he told us it had been washed up the beach about 400m to the north.....
he was bloody lucky and got all his gear back. was a great day in the end. another story to lock away in the fading memory banks....
gives advise on anything ignore him LOL
