posted by flat_spell

I've been sailing BDC/BC for ten and half years. Excluding the occasional holiday, something like 90-95% of my sessions have been there. That's 500, maybe 600 sessions? Who knows? Over a thousand hours probably. The ranking for today? Third best in a decade. Flippin' awesome. Arrived about 10.30 just as three blokes were packing up. I was gutted - "should have been here earlier, mate." Rigged anyway as I had no plans for the rest of the day. It was actually pretty amazing. Really warm and sunny, wind cross off so super gusty on the inside. But more than enough for float 'n' ride. The waves were in there somewhere, hiding under the super high tide. Now and again something would lip up on the third sandbar and I'd squint into the sun, trying to decide where it was going and if I could get there first. Then it would unload on the second sandbar, super heavy - almost closing out but with just enough shoulder to bang in two or three turns before it reached the inside. It was a great game of windsurfing chess to play. Eventually the wind went even more offshore and the high tide was producing backwash in the sets, so I packed up at 12.30. As it was such a sunny day I went for a stroll on the Prom, bought a ice cream, all very pleasant. Walking back to the van it dawned on me that sand was blowing down the beach, and the tide had dropped a bit, and spray was blowing of the breaking swell. And it was swell - I watched in disbelief as something close to mast high closed out along three groynes-worth of beach. In the space of 45 minutes things had gone from pants to epic. And I was sat on a bench eating ice cream and sending text messages! Ran back to the van. Rigged in record time. Donned soggy, sandy wetsuit. The next hour and a half were epic. Float 'n'' ride on the inside, powered outside, long glassy walls giving six, seven, eight turns. Proper solid, fast waves. Breathtakingly good. Absolutely stoked. One particular wave sticks in my memory - I caught in way outside beyond the wind line, put in some solid bottom turns on the flats, as it approached the beach the wind dropped so I was riding mid-face and I remember looking up at the lip but having to bend my neck a second time to actually see it. That wave had size.