Rumours of wind and waves this weekend down the SouthWest, and a planned OMWC trip to Westward Ho! meant a chance to testdrive the new suit. Saturday made 1 attempt to sail, 6.5m/102l JP FSW, but wind far too light, couldn't even get going - very enthusiastic to try! I did do some surfing, which was moderately successful. For both of these, the suit was good - not sure if the neck is high enough for an effective seal, didn't seem to notice the shoulder tightness much, seemed warm enough. I spent too long in it out of the water waiting for a friend to join me, so I did get cold. The doublelined bits might be a bit much...
Sunday was windier - again with the 6.5/102 loined another mate in the medium waves, slightly shorted period than Sat. Went out and back, felt tired, but fancied some more action. The wind came up, spent time rigging 5.5, went out again, each time coming back to land on the beach at the end of the ride. I had discussed waveriding with Nick (expert!), and he'd given me some tips, so it was going well - sideshore, DTL stuff!! No surfers!! A bit of pumping required to catch a wave sometimes, and the downhill feeling pretty scarey sometimes, especially when it caught me out - I wasn't putting my feet in the straps quickly enough.
Caught another wave on the way back to the beach, I'd had to wait to waterstart a bit out the back, so the wind had definitely dropped, and then arsingly fell off, in the impact zone, no chance of standing up. I even laughed at myself for being so stupid - I hadn't really tried hard enough to stay on to be honest. Anyway, spent ages trying to waterstart and couldn't, in either direction, not enough wind, I just wanted to get back to the beach! Suddenly I lost hold of my kit, don't know how, and it caught a wave and was a long way off. I tried to swim for it, but clearly couldn't make it so I tried for the beach. Bad. Just couldn't make any progress, started taking on water, head full of salt water... I was panicking bigtime, the harness makes it harder to breathe with the diaphragm restriction, so I was struggling to loosen it but when I did, it didn't help. I was swimming on my back to lessen the effort and ease breathing, but kept swimming along not down the waves, and the shore seemed as far away as it had ever been, and I was getting extremely disorientated. Was this it? Did our hero checkout at this point? How could the story end like this??
Fortunately Nick sailed up, very coolly, and asked how I was - "I'm totally f*cked" was my reply!! He called the RNLI surf chaps over, and I was relieved to see their pickup opposite me, and hoped I could hang on until they got here. Then the bare-chested hero arrived with the big yellow surf rescue board - marvellous!! Clambered on, got back on a great wave ride, even tucked my feet up to keep the speed up, and they issued oxygen, took me back to the van and suggested an A&E checkup in case of "secondary drowning". The hero also rescued my kit, which rather than being washed ashore as you'd expect on an incoming tide, was going round and round in the rip and waves - no wonder I couldn't swim in. A lady passing by helped me off with my wetsuit because my arms were too massively cramped to use properly. And I was tired!! Utterly shattered.
In summary - a good lesson, both in riding waves and surviving waves. Take them very seriously indeed!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment