Last weekend saw four of Guernsey's hardcore wave sailors travel to their sister Island of Jersey to compete in an inter-island wave competition organised by Justin Horton and crew of the Jersey Association of Windsurfing.We caught the last ferry on Friday evening and arrived in Jersey around 19.30 and checked into our hotel shortly after. We spent that evening in the bar accompanied by a couple of Jersey sailors, chilling out discussing the weather and each others sailing ability and generally talking up a good sail as you tend to do after a few sherberts!
The next day we were up reasonably early and after a good fry up were on the road to St Ouens bay to be greeted by the Jersey boys and a fresh westerly wind. The swell was pretty small and the wind was bang onshore at Le Rocco so we decided to head up to Big Verns where the wind would be more favourable.
The format was a 40minute expression session with your best 5 jumps and wave rides scoring to the overall points. Everyone was on the water around 11.30 and the competition was on. The 5.3 was the sail of choice and as soon as the flag was up we were hit by a massive rain squall. The wind settled down after 5 mins but conditions were tricky due to the onshore wind which meant we were able to jump on both tacks and also get some ok back side wave riding.
We all came in after the heat, de-rigged and headed to the Splash for some well deserved food and drink.
As there were two trophies up for grabs it was decided to run another expression session in the afternoon on the rising tide.
Kick off this time was 14.30 and the 4.7 was the sail which everyone seemed to be opting for this time as the wind was building and the swell was getting bigger. The wind had also gone around a bit more to the NW which gave us a bit more direction sailing out but this also meant starboard tack jumping which was not our favourite. Never less the prevailing conditions gave us some great jumping and I managed to get some good forwards and back loops but the waves were getting heavy and starting to hit logo high. Everyone was finding the sailing difficult and the shore dump was particularly gnarly. Getting caught inside made it hard to get out again and I got pummelled a couple of times. Matt Le P was caught on the inside and trashed his "indestructible" Hot Sails 4.7!! ... luckily it was the end of the heat.
Everyone had a great session and were all feeling pretty shagged out after the long day.
We packed up the van drove back to the hotel, showered, re-couped some energy and headed off to the yacht club for the prize giving.
The overall results showed an undisputed win for the Guerns with myself taking 1st place, Matt Le P taking 2nd and Matt Stark taking 3rd. Richard Klein earned himself a very creditable 9th overall which was good seeing that he rarely is seen down in the surf at Vaz.
Thanks must go to the Jersey guys and girls for hosting and judging the event and we look forward to catching up again when they come to Guernsey in May for some Island Games training with the donkeys.
