Life seams to play games with me as the wind kicks in hard after the event closes. I took a couple of sails and a board to have a bit of fun with once the comp was over, guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find it too windy for the smallest sail. After four hours of the most overpowered sailing I could remember, my arms felt two inches longer.

Reni Egli has a second centre at the far end of the beach where small waves wrap around the sandy point. Farrell drove round while I sailed the last of the kit we till had at the beach, with the end of security we’d taken the rest back to the apartments for safekeeping.

My 5.4 Poison was way too big, and I wa just hanging on as I ran along the beach, I’d hopped for a little rest bite as I passed last weeks speed strip, but the waves were still pushing across the sandbar to form the worst speed strip I’ve seen in years. If thi is what the kite surfers raced in, then its no wonder over half the fleet ended up in hospital.

Another mile further on the beach cuts back and allows the waves to form a more orderly line-up, though small their perfect form provide a great playground for some great sailing. It would have been impossible to sail so over powered in any other conditions, not that stopped my arms feeling like they were about to pop form their sockets.

With the strong winds continuing the following day we headed up North to see Corky in Corralejo and sail the North Shore. We ended up at Punta in the afternoon, the wind was lighter, but perfect for my 6.0 Remedy. The waves were better than forecast and Corky was getting some rocket air.

There’s almost no sand along he North Shore, the coastline is mass of sharp black volcanic rock, sharp enough to tear anything apart. Driving along the cost you start to wonder what separates on bay from the next, the answer is the launch spot. Punta’s reef not only turn swell into waves, but also protect the inside waters and makes for one of the most reliable sailing spots along the North Shore.

I was having a great time until the wind eased while I was out back, my 3S 87 doesn’t support my weight so while I stood on the board with the water lapping around my harness I was also drifting down to the next bay. I’d been more interested in looking up wind for the next gust and hadn’t noticed how close I was getting to an outcrop of rock.

To say I was too close for comfort would be an understatement. As the wave passed underneath me and sucked the volcanic rock dry I could almost smell the fear, some rapid swimming and a lucky gust lifted past the rocks, but still left nowhere to land. It was nearly an hour before I got enough wind to get further up the bay and sail through a small gap in the reef and back to the original launch bay.

It would have been easy to have packed up and put the two weeks down as a disaster, but I couldn’t leave Fuerteventura on a negative so spent the next hour catching every drop of wind the island wanted to spare me.

Farrell and I didn’t arrive back to my place until 2:30 Thursday morning, not that I had a chance to lay in bed. Sally had booked the day out with the finds and friends in Thetford Forest. There’s three hours of climbing and sliding through the trees, and it wasn’t just the kids that wanted to get involved, secretly I think it was Sally’s idea, but she put the blame on Aaron.

The weeks end also marked the passing of yet another year in my like, and what has become a tradition with the kids, they buy me something they want, so you can guess I still haven’t had a chance to play with my Nintendo Wii yet.