The plane had hardly touched the tarmac when the phone rang, “the winds looking good up your way tomorrow, you up for sailing, plus I could also do with some pictures”. Harty had obviously been looking at my calendar; twenty-eight hours can feel like a long time, but not when you have to unpack, take pix, sail, and pack again to catch the next flight
Got to be honest, the pix were far from the best; if it wasn’t for the muddy waters off the Essex cost you wouldn’t have been able to see where the sky and sea met. The Wind was directly out of the North making it a little too off shore for sailing the normal Walton beach, instead we ended up on the cliffs steps further round the corner.
Shaun and Anthony joined us for the hike, not that they had to do it many times; next time I’ll have Harty do the running up and down to fetch camera kit. Between fetching the gear and the rain, it looked like I’d already had an hours sailing even though I hadn’t even touched the water, isn’t this supposed to be summer.
They’re not the prettiest pix, but at least we got something, you’d have to stretch the imagination to call it a good day. We tried going up wind to show Harty the Essex version of a windsurfing skate park, but had to turn back as the wind started to fade.
It wasn’t many hours later I was looking through the camera on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy, this time it was sailing of a different kind that filled my lens. In a few days they’ll be nearly two hundred Toppers should arrive at Malcesine’s new sailing club for the Topper worlds. Meantime we have Toppers full range of boats to shoot for the catalogue.
If you’ve been to Lake Garda you’ll know how bad the parking is, cars ram into the tiniest of spots. On the water the windsurfing’s great but the rigging area isn’t any better than the parking, except at the new sailing centre where just isn’t a problem since they reclaimed the lake with an underground car park.
They’ve mad a good job of almost making the club invisible with its grass roof, once inside the roof continues to capture the eye with its curved wooden ceiling. The water out front is perfect for boats with wind being a little lighter on the inside for the morning wind. I had a short swim out to catch the wind, but that’s not unusual for Garda, but once in the wind there’s a two-mile reach to play with before you touch the far shore.
The wind switches direction in the afternoon, or at least it should, so far its failed to materialise so I can’t be certain how good it gets, but word is it works just as well but with the wind line touching the club front. You can probably guess from that, the weather wasn’t as expected, England isn’t alone when it comes to bad weather, the day before I arrived they had the same conditions as I was sailing in at home. Wet.
The world feels like it’s getting smaller by the day, wherever you go friends are bound to arrive. Karin Jaggi was here for a couple of days, picking up kit for the speed event in Namibia next week. Nik Baker arrived with the rest of the Mistral crew for testing, and I even met up with my first ever sponsor (mad fool), Mike Pickering.
The last days have seen a swarm of Toppers arriving, that spacious area is starting to disappear as the boat park has swelled ten fold. I thought the Topper's were only for kids, surprisingly there’s a good few helms with kids of the own. But the biggest surprise was the amount of support the fleet get, ribs and coaches are everywhere, something we could do with in windsurfing.
