The forecast for Thursday was looking good all week, the closer we got the better it looked. All but a few riders arrived the day before in preparation to what we expected to be a world record day. One record, two ambulances and a whole host of spectacular crashes ensured the day will  stick in the minds of all the riders for some time to come.

With the wind showing its intentions so early on, I had plenty of time to get everything prepared. The prediction for the tide was to only drop to two meters, so it looked like we would only get a couple of hours of sailing in, preparation was the key to get the most out of the day. We put the cameras out on the boat two days in advance, but as it turned out we needn’t have bothered.

We still haven’t found out why, but the tide dropped earlier and lower than expected, it was so low hard banks that I‘ve never seen before started to show. Though not on the side we were racing, they did reflect the waves back across the Ray and onto the course.

Half way down the run, the waves turned the course into a choppy mess that caught out all the riders at some point. I’ve got taken down on one run, but was luckier than some others, particularly Peter Davis. He went down hard, hard enough to pull his arm from his socket. He wasn’t alone in catching an ambulance to hospital; the other casualty wasn’t a competitor, but a spectator.

Alex Bennett-baggs had made the trip down to see the action, but couldn’t resist the chance of getting on the water while we were changing courses. First time I saw him he was already with a paramedic and enjoying a bit of morphine. Two shoulders in one day, not bad, but the true performances went to Timo Mullen and John Kenny.

Its hard to mention speed and Timo in the same sentence, he’s defiantly a dedicated wave head. You can’t imagine how surprised I was when he signed up for drivenbywind, thought he was taking the p*ss, but how quickly he’s adapted.

Timo took the record first with an 38.74knot run and went on to finish the day just under 40, but it was John Kenny’s day. He picked up my old Manta 49, and quickly took the Irish record and joined the 40knot club with a run of 40.44knots.

I felt broken, the day had shown such promise, so many had made the trip over and yet we  still didn’t get to write “world” in front of any times. This was the worst conditions I’ve ever seen at the Ray, but some how we still left with a positive feeling, if we can get this close in these conditions, what’s possible when we get it right.

Choosing which day to run is more frustrating than I imagined, Friday was looking good for a while, but the wind turned to the north at the last moment. Then Sunday started to show promise, again this was called off in the end, but waking on the morning I felt we’d made a mistake.

I headed to Clacton with the boys, no point in letting the wind go to waste. The wind was out of the Southeast but hell cold, no one seemed in a rush to get on the water. I never wear gloves for windsurfing, but couldn’t decide which was worse, coming in every two runs to warm them up, or every three to get over the cramp from trying gloves.

Still not convinced gloves work for windsurfing, but somehow I wish they did as it was only my hand that stopped play. The rest of me was perfectly warm, made a change to Spartan wetsuits and have been testing a new suit. The plan is just to have a few suits with the best materials, rather than hundreds of different suits for everyone, now, hopefully they’ll do the same for boots and gloves.