I chased the big Storm of ‘87. It took an hour and a half to cover the usual 15 minute drive to the beach due to the extent of the debris. Steeling myself for the sail of the century, I spend the whole session under-powered in three foot sloppy waves.The wind dropped in the morning as quickly as it had got up the night before and because the depression has moved through so fast, it hadn’t had time to build up a swell. This time would be different! Whitey and I had a 7.30 am rendez-vous on the south coast. We arrived to find the West Wittering Estate car part closed due to the risk of flying beach huts. That was a good sign. We moved down the road to Joliffe. It was big, but how windy was it? We launched on 4.7s (Whitey wanted to go with 4.2 – he has ‘size deception syndrome’). The tide was high. There was no ‘out the back’ just huge relentless walls of mush all the way to Cherbourg. With so much water moving round, the wind was very sketchy and getting out was a mare. It looked like it was going to be one of sessions that promised so much and delivered nothing but a wobble and a big swim. We sure did do some swimming. But we stuck at it. The wind settled down, the swells cleaned up (a little). We started to get some monster rides, the waves breaking and reforming 3 times or more. The sun came out and eventually we were joined by a few of the old guard including Jamie Hawkins. It just got better and better and windier and windier. More of a storm-ette than a hurricane but still one to remember for sure.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 09:41:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015