September has been fun!!!!!!!!

Name: Lucy Robson
Age: 24yrs
Home town: Brighton

September has been fun!! Well I suppose you are thinking that I would say that considering I have been left with the onerous and responsible task of windsurfing all day and no job to speak of! However I have been busy with back to back events at Bigbury with the Wave Championships and Poole competing at the National Freestyle Championships.

Luckily my good friend Terry Luxton lives about 45 minutes drive from Bigbury so I had a nice if crazy place to stay for the duration of the Bigbury comp together with Club Vass boys Simon Hurrey and Colin Dixon. I could tell from the outset that there was going to be a healthy mix of windsurfing and general hooliganism considering the plans to make nightly outings to “Sam’s” the local Exmouth hotspot!

Bigbury - no blow, no show.

On the first couple of days at Bigbury the wind was a complete no-show and we spent our days making the long paddle over to Bantham which sits on the other
side of the bay and getting some surfing in. Bantham is quite a slow wave and the line-up is mostly dominated with local longboarders, however this is not to perturb the UKWA competitors who managed to steal most of the waves on a collection of shortboards and strapless wave boards!

“Cummon Luc, go get your boardies on and let’s see some action!”

These surfing sessions were followed by the drive back to Terry’s where Si would be found cooking up some nice food for us all. It’s not that I have low expectations of the boys but I was actually quite surprised at their culinary skills!

On the third day of the scheduled competition a small breeze started to fill in just on cue as the local news station turned up to film some action! Trevor Funnell made the decision to run an expression session with 15 minute heats scored on your best three waves. And so with Trevor encouraging me “Cummon Luc, go get your boardies on and let’s see some action!” I was ripping and snapping with the best of them in the waist to shoulder high surf on my freestyle combo throwing in a bit of rig flipping and front to sail wave riding to match! And ‘yeh I got first place in the girls’ fleet!

The day’s comp was then followed by an outing on Terry’s boat back at Exmouth. Firstly I just have to mention that Terry’s boat is really cool! It’s reminiscent of something James Bond would have been speeding along in the 1960’s to go pick up some chick in distress – only this time it was me as Si, Col and Ter had great fun in towing me behind in the ringo at about 40 knots hitting the biggest chop and swell head on. I am not sure when I volunteered myself to be a victim on jack ass but that is exactly what it felt like as I was being launched into the air and repeatedly bashing myself in the face! I have never seen Si laugh so much and could hear his hysterics over the sound of the engine until finally they let me off! Back at camp I was nursing my bruises with some alcohol and then a trip was to be had into town.

Tuesday being the last official day of the Bigbury comp came and with it the prize giving. It was then back on the road to drive to Poole for the Freestyle competition and at last the forecast provided some wind!

Nearly perfect Poole

After a brief warm-up session the day before, I was at the beach bright and early on Thursday 15 September. The conditions were however pretty trying for freestyle with choppy water and really gusty wind. After a lot of deliberating I finally settled on a 4.7 Neil Pryde Zone and my 91 JP Freestyle and was organised into four 6 minute heats alongside Sonia Pavelin and Ruth Elliott. My first couple of heats didn’t go great and I could see I was doing too much crashing and not landing enough basic moves to get the scores in. In the last heat I finally got myself together and landed some good moves but still I wasn’t sure it would make up for my earlier mediocre performance. And the lesson also to be learnt from this – don’t sail way out back and do your moves there – the judges won’t see you and what they won’t see they won’t score!

On Friday the wind was just too fickle and not consistent enough to run another round of competition. A couple of expression sessions were run where I actually managed to land a messy vulcan and aerial duck gybe but Sonia snuck ahead of me with an E-slider on the red flag. Saturday and Sunday saw no wind and the Super X was eventually called off after the pro-boys were falling like ducks as they tried to get over the sausage! However the party on Saturday more than made up for the lack of windsurfing and was definitely amusing! Let’s just say we started at about 4pm and ending about 11 hours later...

Lucy is now on the Isle of Tiree getting ready for the biggest event of the year – full report next issue.

Lucy is an Ultrasport team rider and is sponsored by:

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