I’m Nearly Free !!!!!!!! Name: Lucy Robson Age: 24yrs Home town: Brighton I can now officially call myself a full time windsurfer - yeh! With a heavy heart I left my law firm on Friday 26 August, reluctantly packing up my civil litigation manuals and checking nothing inconspicuous was left on my pc. Ha ha – as if! I dumped the law books and headed straight to the beach leaving calls of “bon voyage” and “hope the great whites don’t get you” in my wake. How come the uninitiated have such a bizarre view of the surfista!! One week on I think I am still in shock that I neither have to go to work nor have any further study commitments to attend to and am free to windsurf when I want and where I want (well so long as the funds last anyway). So the plan is now to finish the UK comps over autumn and then set about putting into action the big escape to warmer climes where I’ll find conditions that have a little bit more to offer than the local Shoreham. Not to mention seeing if all the world class breaks that are immortalized in the magazines live up to their reputation and being able to say “yeh I’ve done Hookipa”!   Lucy at an Aztec city somewhere in South America.

Aside from the long awaited and arduous rite of passage to becoming a fully qualified solicitor, August has been characterized by a surprising amount of wind. Coupled with my take on flexi time this has meant that I have been able to get lots of training in, working on those moves that will hopefully enable me to get some good placings at the remainder of the UKWA comps. I’m still on the trail of getting those forwards right and given where I sail, flat water forwards. Most people think that when they decide the time is ripe to go for forwards and they are ready the most difficult step is the psychological one, that is, convincing yourself that it is a good idea to catapult in the straps whilst at planning speed and then the rest will happen. This is a complete myth! Getting good pop off chop, bearing the board off wind whilst sheeting in hard and throwing the mast windward takes more than 'cajones', it requires a lot of concentration! But a goal worth pursuing nonetheless.

Christchurch Youth Camp: Hard Work!

With this training in mind the next event in the UKWA freewave calendar was the freewave series at Christchurch on the bank holiday weekend of 27 - 29 August and it goes without saying that this weekend involved a certain amount of comedy…

… as seems to be the norm with most bank holiday weekends, the forecast was not looking that amenable to windsurfing and arriving at Christchurch on Saturday morning I thought the day would involve not much more than sunbathing, tea and chit chat. Given my relative impatience I was however keen to do something and offered to help coach a group of intermediate boys who were part of the youth training camp that was taking place at the same time. Considering that I have been windsurfing for just over 2 years now I have absolutely no experience or idea of how to coach! But given that am addicted to watching windsurf DVDs and have experienced a lot of helpful coaching from Jem Hall, I did not imagine that coaching could be that hard. And how wrong was I! The amount of concentration and patience that is required is incredible – and as nice and enthusiastic as these boys were – they were really hard work! Every one of them was just obsessed about learning the “Gecko Flaka”. Needless to say that me and Clyde tried to steer them persuasively towards learning some basics firsts, like the heli tack before progressing to some Margarita inspired freestyle. And so if I ever thought that coaching was a piece of p*ss I have clearly been very uninformed and remain extremely impressed with Mark Hosegood’s tenacity with the kids to mention but one!

So the order of the day was a few hours light wind freestyle practice. And if I was ever feeling slightly deflated about my skills going on big a board with a small sail is definitely an ego booster – I don’t think I’ve ever been able to be so energetic with sail spins and remain dry! And so Saturday drew to a close with a tasty BBQ in the evening courtesy of Linda Funnell, which was definitely well appreciated! Accompanied with a few too many Baccardi Breezers with Terry meant that I did not worry too much about the ancient tent I was sleeping in and the not-too pleasant smell of mould that was emanating from it!!

Unfortunately Sunday did not produce the goods wind wise either so after dealing with my hangover and some further ‘on land’ coaching I packed up and drove back to Brighton. And so this next month looks pretty busy with events at Bigbury, Poole, Tiree and a trip somewhere in-between, but given that I won’t have to do any more artful skiving from my job I’m looking forward to making the most of really getting as much windsurfing in as possible conscience-free!

See ya!