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Saturday 13^th October - windsurf ***** sunny :) PB for Xantos and best hour :)

After posting at Mc Donalds last night got back to our spot at Port Mahon and another camper was in it :( so we parked just around the corner and I discovered I had left my harness on the beach at La Franqui :(

We still woke up to a glorious sunrise but from a different angle to usual!  We opened the back door and lay on our stomachs watching the sun come up :)   Made an early start but I had to tie the boards on the roof first and fell off the bloomin ladder – the day can only get better!  I was ok – just had a blue cloud around my head!  We did a quick whiz round lidl before heading for La Franqui to see if the harness was there or if someone had picked it up and returned to the beach this morning.  The German man who has been there every time we have for the last couple of weeks arrived at the same time as us and he hadn’t seen it :(  Had our breakfast and our Belgian friends came and they hadn’t seen it and they had also checked everywhere before they left the beach last night because they thought they would leave something behind and it wasn’t there when they did their check:(  As the wind was picking up and it is supposed to be windy again on Monday we decided the only option was to go to the windsurfing shops at Laucate and buy another one.  So that’s what we did, they didn’t have a very big choice in my size or price range so we got virtually the only one in my size at 85 euros and returned to La Franqui.  I had told the Belgians I fancied Port Nouvelle today and they had looked at me as if I was bonkers but when we got back the German man told us they had gone to Port Nouvelle!  We headed off there and discovered where everyone was –we have never seen so many windsurfers on one beach, and that’s without the huge number of kiters at the far end of the beach!  The age range was huge from as young as 10 years up, and some girls too.  Amazingly one of the first people we spotted was the French guy who parked next to us yesterday (whose sail number was 7777 – that’s how we remembered him!) so I went and asked him if he had seen my harness and he got it straight out of the back of his car!!!!  We knew as soon as we bought one we would get it back – sods law!  The old one is a bit knackered so now I don’t know whether to keep the new one or try to take it back and say it’s too small – we will decide later! So after a quick snack I rigged the 7m and took out the Xantos at about one and to try for an hour, the wind was much stronger than my last sail here and lasted all afternoon :) I spent most of this hour sailing up to the kiters and returning to the van, you do have to concentrate on staying upwind and it is easy to stray into the rougher water making flat out speed harder. With the first hour complete I headed to Gruissan, not so many sailors here now but some good wind and flat water so had a few runs before a 5 mile reach back for lunch.  Feeling refreshed I headed out for another hour and was out one hour forty mins making the session 206 mins :) I headed back to Gruissan and got my fastest times here with wind gusting to 25 mph!!! Including a PB of 32.43 kts for my 1996 F2 Xantos – what a top board – old kit rules!!!  Windsurfing dosen’t get better than this blasting along in the sunshine with the mountains’ as a backdrop with more windsurfers out than the whole of East Anglia !!! – top day :)

Mag had a good day too she did her exercises, finished her book , had lunch and went to sleep!  She followed me to the water with the camera after lunch and walked up the beach taking lots of photos of the sheer number of people on and off the water!  So much going on from dog walkers, swimmers, motor bikes, people taking photos and even people firing arrows!!!  She  was also amazed to see another  Osprey diving into the sea over and over again!  When she got back to the van (about 5.30)she  got the binoculars out and could see at least one and possibly two a long way out to sea – beyond where the windsurfers were sailing.  We both enjoyed our day :)  Returned to Seigan and YES our usual overnight spot was free (no white elephant camper there tonight :)).  Had scrambled egg with cheese and ham and baked beans for tea – we know how to live!  Phase 10 (Mag won) and crème brulees:)  A really nice day which is a surprise because with the hassle of the harness and me falling off the ladder we thought we were in for a duff one today! Thank goodness  no wind forecast for tomorrow so we can have a quiet day relaxing before it all kicks off again with an early start for hopefully another windy La Franqui day!!!

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