A lovely, miserable night out

Thursday is our regular practice evening in St. Philips.  The forecast was for N25 knots gusting to 35 with rain.  I doubted many would be interested in that so I mailed some of the guys.  Terry replied he would if I would.  Game on!  Then Neville also was in.

When evening came the wind had dropped to 20 knots northerly with gusts to 25.  The forecast for rain was spot on.

Waves were 1 to 1.5 meters but huge in terms of water volume.  Most of the evening I paddled out into the waves and caught some great surf rides back.  Here Neville rides up one wave and ...

... rides over the crest ahead of me until ...

... I reached the crest and Neville was well below me.

As I said it was raining constantly so it was impossible to keep water off of the lens.

Neville was in the banana boat spending some time in the water surging over the rock at the north end of the cove.  The larger waves rushed over the rock just in front of my bow and careened against the nearby cliffs.  Picking the wrong moment meant a short ride onto the rocks.

Care had to be exercised because there was so little room between the rock an the cliff to the right.

The other or us with questionable sanity to be out in the inclement weather was Terry.  Here just a speck on the top of a waves and ...

... here cruising past me.

After an hour and a half we had enough in the cold wind that dropped the temperature down to -6C.  We gingerly made our entrance back into the boat basin between the narrow piers.  It was cold and wet but it was fun.

I'm hoping the weather will soon warm up a bit which should draw more people out.