On Thursday, six MBH members, Ian, Mike, Rob, me, Mark and Izumi went to Stithians Lake for a wind-surfing lesson thanks to Phil. Phil teaches people how to become windsurfing instructors and they wanted some guinea pigs to train on. Little did they know what they had let themselves in for!
Mike, Ian and Rob all turned up on time and were wondering where the others were. I turned up 15 minutes late due to slow-moving vehicles around Helston, and Mark and Izumi decided to take the scenic route around the various villages surrounding the lake, finally turning up at 45 minutes late!
We were all kitted out with wetsuits, buoyancy aids and cagoules. All of us, except Rob, had booties to wear and so he ended up wearing the trainers he drove there in (and needed that evening for running). He had a wet drive home!
We were then all told what various bits of the board and sail were called - front, back, bottom, fin, boom - easy so far. Then we all had a go on the land-based board at getting on it, standing up, bringing up the sail, turning. Didn’t appear too bad on land. Then they said we had to get into the water ….. .
We were allocated one board, sail and instructor each and then we were off …. off the board that is and into the water. I don’t know how many times we all fell in, luckily the water wasn’t cold (but Ian will tell you otherwise!)
Ian and Mike seemed to make it look easy. You could tell they’ve done it before. Mark and Izumi kept being attracted to one another and had a massive head-on collision, neither one wanting to give in first. Then Rob and I just kept falling in! The instructors had so much patience. Mine just kept telling me to relax, bum forward, relax, bend the knees, relax, straighten the back, relax, get on the board, relax…. I seem to remember hearing the same words from the other instructors as well.
The two hours went by so quickly. It was a shame when we were told to get out of the water. That is until we were told that we had to sail back to the start area. For some reason I seemed to think that I needed to sail half way across the lake first until Phil kept shouting at me to turn the board towards the buildings and sail into shore. I finally got the message.
A good time was had by all MBH members, not sure what the instructors thought of us though!
I’ve uploaded some pictures taken by Phil onto Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/26647286@N04/
