Weather at Grafham Water Click Here For Weather @ Grafham Water     Windsurfing News     Windsurfing 4 Cancer Research - Sunday 3rd May Report From Tristan What a day! I had been watching the weather forecast all week and it looked as though my worst fears would happen, that I would be ‘bobbing about’ in a windless calm for 10 hours. However from midweek a wave of optimism passed over me as I saw the forecast suddenly improve promising a more breezy affair. My only limitation being my lack of fitness and only 3 windsurfing outings in over 7 months, what could possibly go wrong? A game of squash that’s what! On Thursday I thought a quick game would help with a final burst of activity before taking a couple of days rest before the big day on Sunday. Unfortunately though, with a slip of the shoe I dropped my shoulder into the wall having run towards it about as fast as I could, my immediate fears were that I had dislocated it as I rolled around on the floor in agony. Once I finally managed to get up I walked off to find a mirror expecting my collar bone to be sticking out of my tee-shirt; Thankfully it wasn’t and thankfully I am just a bit of a hypochondriac meaning I had probably just bruised it. The pain and stiffness was worse on Friday and worse still on Saturday, with the forecast now predicting quite strong winds for Sunday it just didn’t look like I was going to be able to take part. Having called 15 sports injury clinics and Chiropractors on Saturday I managed to get a 5.30pm appointment to try and get some last minute pulling about and get my shoulder working. Whilst not pleasant, Dr Broe did enough and told me what I had wanted to hear, that as long as I could cope with the pain, there was no reason I shouldn’t take part – waheey! Sunday morning, got to Grafham at 8am, rigged and sorted my kit and spent considerably longer than normal trying to get into my wetsuit. There for 4 of us taking part and we all hit the water at 9am in ideal conditions, cross shore winds blowing 20 mph, just still very cold at that time of the morning. Whilst the event was more about sailing for as long as possible, I had set myself a personal challenge of sailing 100 miles in the day, something I had ruled out with the recent shoulder incident. Off the beach, hooked into my harness and shoulder felt OK, can’t beat max strength Ibuprofen. Having to turn wasn’t great so made sure I sailed the whole width of the lake on each run to keep this to a minimum, although I must have still done over 100 during the day. Wearing my GPS I kept an eye on the distances I was covering and 10 miles came around fairly quickly, I thought I would do 10-15 miles at a time returning to the shore for a quick drink in between to keep hydrated. By the time I reached 33 miles I was already starting to feel fatigued and the prospect of a further 67 miles seemed very unlikely. So instead of coming in as planned I just kept sailing until I had covered over 50 miles, psychologically this felt more positive as at least I was halfway there. I took a rest and some much needed lunch and went out and covered another 10 miles and realised the batteries had run out on my GPS so missed my last few runs. An unplanned stop but quickly sorted and clocking up the miles again covering another 25 in about an hour. It was starting to look possible however the wind was becoming ever more temperamental and I still had 15 miles to go. The final burst and I was determined not to come back in until I had reached the 100 mark. I must have got carried away as by the time I finished I had sailed 106 miles. According to my GPS this took 5 hours and 49 minutes (sailing time) and I reached a top speed of 34.4mph. The 4 of us who took part at Grafham raised £2000 between us and for all the other windsurfers and kitesurfers who took part across the country a significant amount of money was raised for Cancer Research. Thank you to those who sponsored me, it was a very memorable day. Click here for photo's taken of the event Well Done Tristan , James Stewart, Dan Theze & Alex Smith Dave White is planning a trip to Grafham Saturday 9th May Dave White is coming up this Saturday with a veiw to getting some photo's and information for a Location report to be published in Boards..He needs you! To blast around and make the lake look busy.Dave loves windsurfing and talking about it so turn and get some tips from The King of Speed. Carve Clinic with "Stan the Man" Stan has kindly offered his services to run a carve clinic - will be posting dates a.s.a.p