Windsurfers are a pretty adventurous lot and not afraid to go chasing off after storms seeking those magic conditions. But it does not always go to plan, but it does usually make a good story, this one is from Steve Thorp:

5th December 2013 West Kirby

It’s been a pretty slow year for us UK speed sailors so when the forecast for the 5th Dec came into view we all got pretty excited. It was predicted a force 8 gusting to 10 -SW in the morning and NW in the afternoon. So at some point it surely had to line up to a perfect Westerly, and perhaps for 10 minutes during the swing round from SW produce ‘record’ type flat and nuking conditions.

As we looked a bit closer though there was the small issue of a big high tide right in the middle of the day, which would breach the wall and spoil the course. In fact the 11am until 1pm breach would almost certainly line up with the westerly swing -pretty rotten luck that the best wind conditions of the year would be ruined by a particularly high tide. I’m not sure any of us quite believed it, and we all hoped that the timings would be a little out and we’d score.. well we deserved it after all

The SW to NW swing did mean good news for wavesailing though, as the SW would produce the swell and NW give cross off winds in North Wales.

We all arrived at Kirby bright and early. The wind was howling, though we could see it was gusty as everytime we checked the water state a different sail came out the bag. No one was in too big a rush as we knew the speeds would be much faster during the swing. Those of us that were keen to sail and test kit got on the water first, which turned out to be a good thing as the wind remained SW until the wall breached, and it breached early at 10.30am.

The shortness of the session and the gusty 40-55 knot winds meant that many didn’t get their 5 runs in for a gps average. Ian Richards, Michael George and myself were the first out and the only 3 to post. I had a really good day, feeling fortunate to finish ahead of the others who’ve been really pushing their speedsailing and are getting quicker every time.

I had a particularly good 500m time again which I feel must be down to the Hot Sails Maui gps speedsail -it really seems to power you along in a very efficient way. I’m also very impressed with how easily it handled the 40-55 knot gusty wind being a 5.5 with only a 78kg pilot to control it.

I figured with the wall breaching early we were going to see far longer than the 2hr break, and the chances were the wind would be round to NW by the time the course was sailable again (far too broad).

I’m not good at sitting around waiting, so came straight in, de rigged in a flash, changed in the van and bolted to North Wales for some waves.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I heard of all the carnage. The car park had been totally flooded -trapping Ian in the changing rooms for over an hour until he decided to put his wetsuit back on! Cars were washed down the road and walls knocked down by the storm surge. The combination of 50 knot winds and a big high tide caused havoc for the local residents.

The storm surge breached the seawall and chaos ensued!

Totally unaware of this I enjoyed a nicely powered 4.7 down the line session at Rhosniegr where the wind had now eased.

Reports from Kirby were that it had blown a perfect westerly during the un-sailable surge which lasted over 3 hrs, then swung NW before it was sailable again, just what we’d all feared.

Hopefully we’ll get a classic Kirby day next time.

Here are some photos of the havoc and aftermath of the storm taken by Michael George:

Pics of the carnage at Kirby courtesy of Michael George

Pics of the carnage at Kirby courtesy of Michael George

Pics of the carnage at Kirby courtesy of Michael George

Authors: Tom Hammerton