I had the chance to sail at Whitstable yesterday. There was plenty of wind, about 18 to 24 knots. The only thing was that it was bang onshore and high tide. This makes it rather hard to get out as the groynes are only about 20 yards apart which means you have to swim out against wind and, in this case, tide so that you can edge past the groynes and get some speed up very quickly to head up wind. However, there is not much space and twice I managed to almost smash into submerged groynes. In fact, I did graze them slightly and picked up some minor dings to the board, but nothing serious.
I had rigged up the 8.0 Hot Sails Maui GPS and slotted that into the 110 (66cm) Mistral Slalom RD. I thought that this would be a bit too bit for the conditions (even though someone on the beach told me that it was dropping), but I wanted to find out when that combination would be too much. I think that for comfortable sailing I was right in that it was a little on the large size, not that the sail became unstable; but more that there was more power than I could comfortably control, especially when trying to gybe and tack. The board was surprisingly controllable given the condition of the chop, which was a intense form of Thames Estuary corrugated chop - short, sharp, steep and brown. I would have loved to try it with a 7.3 but I do not have a mast for that at the moment. I would also have liked to try the 95L Mistral Slalom and a 6.6 GPS but I did not have the combination with me.
All in all it was a good session to show that the conditions required a smaller set up (and perhaps some more sailor skill....). I found I could really only get comfortable going upwind, downwind I was completely out of shape and I think that showed in the very low GPS speed of just over 23knots showing on the GT-31.
Whitstable is a very pleasant place to sail from (if you can get parked) and the Whitstable Oyster Company - the building on the far left above (http://www.oysterfishery.co.uk/) is good for food and coffee.
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