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Tuapiro point. Katikati, Bay Of Plenty, NZ.

Easterly low tide works really well here! Must have been blowing about 30 knots plus at times.. The Sandbar is almost moon shaped and so you can sail it in so many spots. Just startd to get to grips and did a manic run back towards launch spot. The wind was strong, and picked up some good initial speeds on my Isonic 97l with 36cm fin and the new 7.0 Severne Overdrive R8 I had not used yet until now. Sped along the bank about 20m from the shore just testing the waters so to speak.. Then BAM!! I cartwheeled kinda, took a maassive fall to windward. No idea what happened but ended up in the water really fast. I stod up and felt the pain of the impact to something with my face.. looked at my gear and wondered where the board had gone. Then saw that floating downwind away from me fast! I was already in thigh deep water and wasn't sure how deep it got how quickly and the board was moving faster than I could swim.. So I took my rig and waved Curtis down. Well. He came along and we discussed options to get my board back to me, my rig to the lee shore (luckly the side we launched from) or me to sail his bak etc. We ended up choosing to just copy the board, and drifted downwind to the leeshore. Thankful of the winter wetsuit! Sails interlocked so we got that back as well. Oh, it also suffered with a hole, but no idea how that happened either. Mid height well away from everything.. maybe my helmet? SO after a drift swim type session, we ended up 50m from the board and I sailed it back along the shore to the launch spot. Literally just up from where we had similar time the day previous with Curtis breaking his boom and then tearing his sail. Ah. Good times. Tuaprio. WE WILL BE BACK! haha.