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Tabou Manta 71, NP RSR Evo XV 7.4m, Elmo SS 42cm Green.

Morning session @ Novara with a f'ken cold sub 20ºC SE breeze (free shot for the Tasi and Vic crew to coment about soft c0cks). Shame about my mate visiting but what can you do when the breeze is blowing, you can be in pain on the water doing what you like or feeling miserable at home (my beloved's words as she is far far wiser than I can ever be)

Got down there after 8am to find whitecaps everywhere, texted around giving people the heads up, but most were still in the fart sack or wishing they still were.

There was enough wind to go the 6.5m and smaller board but not trusting easterlies based on past experience went with the bigger kit.

Got it all rigged up and it was still blowing, thankfully Snides turned up and wanted a chat which I was happy to oblige, a it was cold and my testicular fortitude was rather lacking.

After a bit of procrastination (yabbering) Snides left and I had to remember how to get into a wetsuit, which is a bit of a circus as the only way I can get the zip done up without it zipping a couple of inches of back hair and skin it the use the pateneted "Elmo" zipping method of string the zip pull through one of the trailer side door locks and then lower myself down, it truely must be very suss looking. 

Any hoos after much fluffing around I hit the water, walked out the 250m and take off, I'm not overpowered, nice, the new fin with a different layup is awesome. Nice squirt across the bay.

Nice return run, and another squirt going out, it's nice out there rather than the usual junk there lines of waves up to knee high, but they're lines and you can just rock over the faces of the steep ones, I get to my gybe spot and look down (cause I'm a gumby) and spot the mast base isn't where it should be (cause I'm a gumby) so splatt the gybe adjust the base and tighten it properly.

Oooo thats a bit better on the return leg, the next run my mates making my vission go a bit squiffy, which I figure is not a bad thing as if I can't see any shoe soles out there I can't hit them.

Spot the Paul and Annie mobile hiding on the unpowered ramp, went did another run and came back in to have a chat.

Don't know what the issue was but for some reason they didn't to go out, bit hard to figure it out as they were using their teeth to convey this message in morse code, eventually they left to go and google what the hell these "wetsuit" thingies were. 

So I went out again walked another 250m out and gave it another 10km, by that time i'd racked up 20km and my mate wasn't making things anymore pleasant, so decided I'd had a lot of fun.

So I lugged my kit up to the pathway in preperation to derig, when who should turn up and park right were I was going to bring my car to? Hardcore Hardie, now you got to understand that Hardcore HATES the cold, anything below 25 degrees and he whines like a plane full of poms back to England after a failed test series.

However, there is one thing Hardcore hates more than the cold.

So he was umming and ahhing so I said "if you go out I'll head back out" so it was the cold or go home and carry on w**king and it's not tthe pepper and rapid hand movents word I'm talking about here.

So after much shinanigans trying to inflate his wingydingythingy, we hit the water and I have another 250m traipse out, (starting to feel these at this stage).

Hardcore is having fun and I'm also enjoying myself banging out another 10km until the wind started to fade and from there I decided that was good enough for today.

Lot of fun, super happy with the new fin as it worked a treat.

The interesting stuff didn't end there as after shopping on way home I dropped in down at Dawesville to check out the trend setters who were just hitting the water (the sun had just come out).

FirieBob took of and looked as cruisy as can be.

Stroppo walked out, hoisted  himself up onto his board, just as he gave his wing a pump there was an explosion in the water behind him (1-2m) with a fin making a quick u-turn spraying up water about a foot in the air as it realised the true magnitude of what it was trying to sneak up on, not advisable as Stropp just loves some flake with his chips.

What a day. though I could've done without the 1.5km of walking in and out