Light winds and cold temperatures plagued the Easter weekends proceedings. As many made the journey to the first event on the BSA Tour this year they were met with a gentle breeze that stayed for the entire weekend, only picking up in typical fashion when the final call had been made to abandon any attempt at official races. In the end a few ‘fun races’ were held for those brave enough to hit the water, check out our gallery below. The Tushingham demo crew quoted that it was: “FFFFFFFFFreezing… with not enough wind for official racing but at least enough breeze for a few fun races. A good opportunity for competitors to catch up with old friends and share stories of warmer times!”

We caught up with Chris Guest who was on site and gave us a small report about the event, over to Chris:

“Ask anyone who’s been doing the slalom circuit for a few years – Hayling Island refuses to produce any wind on Easter weekend, and this year was no different. It did however differ to previous years, in that it was about 20C colder..

Anyway now for the events: Friday 7am – quick pre-event gym session. 8am load up the van, 8.30am – can’t start the van because of the cold and flatten my battery in the process. About an hour and half later, after arguing with Green Flag that I had paid and that my cover had not expired – the van was good to go again. 2h30 drive down to Hayling island where Chris Body and his family were waiting. Chris was ready to go so I rigged up quickly rigged up my biggest kit. The wind was super light near the beach so I thought I would try out my new 55cm Type-R fin. I got planning super early but the upwind railing was very uncomfortable as the wind picked up. Quick change back to the 45cm and I was tuning with Chris (and Jack Trollope who had arrived in the meantime) – each of us taking it in turn to try changing something on our kit – judging what made a difference by our relative speed. After a few hours the temperature dropped so we headed to the pub. Saturday was pretty uneventful – it gave me chance to catch up with everyone from the circuit and generally walk around in my onesie getting laughed at. It was too cold and there was no wind – racing was called off at 2.15pm. The evening was spent in the warm pub again, entertainment provided by Dave White and his stories.

Sunday was windier (and colder) but too patchy in the morning for racing, so I went out to play on the waves that the sandbar was kicking up and really enjoyed myself, even on slalom kit. Eventually came back in when the wind filled in, hoping for some races. According to the race crew it was still too patchy so we did some fun races out to a buoy and back. I did a couple of these and then headed in, conscious of the fact I was getting cold when we could potentially be racing later. As lunch went by, the wind really picked up and I got ready to race – only to be disappointed when they called the racing off early again, at 2.30pm. I still went out, partly to prove a point, and ended up having a good training session – practising gybing on big kit in swell and general speed in choppier conditions.

Overall a good weekend for light wind training and tuning, and a 7th place to put towards the year ranking…”