Just saw on local news, there was a search today for a missing 61 year old windsurfer at Burrum Heads. Reported to have been found safe.
Anyone know details?
Geoff, Ray? Are you guys ok?
From GPS team challenge:
Geoff Ringe (1265km):
6 hours ago
falcon 104, ram 8.0 select sl7, I will let ray tell the rest of the story
Hooray (2214km):
4 hours ago
Exo76, 8mF10ram, 43sl7.Enjoyable sail with Geoff on the western side of the sandbar. Steady 15kts so we were going to log up some kms as the conditions were near perfect. Just completed my gybe, then splash! My board went one way and my sail the other. My mast base bolt broke away from universal joint. Saw Geoff sailing about 200m behind me then another splash! At the time I did not know he had broken his boom near the clamp. I was waiting for him to come over to see what was my problem but he sailed back to shore. Lucky he could not hear what I was calling him or he may not have done anything to help me.
I retrived my sail and removed the broken mast base from the extension, pulled out excess downhaul line and tied it to broken mast base in the track. I hooked the uphaul line into my seat harness and was able to hold the mast just out of the water which enabled me to sail at 2kts back to shore. After about 1.5hrs I stepped off the board. Took my gear up the beach and packed it up before making my way to a house to call the wife to come and pick me up. She was out to lunch, so rang a friend to let him know I was ok..
As the kind lady was giving me a glass of water we heard a chopper fly over the water. "Oh do you think they are looking for you?",said the lady. Maybe.5 mins later the chopper had landed near me followed by police car, police rubber duck,and as I was getting a ride in back of police car we passed TV station cars.
A BIG THANK YOU TO GEOFF for his concern and it is good to know that the chopper was there in 12mins from phone call.
The moral to this story is you should purchase a new mast base each season, mine was 14months old.
Good winds forecast for tomorrow so will be out if the back allows
Thankfully all OK, Ray can tell the story!
gpsteamchallenge.com.au/sailor_session/show?date=2009-11-04&team=8
Good on ya Ray. You're lucky you didn't lose your board or you would have needed that chopper.
Was it a boge universal that broke? (mental note to self to buy a new one)
