The wind drought continues...

No wind last weekend, no wind this weekend... Will this lift? Only during the week it seems. Went down to Lee-on-the-Solent today, but no action. Lovely day, though, great trip down.

Yet more of the ubiquitous beach huts... but they are so evocative. Maybe I should start a photo collection instead of this saddo web site, something with some art on it...

Just some people caught against the light, as it did that wondrous autumnal "turn everything into magic" thing.

Rigged the "new" Tush 4.0, but when I got it out of the sail bag it certainly wasn't new! No Tush goodie bag and instructions, alien sticker on sail, lots of mud and abrasions, no tie-up ribbon, and, final shame, no batten adjusting allen key. Called Bray - very apologetic, it was on the new sails rack (as I'd seen myself), ordering a new one for you now sir, any colour preference. Yes, Stealth please, but I don't really care if it's going to delay anything.

Thought I'd throw in some pictures of the revised van interior, just to make this more interesting. Passes the time, eh?

Here's the fat futon, with additional duvet - was going to stay over, but not enough people around and it is gonna be damned cold... hence duvet, but chickened out!

It looks much more untidy than it feels, because everything is actually very organised now. The big green bag is the new wetsuit, in an M&S suit bag to stop it getting nicks and cuts from being handled in the smoothskin suit hostile vanvironment.

Here you can see the nifty pine bench box, which is really handy for getting on the bed and stopping stuff from flying around the inside.

Detail of below bed area, with bike visible, and additional shelves and boxes. Cool.

Also stopped in at Andy Biggs in Gosport, which was interesting. Succumbed and bought a wallet (finally, been using a plastic bag up until now), a Yak helmet (locally made, fits well, will keep head really warm), and some Oakley trainers at a big reduction. Cool. Most interesting of all, met a guy called Neil who is going out to Maui shortly, and will be staying with some friends out there. Pumped him for info - he spent 6 months out there last year, and is going out for 6-8 weeks now. Recommends the summer (June-August) for blasting weather. Rented a studio apartment for his 6 month trip, reckons a month would cost about £2000, if you took your own boards. Break even point for board rental is two weeks, after that take your own. Suggest my JP 91l is the job, and I'd need at most the 5.5, 4.7 and 5, maybe not even the largest. That would be cool. So not too much baggage then. Excess baggage going is easy, but coming back they are of course familiar with all the tricks! He's going to email me some info - hope so, sounds exciting!

Which brings me to the reason for being here...

Let's Go Wavesailing!!

I love the smell of neoprene in the morning

Picked up the new wetsuit yesterday. Blimey. Very nice. Incredibly soft stretchy smoothskin neoprene, fits really well. The suit was only made last week and still smells very strongly of glue - the shop person had trouble breathing near a newly delivered box of suits in a closed room! The dry zip is a bit stiffer than a normal zip, but it seems like a good tradeoff.

The undersuit is cool too, and the two component idea leaves it all feeling less bulky somehow.

All I have to do now is try it out, but we're stuck with sod all wind here at the moment. So I've been compensating by going down the gym...

Where I met Steve last week and will be meeting him again today. Very cool guy. Told him what I wanted to do, and he's given me a bunch of free weight things to do. This is good, because I have some weights at home so I can always do them away from the gym if necessary. They include

• lunges to the front and side carrying weights, using 5kg at the moment
• "John Travolta" moves from side of opposite foot to up in the air, with weights
• What Steve calls "chopping" - pulling weights on string from down by foot across and up with both hands, rotating in followthrough like a golf swing
• Vertical rowing with a bar of weights, back slightly bent
• Dead lift from ground to hang weighs off arms

There's a bunch of stretches and the like as well. I can hardly remember it all!! But at least it addes a bit of focus to a session.

Oh yes, whilst at the windsurf shop bought some new boots, O'Neill with the split toe, seem very sensitive,

and couldn't resist that Tush 4.0 Storm I'd been looking at... Dammit, there must come a point when I can stop buying things, mustn't there?

And one more thing. Following a conversation over food one weekend, Bernie the club Chairdude has asked me to be the magazine editor, probably because I was the person sitting beside at the time. I've accepted but won't have much to do until January when the next one comes out. There's some technical stuff to sort out, the current publisher uses Quark, which Neil the present ed runs on a Mac laptop, but there's talk of a new publisher and Windows-based software. This could be useful 'cos I could put it on my laptop, handy for those long evenings working away from home. Which never seem to happen, because there's always so much to do!

With all this non-sailing activity, I'm concerned about losing focus. Must remember at all times, especially when struggling in the gym, there's only one reason for all this...

Waves waves waves!!!