Kanaha again

The plan today is to have a barbecue, so A couple of us grab the impressively wedgey kitty (in the ziplock bag provided by yours truly - adopting my mother's habit of saving plastic bags pays off...), and stock up at the Mana Foods supermarket. This is the most random store I've ever been in - like much of its produce, it's probably grown organically! The organiser was and still is probably stoned. Anyway, we get lots of stuff. And another 18 jugs of water, for a total of $251.03. It takes a lot to run 15 people, especially windsurfers!

Since we all know where Kanaha is now, we get to make our own way there for 12, so Jurgen and I put some gas in the van, which we're getting to keep for the trip. We've managed to switch from the original minivan rental. Anyway, a guy hitches a ride with us at the gas station, seems nice enough, but talks too much. I don't really need repaying with stories about his father's 10 miles a day for 50 years fitness habit, and like many people here, he has a slightly edgy strangeness about the eyes... apparently he's lived on various Hawaii islands and done lots of stuff, but it's not clear where he lives now. There appear to be many friends and so on everywhere. He gets out at the lights on Airport road, heading for Costco, having failed to persuade Jurgen, a focussed young man who thinks he knows what he wants, that we should take the "short cut" around the airport and get into Kanaha by a sideroad.

We're all playing for the evening session today, and it looks quite windy and with some small swell, like yesterday. So things get off to a slow start, especially as Cribby buggers off to get a coffee and ends up being gone ages, not arriving back until 1.30 or later. This time we're going to do exercises in the lagoon, going up- and down-wind practising stalling in the straps and accelerating away on gusts. It's hard work! There's also the "ooh, ahh, Cantona!" mnemonic for recalling the bottom turn, cutback and kick rhythm, which has us doing "Cribby Tai Chi" on the beach. Fortunately, Norwegian Alex's lady Cecilia is there to take pictures of the motley crue dancing around on one leg...

And so, to the waves!! My eye is getting better, and I actually end up on a wave, or almost, but it peters out, leaving me to fall in under the next one. The only problem with wavesailing is the incredible skill and effort it takes to get out to the damn things and put yourself in front of one, and then the dogged breathsucking, panicky reefkicking struggle to right the gear without getting it munched and waterstart out of the inevitable crash in the impact zone. Iron in the Soul?? Maybe Jean-Paul Sartre should have windsurfed, got a life and then he'd have been less of an arrogant twat... I do get one excellent wave, but look around, and someone is on it ahead of me upwind, so I have to let him go by, and fall off as a result. Bugger.

But then it all comes together the once, and I remember 50% of the stuff, and try it all out - yay!! Excellent. The reward of a windless waterstart from the impact zone is shared with Jorgen from Sweden, and I get away before him, getting a good speed up through the incoming waves. This tempts me into a jump, which goes ok, but I fall off after, and spend more weeks in the timewarp of swim-flip-push-swim-glurble-waterstart. Bugger. It's good fun on reflection, but I'm absolutely knackered at the end of it. Might have bust a toe - it's bruising up good, and narrowly escaped sticking a fin thru my knee, only bruising. Phew.

The barbecue goes well, apple, tomato and onion salad is pretty tasty, and the "lost water" method of rice cooking works well to sort rice for 15. I over-estimated, always the best policy with large groups! The antipodeans, Max and Lorne, have done a good job on the chicken, pork and burgers, completing just as the gas runs out. We sit around and talk bollocks until late, like maybe 10 o'clock, before I sag off to bed...