WestOzWind

This tale is based back in the 80's when boards under 13ft long were unthinkable craziness and an extremely muscular physique was required just to lift your board off the ground.

It was a typical summers day when your hero, Sir Stiltskin (he wasn't grumpy in those days) and his good mate (who for the sake of artistic license we will call the BLACK knight (or in case I get confused and lose my train of thought, Dave)) arrived at the hallowed jousting field of Shoalwater bay.

The wind was wafting a leisurely 8 knots (or thereabouts) from the east and, as was our want, we decided to float out onto the emerald green water and stuff around doing some in front of the sail and railriding freestyle tricks (remember this was in the days of triangular sails and massively long boards, not todays twisty spinning ankle snapping freestyle), while waiting for the seabreeze to kick in.

Anyway, as usually happens, we ended up at opposite ends of the "run" rushing towards each other and playing an unannounced game of chicken (which is why I started this stupid metaphor of jousting).

This was fun and as you would expect we started getting closer and closer to each other before one would chicken out and bear away.

As you can imagine, the final run ended when neither of us gave way and we managed to slam together at a relatively brisk pace, both diving into the water at the last possible moment.
Not a problem I thought, my Windrush Clubman could have withstood a Sherman tank rolling over it.

And so it did, but The Black Knights steed did not fare so well, or more correctly his jousting stick (mast) bore the brunt of all damage and crushed and bent beyond further use.

Thus a great days fun and sailing was finished and the Black Knight and his buxom wench trudged off home, after said wench had berated us both for being idiots and costing her a fortune.

aahhh the fun of light wind days, big boards and careless fun....alak the realisation that you couldn't afford replacement parts and had to save for weeks to get new stuff.