My arrival timing was fairly reasonable as several windsurfers had put their kit together and were due to join the single person already on the water. It was time for me to put my kit together — put the Lensmaster gimbal head on the Gitzo tripod with the Novoflex levelling head. This was going to be a test of a new set of wave washers in place of the spring washer in the gimbal head that Robert Hardy had kindly supplied just that morning. Recently I had been doing my own experimenting to improve the overall smoothness of what is already a good (British made) gimbal head, and had been in contact with Robert who was its designer; hence why he sent me his latest take on how to effect an improvement. Although only marginal , any slight advance is always welcome and so it proved.
The shooting on the lake this time would be watching the various sailors go through various manoeuvres to improve their skills and do my best to capture the sequences and apparently due to the wind direction the conditions would not favour jumps, so such dramatics were not likely fare. Seemingly though jumping would not be easy, it was not going to stop some of them taking a chance, as I spotted a couple through my lens, and one with my eyes!
Not being a windsurfer myself, it is not easy to read the conditions and sense when a sailor is about to make their move so to capture jumps at all gives me a lot of satisfaction and to do so when it less likely than ever is a delight. I am afraid that there are a lot of images to wade through as they are as much as anything a record the windsurfers themselves can study to seek to hone their skills, and some sequences may well span more than the same page.
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