I headed for the lake at Brogborough in the hope that the wind and a few signs of sun might attract a few windsurfers onto the water. Upon arrival it was very far from crowded; compared to a good day of wind and sun on a Friday, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say the car park was deserted. But undeterred I headed for the clubhouse. Inside there was the sound of animated conversation, but no one in the main entrance area, so I headed for that corner from which the sounds of voices came – the reason for the gathering in that smaller room was soon very evident as in the corner was a roaring stove and the gathering there were enjoying its warmth and chatting animatedly.
I joined them there for a short while before venturing out to my car and began assembling my camera and tripod as there was one sailor on the lake and talk inside of others due out soon. Since originally it had been my intention of trying out my newly acquired Benbo tripod, one of whose unique features being the ability for its legs to be immersed in water safely, before I set up my more conventional tripod, I pulled this from my car and brought it in to show off its equally unusual ability of being locked into any position by the application of a single lever. I pointed out its corollary, that undoing the selfsame lock could equally, result in a total collapse with everything flopping to the ground, so one’s camera kit was somewhat compromised if care was not taken!
On this occasion I was unable to use it in anger as the means of camera attachment is solely by a 1/4in Whitworth, not the heavier professional standard 3/8th in Whitworth and all my various heads were of this larger size, and the small conversion adaptors failed to lock correctly due to their depth. This is a great shame and had been assured of these adaptors being usable, which I found not to be the case, regrettably at a cost, in using one to check it out, the overtightening had resulted in it becoming jammed and in attempting to use a screwdriver to extract it, it simply sheared! So for the present much as I wish to use that tripod, I can see myself having to either persuade the manufacturers to provide a means of using the larger standard screw thread, or returning it, which would be a shame.
Soon I had the camera mounted on my Gitzo with the gimbal head and the Sigma 150-600mm down on the jetty, so I was clear of any intervening bushes and moderately low. By now there were three windsurfers on the lake and not long after, Sam was taking to the water with a different hydrofoil board than I had seen him on before, so I was about to see how the pairing performed in the somewhat gusty wind that prevailed. It was not long before he was up and clear of the surface, though not always parallel to the water, and there were geese on the lake close to shore who had probably been enjoying the lack of human activity over the last few weeks; the sight of Sam riding high spooked them and they lacked Air Traffic Control for they headed directly across his bows, missing collision by a couple of wing-feather width! Something to which, I was not only a witness, but was fortunate enough to even capture!
By way of confirmation that the geese were not aware of windsurfing activity on this lake they were spooked a little later for a second time and also a cormorant took off from the lake and headed elsewhere, which probably the local fish community were more than happy to watch, as these birds very often maim the fish they seek without successfully catching them to devour, much to the annoyance of any anglers.
Unusually, on this occasion, there are many near duplicate images, but the numbers I had edited neatly filled the gallery pages, so I saved much time by not culling as many as I would normally for the sake of speed in getting them up onto the blog.
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