The next three days were perfect seven meter with sideshore wind. The waves were smaller but still very nice. It was easy to park the kite and surf down the line. Mike McCarthy was there and he intoduced me to his friend Kevin. Mike and I both rented Cabrinha surf boards from Neil Pryde for the time we were there. On my last day I tacked up to Uppers. It was me and a bunch of windsurfers. They were messing with me. They would go by me in a kind of aggro way. On the way out they would try to turn it into a race. One guy got about 15 feet downwind of me and stayed there so I couldn't sign my kite. Uppers is a bunch of peaks instead of a long wave like Lowers. Sometimes I linked up the peaks, others the wave ended quickly. It was nice to be able to go out the right side and ride back out on flat water though. On my last ride I decided that I was going to go downwind back to lowers. When I turned to go out there was a wave out of nowhere that I couldn't avoid. I jumped as best I could but the wave was nine feet and I jumped eight. The wave pitched hard and slammed my board and suddenly I was in alot of pain. My toes were screaming but it wasn't until I got going again that I realized I hurt my ankle. I limped my way back to the launch and that was it for kiting.
I can't complain though, five days in a row of kiting in the winter is alot. With the conditions the way they were I was at or beyond my limits alot of the time so to get out with a sprained ankle isn't too bad. I surfed almost every day on the south shore and even tried stand up for the first time. I'll be practicing jumping as high as I can with my surfboard at Deer Creek this summer.
