Storm's a brewin'...

Last weekend saw the Canaries on 'orange alert' for an approaching Atlantic storm and it hit us, in a disappointingly mellow fashion, on Saturday. I say mellow but it rained really heavily for a couple of days and the wind did actually get up to a very strong 60 mph just after I finished sailing at el Hierro. In fact, it picked up to that while I was derigging and I've still got some of the Saharan dirt in my ears. Probably. Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, we rocked up to the northshore on the morning of the predicted storm and  had a quick look at La Caleta, which was small and a tad too offshore then had a spy at el Hierro, a renowned surf break which can occasionally produce the goods in a WSW or ENE and were fairly inspired by the conditions there. Last time I sailed there it was massive and I was overpowered on 4.0, but this time was nice little head-high sets and wind for 5.0 (in the beginning at least). Great, fun session with the wind and waves building all the time until, like I said, it fully kicked in while I was derigging to the point where I could only see about 2 metres on the track on the drive home. Wish I'd taken a photo actually. Luckily for me, however, a friend of mine Gwenael Marche was on hand to get some nice pics of the sailing before all meteorological hell broke loose and we retreated to the shelter of our little house to hide from the fury of the ensuing storm...