2015 01 11 - Epic downwinder - Werribee to Altona

January 13, 2015

With a good south easterly forecast for the east side of the bay, Pete and I travelled down to Werribee south to check out a new location. We'd provisionally planned to do a downwinder from Werribee to Altona and, on arrival, conditions were perfect. Werribee south is a strange little place, a silty river enters into the sea, a lot of houses with fantastic views of the bay, but all a little decrepit and old. Eric had signed up to the downwinder, so we set off to the south to kill some time whilst he was setting up. Fantastic flat water allowed us to get a long way south and quite a bit upwind.

We had quite a tack to get past a breakwater, by which time Eric had miraculously got a lot of upwind - a larger kite makes a good deal of difference. Eric let us know that Stu was thinking about joining us - we waited around for a while but after no sign of him, and knowing how much upwind was required, we headed off.

Plain sailing with a lot of wind - we were able to motor down past new housing developments with big marinas, ramshackle huts built right on the beach, an army base and eventually reached point cook. After point cook it was all downwind action, great chance to churn out some downwind turns and jumps. It was about this time I started to realise how much the bindings sucked - they were starting to cut into my feet really badly.

Beautiful views across to Melbourne - it looked like we could have made a straight line to Port Melbourne from there. A big group of black swans filled the skyline as we made the turn - quite the welcoming committee.

Straight forward trip to the beach at Altona - we were all really pleased to see Mike and have made it so easily. I didn't even feel fatigued...which as I was about to learn, would be my undoing.