11 cars, 2 trailers, 60 nuns and one hell of a big weekend at Aussie Kiss 2014!
On Friday, 60 Exeter Windriders made their way to Bude holiday resort, along with 500 other students from around the country for the start of the largest student windsurfing event in the UK.
The Friday night saw a lot of ‘team bonding’ all around; from the unbelievable moves being thrown down in the club to the copious cuddling taking place in the caravans (much of it out of necessity, with beds and sleeping bags going missing left, right and centre!)
The committee endeavored to make themselves as unpopular as possible on Saturday morning, with the unannounced and entirely unwelcome 07:45 wake up calls to all the Exeter caravans. Much needed bacon rolls and gallons of free Red Bull were gratefully received (as were the lovely Red Bull girls by Dan Lytton!) By 9:00 we were ready to head off; with the majority going to Roadford lake for the first day of Windsurfing.
All but one of our beginners managed to get out into the windy conditions for a fantastic lesson on the Lake. All but Ed Hume-Kendall that is, whose ‘quick nap in the car’ quickly became a 4-hour coma! Meanwhile, the intermediates got out free sailing on the club’s shiny new intermediate kit from Starboard and Tushingham and also benefitted from a series of intermediate clinics to improve various skills and techniques.
At the same time, another Exeter group had headed off to Saunton for a day of kite surfing on the beach and everybody did fantastically well. Learning to kite in crocodile infested waters clearly did wonders for Tash Parker, who was popping jumps off the waves. Everyone else was making great progress too… until Naomi managed to well and truly ‘Crumpton’ her lines and Joash finally became too cold, having spent all day kiting in his boxer shorts.
That evening, everyone met back up in the caravans after having cleared Morrisons out completely of oven pizzas on the way. Saturday was the notorious Aussie Kiss costume party and we were representing in force, with nearly 60 of us from Exeter fully kitted out as nuns. Anna James was the clear winner of the costume competition for her phenomenal (if slightly creepy) see-through tummy! We also continued the Exeter tradition of drinking from hollowed out fruit and veg, with some fantastic creativity here too: A close call, with a beautifully decorated pineapple from Tara Macey coming in 2nd, but Ollie Sherrat takes the overall veg prize for being possibly the first man ever to electrify a butternut squash with LED fairy lights! The night escalated quickly to a nail biting moment for George as his Land Rover’s roof rack groaned under the weight of 30 nuns dancing furiously on top of it, before forming an impressive conga line stretching from the caravan door, all the way into the club… The rest is probably best left untold!
Sunday morning was another exercise in Windriders .vs. Hangover with all the caravans needing a thorough muck out, various sleeping bags and pieces of clothing being matched up to their rightful owners and a site-wide manhunt to find Louisa! After everyone was eventually accounted for, we split up again for the day’s activities. The windsurfers headed back to the lake for some more free sailing in the morning followed by competitions in the afternoon: In the team racing, we had Adam Palmer, George Simmonds and Tom Blaszczyk and despite being on the smallest sail, they managed to smash their heat and make it into the finals! After that, George Simmonds and Jo Wright competed individually in the freestyle competition, which was awesome to watch!
The other group made their way to North Devon Wake Park for an afternoon of shredding on our fleet of sick new Jobe wake-boards. Our wake captain Geordie Baxter continued the weekend’s scantily clad trend by stomping a half cab roll in his boxer shorts, while Tash managed to nail down some 180’s off the kicker.
Finally, we all headed off to meet up back in Exeter, completely broken but having had an awesome time at the club’s biggest event of the year so far! Massive thanks go out to the whole Student Windsurfing Association for organising the weekend, to Red Bull for bringing the party and resurrecting us in the mornings and of course to all of you that came and made it such a success. Only a few days to recover now, before we head off to Wales to do it all over again at the SKA beginners’ weekend.
