Its been a great week here in Cape Town leading up to Christmas, loads of wind and waves and sunshine!! We’ve had some great jumping days at Big Bay and Sunset, my backies are starting to get a lot more consistent and i’m managing get higher as well. The riding has been ok not amazing but the usual Cape Town 1 hit wonder style!

This year i have brought out two up and coming guys so that they can train and get ready for the 2012 assault on the world freestyle tour and the Uk wave tour. Youp Schmit is the future star of the JP/Neil Pryde freestyle team. Already claiming the under 18 world champion title. Cape Town a great pace for him to train as the conditions are lot more hardcore than in his homespot of Bonaire. The wind is a lot stronger which gives him the chance to get used to his small sails ready for the Canaries events and having the waves right on the doorstep means he can train some jumping as well. He has been sailing pretty sick with all the new usual moves including some big Kabikuchis!

Alesky or Lecky Gayda is the 2011 UK Amateur wave champion and is fully ripping this year. He is always super keen to get out on the water and always the first out and last in no matter how big or small it is. He has been fully charging the big ones down and smacking some big lips! Unfortunately for him the other day he got smacked back by a big lip resulting in a nice gash above his eye! Like me last year he is on the pushloop mission! He’s getting closer and had some good crashes! His riding is improving a lot and backies are getting more consistent.

Living with the boys is quite funny but also quite hard work sometimes! Having one that wants to wavesail all the time and one that wants to freestyle all time usually results in one unhappy teenager! But it means that we get a lot of sessions in which is a good thing and any teenage unhappiness is very short lived. The language barrier also causes much amusement! Both speak english fine but Lecky’s strong essex accent and Youp’s Carribean/Bonairean style accent means that understanding what eachother says is pretty much impossible and i end up having to translate everything! My cooking skills are getting pretty good though as the boys don’t cook anything apart from eggs!!

Christmas over here is really different from at home. Its really hard to get into the Christmas spirit as the wind usually takes priority of any plans made. Not that i’m complaining though as it means getting out on the water! We had a more fun than expected session at Sunset with some nice stunt ramps for jumping. Followed on later by an awesome braai (bbq) and fun games with Little Joe and Karen, Bish and Charlotte, Greg and Sandy and the two Robs, Saint and Partridge. We did secret santa as well and people went all out on the presents!! See pic below with me using mine!

Well thats it for Christmas over here, forecast is looking awesome for next week so stay tuned some video action. Gonna head in to Cape Town now for a mooch around the waterfront and hopefully catch either the new Sherlock Holmes movie or Mission impossible!

Cheers and Merry Christmas to all!!

Check out the Tiree Wave Classic video which was shown on Sky sports!!

Strange weather the last few days here in Cape Town, rain and wind from the wrong way North Westerly, which is starboard tack going out for those of you that haven’t been here before rather than the usual South Easterly which is port tack out. We had some fun freestyle sessions on the lake which was good as it gave me a chance to get used to sailing on my Neilpryde Firefly 4.9. Its so nice to use a sail that feels smaller and lighter then it actually is. A decent sized swell came through which gave us some nice waves yesterday right in front of our apartment and in front of the shipwreck too. Some good sized sets coming through, Lecky managed to find a mast high monster – good lad! Below are a few pics from the session. Cheers to Debby for taking them.

So after a bit of a slow start its all kicked off out here!! The last 2 days we have spent over 5 hours on the water each day! Surfed quite a bit too! The swell has been up with some coming in at close to mast high yesterday. Full respect to young Lecky for getting out there before anyone else and charging down some big ones! Some good jumping at Big Bay and Sunset today. Also managed to squeeze in a freestyle session at the lake as well. So nice to be on the new Neil Pryde Firefly and JP Freestyle with some solid wind. Below are a few screen grabs from a couple of clips from the freestyle session.

Looks like we have a bit of a break in the wind and swell which is good as my body could do with a break! Will try and get some wave action on film next time.

Cheers!

So i made it to Cape Town all good!! Flew with Virgin again and as always they are so good with kit! Brought 3 board bags full and paid 32 quid! Nice!! I have brought out young Lecky (Alesky Gayda) the 2011 Uk Amateur Champ for some training!  The new pad is pretty pimp, right on the beach front and as you can see in the Flickr slideshow above the view is pretty sick!

Been a pretty quiet 1st few days which has been good to get all the boring (but important) stuff out the way like getting sim cards, buying beer, getting food, buying beer, sorting out internet, buying beer, putting all the straps on the boards and err buying more beer! Went for a surf this morning down at Karmas but there was a bit too much wind from the SW so it was a bit messy.  So we headed in at big bay for some close outs! Was pretty fun and nice to get out on the water!

Forecast is looking pretty epic from Thursday with a good sized swell coming and some wind!! Will update with pics and vids as much a possible on my flickr page but for now i can hear Doodles calling…

Cheers!!

So after the epic session at camber on saturday myself and Rent boy Ric Cleworth headed up to Whitstable for some freestyle.  Unfortunately we missed low tide though and so it wasn’t quite as flat as we want but it was windy so all good!  Josh from Blacklab wanted to get some filming done but unfortunately once the tide was fully high it was pretty much unsailable!  Here are some screen shots from some of the clips courtesy of Josh at Blacklab.

Had an awesome session down at Camber Sands on Saturday. I was on my Neil Pryde 4.7 Combat and it was full power windy with awesome stunt ramps! I stayed on my JP Twinzer Quad 82 which was perfect in lulls, it has to be the most early planing wave board ever! It was a bit big in the gusts though!! Really need to work on my starboard tack jumping! The wind swung more side shore later on which gave some great frontside riding. Camber is a great place for wave sailing, it seems to be the most sideshore of anywhere else i’ve sailed in the south east. It works in any tide with a bit of a walk at low tide though and up over the dune! Nice bunch of local sailors as well! Parking is a slight issue at the dune if its a busy day, which if its windy it will be! If there is no room to park outside the main gates then just go 50m up the road and park in the lay by.

The shot below is from a super windy day at Camber taken by JC when Brawzinio and Skyeboy were out sailing.

Pic by JC

So we made it Bonaire after a pretty easy journey really! KLM’s baggage policy is ok as long as you make sure one of your bags is no longer than 200cm and no heavier than 23kg because then it is considered as a normal piece of luggage. So clothes in hand luggage and then 1 quiver bag with 3 sails, 2 booms, 3 extensions, 6 new K4 fins and then a double board bag with 1 board, 3 masts, 1 boom, harness and flip flops and you’re done! £170 so not great but could have been worse!

Managed to somehow get upgraded to Economy comfort on the online check in too so happy days! We had to be quite quick going through Amsterdam which was hard with our heavy hand luggage but luckily we found these mini trolleys which made life a lot easier! We also stumbled across Paul Zeper from Holland in the airport too!

Big thanks to Caesar Finnies for giving us a ride at 4 in the morning to Jibe City where we are staying. No wind so far on this first day but it gave us the opportunity to go to the shop and grab the essentials, pasta, bolognaise ingredients, beer, lots of eggs, beer, corn flakes and err more beer! The weather is pretty hardcore as far as heat goes, no wind and super humid, luckily we have aircon in the room so all good! Paul took us on a tour around the island in a clapped out old car, it has a piece of string attached to the accelerator so you can accelerate by pulling it! Pretty comedy! We saw loads of flamingos and lizzards and fish and all sorts really! Loads of crystal clear water too!

Ok i’ve gone on a bit too long now so i’ll leave it there! Hopefully wind coming in the next few days, the forecast looks really good! Stay tuned for more updates! Loads of pics below and above in the slideshow.

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When i was out in South Africa this winter the boys in the house had some K4 Quad Fins and they had been raving about them! I thought well i need all the help i can get! I was having problems with loosing grip at the top of the wave on my stock fins that came with the board. The boys were hogging the bigger sizes so i was left to try out the small set 13′s at the back and 8′s on the front. I actually had more grip then before!! I was amazed! I could push as hard a i could and still not loose grip but then when i did loose it a couple times the fins almost sprig back and bring the board underneath you again. The main thing for me was i had more confidence and control on the wave which is when my wave sailing started to improve. I thought “i have to have these!” But they were more of a set for the boys to test, so i stole them!! The way i saw it i wouldn’t have the confidence to compete in the waves with the top boys without them! As it stands i came 3rd in Wales and 3rd in Ireland in my first full year competing on the wave tour and i was using the K4 fins!

I then got in contact with Steve about possibly making a freestyle fin. It was new territory for both of us as we didn’t know how the material would work for freestyle. The great thing with Steve is that he actually listens to everything you say! So we came up with a couple of shapes and Steve moulded them up super quick! It was also the windiest week in the UK so far so perfect for testing the shapes! I tested them in my new secret freestyle spot at Rye Watersports (not so secret anymore!) so i got the chance to test them in all sorts of chop and flat water. The first thing i noticed was that i couldn’t feel any difference between the plastic ones and the G10 ones! Which meant we had a great opportunity to change and play around with the shape to get the ultimate freestyle fin. The other main things to consider are the weight and the cost which are both a lot less than normal G10 fins! I took the prototypes straight to the UKWA Freestyle event in Minis bay and won the event using them. I have that much confidence them. We are now just tweaking the shapes and design a little and i am taking the fins on to the World Tour for the whole year and really looking forward to getting on the new ones!

My results in the UK Waves and Freestyle so far this year have been directly attributed to K4 fins and i’m feeling super stoked to be a part of the team. A brand made by windsurfers for windsurfers who listen and innovative and are just hell keen on getting out on the water and going sailing pushing the limits of themselves and their equipment to the max!

First all massive apologies for not doing more updates. I have been travelling and competing loads! The plan was to get it all done in Ireland but the internet is pretty much non existent and because i was technically in Europe i couldn’t use my Iphone to upload anything either!

So after a shocker from Austria we finally made it back to the UK after a 25 hour journey – nice one Max for driving! A quick stop in at Simsy’s house for lunch and to swap freestyle kit for wave kit and we were off again! Everyone was totally broken from all the travel. Especially Max who was driving! But there was some comedy stops along the way with various tomfoolery being played on each others vans and some comedy purchases being made in the dodgy Austrian super markets! Also need to mention a massive thank you to to Da Mike, Valle and the guys from the Royal Captains bar for looking after us all week and supplying us with mucho booze!

There are more pictures from the event in the flickr slideshow at the top of the page. Other pics courtesy of JC/PWA

Ok so the next stop was Rhosneiger in North Wales for the BWA Wave event 1 hosted by Funsport. After a winter of training in Cape Town i really wanted to try and push hard into the UK wave scene. The first couple of days there was now ind but some nice waves for a bit of Supping and surfing! Tried some tow in surfing but failed miserably and nearly tore my hands off as we had no handle on the tow rope!

On Sunday we managed to get enough wind and waves to get the comp started. I was on my 4.9 FireFly and JP Wave Single Thruster 83. Which turned out to be an awesome combo again in the less than ideal conditions. I was having some good heats nailing some good pushies and a few backies (not many though!). With my waveriding i was trying to pick out the bigger waves and was really concentrating on getting as vertical as possible in the turns.

Luckily Phil Horrocks and Ben Profitt were in the other side of the draw which left them battling it out for a place in the final. I had a close heat with James Cox but just managed to sneak through into the final against Phil. I sailed a decent heat but to beat Phil at his local spot is going to be difficult! So after the single elimination i was in 2nd place! Phil 1st and Ben 3rd. The wind sort of stayed so Duncan the head judge was quick to get athe double elimination going. I wouldn’t have minded if we had finished there though haha!!

Adam Lewis came flying through the double taking down everybody with sick backies and fast powerful waveriding. He was stopped (luckily for me!) by Ben who was super determined to get back into the final. The wind was fully dying at this point which made it difficult to find ramps to jump off and get powerful turns. I lost by 0.5 to Ben! Gutted!! He then went on to challenge Phil for 1st place. He beat him the first time with some nice wave rides and a backside 360 but then in the 2nd final Phil took it leaving him in 1st overall for the event. Ben in 2nd and me in 3rd!!

All shots courtesy of www.globalshots.co.uk

So another turn around of vans and kit as Max was heading to Vass so me and Bryan jumped into Sam Neals van for the trip across to Ireland. After the super late finish at Rhossie it meant that we had to get the 2am ferry from Holyhead!! Sounds bad but actually worked out pretty good as it meant that we arrived in Dublin at 6.30am so it meant the drive to Castlegregory was during the daylight hours.

When we arrived into Castlegregory the wind was up and the competition got underway with the Amateurs, Masters and Ladies fleets. I have to say the standard in the Amateur fleet is very impressive! I saw some great riding from Welsh local boy Lewis Marrony and also the new up and coming youth Alesky Gayda threw a massive backie wich most pros would be proud of! Also good to see the mighty Dave White competing in the Masters!

Competition for the Pro’s got underway the next day with some cross on port tack sailing at the dumps! Wind was light and gusty but still managed to bust a decent pushie in my heat against Bryan. Later on the conditions changed and we moved beaches to Gowlane. The waves were tiny and the wind was light cross off. I lost in a tie breaker decision to local boy Rob Jones who put in some greta riding skills. This left me in equal 5th place with 4 others which basically means if i loose my 1st heat in the double i would have been 9th! Ouch! I did not want that to happen!!

The double got underway the next day again at Gowlane. Bit windier and waves were a bit bigger. I had a massive battle on my hands and managed to come through 6 heats!! I managed to make it back up to 3rd!! I was super happy!! I was really concentrating on getting in some vertical turns on the bigger waves. I was going through on consistently high wave scores. Unfortunately for Adam Lewis he crashed on one of his good waves which meant he only had 1 super high scoring wave. Sorry Adam!! He was ripping though!! We finished off the event in Ireland with a proper knees up at Spillanes pub with lots of comedy antics, pole climbing, Georges Saturday night fever dance (video coming soon!) lots of shirt ripping and lots of Guinness!!

All pics courtesy of Si Crowther/Boards

So 3rd in Ireland, 3rd in Rhossie…. 3rd OVERALL!!! WOO YEH!!

Super happy so far! Massive thanks to the BWA, Funsport, Jamie Knox, Spillanes Pub and everyone else for making the BWA events a great pace to be.