Home and Worthing

Finally home now from my summer travels and what a journey home it was. I was out in Greece for a few days with my family and girlfriend and it took us from 7am to 2am the next day to get home from Vass. Basically we did it the public transport way, taking the bus from Vass to Lefkada, then Lefkada to Athens, then Athens to the Airport, then the Plane and finally home. Anyway I got home and found myself waking up at 6.30 due to jetlag, then it was straight down to Worthing.

Worthing was good fun, it was good to catch up with a lot of people and see what everyone had been up to. The standard on the UK tour is definately on the increase with some pretty good young guys on the tour making their mark. Unfortunately I ended up coming second, if I'm honest I'm a bit disappointed by this as all the judges missed one of my moves in the final!! I don't think it helped that I sailed my worst heat in the final either as I was landing double flakas in just about every other heat as well as shaka flakas, sw konos, funnels, no handed flakas. Ahh well sounding like a sore loser now making up excuses for it...

Will Rogers who won was certainly sailing very well and even if my move had been seen and scored it still would have been a close call as he was very consistent throughout the competition, not dropping many of his moves.

More comps coming up over the next couple of weeks, hopefully we will get some wind...

Oh yeh one of the highlights of the weekend had to be the sw kono into forward that I was seriously close to sailing away from... might just work on that one!

Home and Video...

So back for a whole 48 hours before I head out to Greece for a few days then home on Friday to go to the Worthing freestyle competition! It will be interesting to see who turns up... after that its the legendary night windsurf event, probably the biggest UK event on the calendar in terms of participation and spectators, although I'm sure the SWA are near-about that mark at their Aussie Kiss event each year!!

As said in a previous post my video is going to be up soon, although had a few words with a friend of mine and looks like I'm going to hold back for an extra week or so and see if I can get some shots in Greece. More on that soon...

As it is, I'm heading down to Camber Sands tomorrow for a sneaky UK windsurf with a few of my friends. Really looking forward to getting out there with them and just enjoying it and having fun, then it's on to a house party and a 3am departure for Gatwick airport...sleeps over-rated!

Turkish Press...the evidence

As promised in my previous post here are some pics of the paper I managed to make it into:

Made it both front page and back page!! But what's this about Slalom sailing in the first pic? Translations welcome if you can read it?

Funny thing is that the first shop we went into they pulled out the paper and asked if it was us... famous in Datca... ohhh yehhhh!!

Turkish press

So yesterday the owner of the Villa we are staying in organised for the local Turkish newspaper to Interview me for a small feature. It was quite amusing with the language barrier but they wanted my thoughts on what windsurfing in Datca was like and if it is a good place to hold events, etc... I'll post a copy up once it has gone to print, maybe someone can translate it for me and see if they got everything I said right?!

Aside from that I managed to get a little windsurf in at the Datca Municipal Windsurf centre, it was actually good fun, the kit was a little dated, I was on a 105l (Unamed) Wave board with a 25cm Wave fin and a 6.5 Ezzy. Anyway I landed a few forward loops, spocks, shuv-its, nothing too special but was good fun  despite that.

Also a little pre warning for anyone interested, my next little vid project with BlackLab Films is in the editing phase and should be up in about a week. In the meantime BlackLab films have released a short video of UK wave sailor Sarah Bibby, which I have seen on her Facebook but will hopefully be online shortly.

Boards Contents Page!!!

So if you haven't picked up a copy already I made it onto the double page spread of the contents page of Boards mag, not quite the cover but the next best thing so super happy with that. Go buy yourself a copy!!! Thanks to Josh Wilmott for taking the photo that windy evening, we were hoping to get more pics but we had been filming for an hour or so and then changed to photos and on the thrid run I stacked it, putting my foot down on the bottom at about 20knots and sliced my toe open really deep on a oyster shell. Still have the scar, it went all the way through my new booties as well it was that sharp. Still can't complain when that was the first of the three pics :)

In other news, out here in Turkey at the mo having a two week break with my girlfriend and her family, nice to have a non-windsurfing holiday for the first time in two and a half years other than the week skiing I do every year. This is giving me some time to work on my next video, having got all the clips from Fuerte together. A bit of help from my mate Josh and we should have something I reckon.

After this trip its home for two days and then Greece for just under a week with my family. I'm taking kit and the camera so hopefully stop at Vass and get some action as well, then it's back for the UK comps, Worthing Freestyle, Night windsurf, Poole Windfest...etc...

Ponch in Fuerte at Centre 2

PWA Fuerte all done

What an amazing day of action here,the level always seems to be going up at each event and this certainly didn't fail to meet expectations. I will leave the surprises to the likes of the boardseeker vids that will be up shortly!

As for my expectations I definately exceeded them,coming 25th overall has been a great acheivment for me at my first event, my aim this year was to get some experience from the events and I really have learnt a huge amount about competition freestyle sailing and I know what I need to do to help me next time and also what to learn!

I will update this again soon with more details as I'm doing it via my phone but i'm happy about my result and now looking forward to a little bit of rest back home in the uk! I've got a small amount of footage from out here so will try to put together a vid of the trip over the couple of weeks!