Something in the pipeline

So here is a little clip of a vision Josh and myself have had for some time.

http://video.mpora.com/watch/GQK5MZZ0W/

We plan to film a video that is almost completely unique, it is something that we don't know how long it will take and how big it will be but we really hope it will be something special. I'm not going to rant on about it, just post snippets from it from time to time. When we decide that we have collected enough footage to begin editing the final picture we will set a deadline...and let the www. know about it!!!

For now, this session was at Whitstable, last night from 8-11pm, 40 knots from the west sailing on my 4.1 Superstyle and 88l Twintip Twinzer. It was fairly warm, in-fact warmer than the session we had this morning at 10am... straaange!

Home ground!

Sailed at Camber this morning, nothing unusual about that except it was sub 10 degrees and about 40 knots!!! Super windy, super stacked, super cold and double ice cream hands! Perfect, winter is here then!

Bubble met me down at Rye station, he even decided to get the train for this 'epic' session, getting up at about 6.15 this morning for it! It was good fun..generally... but not quite what we had in mind. We preped the video cameras and waterproof housing the night before, thinking we could do a bit of filming as well but our power hour finished when the tide got a bit on the high side and the wind picked up even more! I think even holding a video camera, let alone trying to press filming buttons in those conditions would have been almost impossible!

It's sessions like that where you think if I can land this move in these conditions or even learn something new then that's one ticked off the list of being able to do it in all conditions. Shame it was the puneta show and I didn't land anything new but did get close to a new combo for me...so learnt something! Time to crack out the gloves and hoods...

Weymouth power hour!!

On my way home yesterday and thought I would stop off at Weymouth for a quick power hour of glassy flat freestyle.

Feels like ages since I've actually had a fully dedicated freestyle session, aside from the 5 gusts I caught at the lake at Aussie Kiss! Turned out to be an amazing session on the 4.9 Superstyle and 88 Twinfin Twintip. Busting out all the old moves and even a couple new ones helped me keep up to date with a lot of the new moves/combination moves that are coming out at the moment.

It was pretty gusty but that freestyle board was unreal, so spinny, still fast and with loads of pop!! Off for more practice now and even more tmrw! 14/15 degrees and we are in Nov!! 25 knots+ wind forecast for almost everyday this next week and 25 knots+ wind pretty much everyday for the last week!!! Happy days!!

Also noticed someone taking photos at Weymouth yesterday... would love to get hold of them if anyone knows who it was?!

BWA Cornwall Classic and series title!!!

So a quick write up on the event...

photo: JC

Seeing the forecast I decided to head down a couple days early via Exmouth and thanks to google maps for taking me the slowest route possible. The conditions were amazing, fully down the line, with head to logo high sets, probably the best I've ever seen anywhere (in real life). It was certainly a good days practice considering as all my wave sailing I do at the moment only seems to happen during competitions.

photo: JC

Competition day (92l RRD Twinfin/84l RRD Hardcore Quad and 5.3/4.9 RRD Superstyle) - the wind pretty much did as forecast and picked up all day...until the final... but with the dropping tide this meant we had some pretty decent conditions for most of the comp. I was pretty careless in my first heat, just going for broke and trying to hit the latest possible aerial I could at the end of every wave, resulting in a lot of crashes. This left it pretty close to the mark and put me a bit on edge. Playing it safer in the second heat saw me score a reasonable early wave but then I couldn't pull it together for the next wave. So for the rest of the heat up until about 20 seconds to go I was struggling with the one good wave and nothing else particularly special. Getting worked for about 4 minutes with no wind to water-start didn't help matters. This was after they had already abandoned our heat once already. Anyway with about 20 seconds to go I tacked onto a wave, nothing too big but made the most of it, scoring a small aerial right at the end.

I came in from this heat to hear Scotty had been pretty unlucky in his last heat with not much wind to help him get out and some close out waves. This meant I went into the final already having taken the series title!!! It was good in a sense that I could sail the final just for the fun of it, but I would have liked to see Scotty in the final. As it was I still wanted to win the event and with the Sheridon brothers in the final with myself and Emile Kott (not Lewis... ;) ) it wasn't going to be easy. With the wind completely backing off as some rain began to kick in they got the final underway in the lightest of conditions. The waves were still holding up, head high at best, but getting out was a nightmare, and I found myself getting worked for a lot of the heat, having to uphaul to get going and only catching 3/4 waves in 14 minutes. My second wave was quite nice, with a couple of turns and an aerial and then all I could grasp from the other waves was a single nice turn on the shoulder of one wave... So when I came in I had no idea who had got it. It was only when someone mentioned that the only other person to get out was Emile and he had only got one wave that I realised I had clenched the event title as well!!

So overall, super happy with my results this year and really happy with choosing to go for the amateur fleet as waves aren't really what I practice and this gave me the chance to practice and sail more heats at each event. It certainly wasn't easy with the battle against Scotty but it was good fun and never too serious.

photo: Globalshots, Jay Haysey

Thanks to everyone that has helped this year, particularly my sponsors providing me with all my RRD needs, Jai and Wouter at SeaSpriteSports and also Mike at TurfDog. Also Jem Hall for some acceptable abuse and good pointers/coaching tips. The support from my parents and girlfriend and all the good work from the guys behind the BWA. Last but not least, good work to Big Davey (fellow RRD team rider) for winning the masters at this event and overall 2nd!