CATEGORIES

Stormy Dreams

Harty sings the praises of the storm chasing shenanigans in Donegal.

Seavets

Seavets is a UK based senior and veteran windsurfers association, vice-chairman Ruth Tracey tells us more about their merry clan.

Other Voices

It’s a paradox of the vast array of communication tools of our modern age that still some of the most interesting voices are those least heard.

Move On Up - Gybe Exits

This month we look at the gybe exit. It requires us to be very efficient and consistent in handling the rig in a clew first position, and also challenges our early planing skills. The best news is you can really nail many of the clew first skills at slower speeds in light winds on bigger boards. And we can improve our speed out of the gybe by working on our early planing skills. If we have a strong and ‘active’ getting planing position then the nirvana of a planing gybe exit is so much closer! We can be working on this even before we learn to gybe, so we have our gybe endings already nailed before we attempt to carve!

Miriam Asmussen

Norwegian racer Miriam Rasmussen was a late starter to windsurfing, but that hasn’t held her back. From competing around the world to setting national speed records, Miriam has forged her own path in the sport from a challenging beginning. Learn more about Miriam’s inspiring path as she tells us in her own words, “The story so far, …or how I stopped worrying and learned to love windsurfing!”

Invasive Species Week 2019

The RYA tell us about the ‘Check Clean Dry’ initiative to help stop the spread of invasive species and diseases.

Gunsails Bow Concept

One look at the Gunsails BOW sail tells you it’s different, very different! It has a specially developed mast to go with its radical head design and in contrast to established modern designs, doesn’t have a loose leech. To get the lowdown on the BOW and find out more about its design, we caught up with designer Pieter Bijl.

Freestyle King

Born in 1989 in Porlamar, the largest city on Isla Margarita, Venezuela, “Gollito“ Jose Estredo grew up in the windsurfing playground of El Yaque, home to fellow PWA freestyle champion, Ricardo Campello. At the tender age of 13 he entered his first professional competition and won his first PWA freestyle world title in 2006, his ninth world title in 2018 and the smart money is on number 10 for 2019! In the ever-changing world of freestyle, one thing remains constant, Gollito winning! So what is the secret of his success, we ask his peers and the man himself.

Francesco Cappuzzo

Italian windsurfer Francesco Cappuzzo has a few strings to his boom. He competes on both the PWA freestyle and wave tours, no surprises there, plenty of sailors dabble in both, but how many do you also know compete on the Professional Kitesurfing GKA tour?

Exploring Israel's Windsurfing

Boasting 275 km of coastline with access to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Israel enjoys solid wind statistics all year round and offers everything from flat water to waves. It has a buoyant windsurfing community, but outside of the country relatively little is known about it as a windsurfing destination; Eric de Cruz made a trip there with PWA slalom sailor Benjamin ‘Babou’ Augé and Esteban de Cruz to find out more.

Defi Wind Japan

Miyako island in Okinawa Prefecture played host to the inaugural Defi Wind Japan last month and interestingly the City of Miyakojima, which includes not only Miyako Island, but also five other populated islands, is twinned with the island of Maui! Japanese windsurfing culture is one of the most interesting in the world and combining it with the DéfiWind concept was always going to be an interesting mix; we talk to some of the athletes and organisers to get a flavour of the event.

All In Good Time

Harty this month suggests that improvement may lie focussing not so much on ‘how’, but ‘how long.’ It’s all about time and timing

The Magheroarty Mission

After a three year wait, the Red Bull Storm Chase finally found the weather system they were looking for, storm ‘Gareth’, to green light the event and in keeping with the Storm Chase’s history, produce one of the most spectacular wavesailing contests ever! Rain, hail, snow, an 8 metre swell and force ten plus winds tested the riders to their absolute limits at Magheroarty, county Donegal, NW Ireland; John Carter caught up with the competitors and contest organiser Jobst von Paepcke to find out how it all went down.

Go Big & Go Easy

Surfing must be one of the hardest sports to learn. But learning to surf on a SUP is probably even harder.

On Europe's Amazon

The Danube Delta is one of the wildest corners of Europe. A labyrinth of jungle-like waterways bedecked with climbing vines that hide kingfishers, pelicans and floating islands leading into a mystical world of deep forests and rivers. Sadly like any paradise, it is under threat.

The Great Route

Data can only tell us so much. Environmental researcher Michael Walther wanted to make a more qualititave invesgitation into the effects of the anthroposcene on the remote west coast of Greenland. As he saw, climate change is altering not only the extent of the ice, but more crucially the way the ice behaves. The impact on the people that live there was profound.

Small Minded: Wiping The Slate Clean

A few years ago I wrote about a perceived ‘eddy’ of lower and lower volume surfing paddleboards spinning away to the side of the sport’s mainstream. A veritable closed shop of elite riders chasing shortboard surfing-esque performance atop pieces of equipment that increasingly resembled just that: a surfing shortboard.

Practical Progress

Progress in our modern world is a given. We innovate more, we advance – it’s the human way. But sport is cruel, progress is not always a linear path, more a zigzag, back and forth towards the next level. Finn Mullen offers some practical tips for an aspiring SUP surfer looking to keep their progress on track.

Prohibited Items

I’d almost forgotten about the weariness with which airport staff– from check-in personnel to baggage handlers look at you when they see you bumbling your way through departures with a large board bag.

Paddle Science #14 - Blood Testing

We can be doing all the right things: for example eating a low carb diet, following a training program, but it is not easy to know if our blood glucose levels are in the right range, or if overtraining is leading to chronic inflammation.

Lost In Koh Chang

If the newly crowned world champion sup racer gives you a tip-off to visit a place, it’s probably worth more than a casual glance. Daniel Hasulyo has just taken the technical race title at the ISA event in China, and if you’re wondering what his training schedule runs like, it looks a bit like this…

Composite Or Inflatable?

A great polymath once said, if N is the number of boards you need, and S is the number of boards you own, then N = S +1. This month, we’re going to look at your next board purchase, and how to zero in on the construction that you need.

Ten Years After

When you’re having a good moment, say on a trip somewhere you thought you’d never get to, or after the best surf you’ve ever had, or finding yourself at last planing with a foil, or perhaps even better - getting a new dog or addition to your family, do you ever think about what your ten-years-younger self would have thought if they knew it would be coming up?

Logging In

I am sitting in a tuk-tuk carelessly sneaking through the chaotic traffic of Colombo way faster and way more dangerously than it should be. All around me I pass by thousands of people looking busy with their everyday lives. Drivers, beggars, porters, passengers, policemen with white gloves, buddhist monks dressed in orange, schoolboys in uniform, street food sellers, and hordes of ordinary people just going somewhere. I wonder what they do all day. I wonder what their reality is like. I came to Sri Lanka to experience first hand the spirit of a country in which everyone these days seems to be interested in.

Endurance

A great shout erupts from the centre of fifty neoprene-clad people clustered on the dark banks of Loch Ness. The wind whips and pulls at the group of paddlers, all of whom are fortified by a dram of whisky, as the sound of Scottish bagpipes signifies the first grey light of dawn. With it, the true scale of Loch Ness stretches out before the challengers, as dark, ferocious gusts claw at the surface of the black water and bands of sleet and rain cut at bare flesh.

Le Morne-ing Of The Earth

After 11 hours in a stress position, otherwise known as coach class, Valentin Illichmann and I finally land in Mauritius. Flung out in the Indian Ocean some 800km offof Madagascar with only Reunion for company, its closest neighbour in the other direction is Australia (where interestingly they also drive on the left).

City To Sea

Lena Erdil and Kai Steimer switch plans with the caprice of the Sinop wind on a trip that takes them out of Istanbul and onto the Black Sea…

Between Storms

It’s deep winter. Boots, gloves and hood are ready to go..., but I have been very fortunate and grateful this year (thanks to some awesome support from my key sponsors ION, Fanatic SUP International and Nik Baker K66) to have not needed the aforementioned items – yet.

Redcar Wind Power

The northeast coast of England on its day has some of the best surfing and windsurfing conditions in the UK, but many of the spots are a closely guarded secret or off the beaten track. Redcar though is a well known windsurfing beach and its credentials as a windy spot not in doubt given the huge wind farm just offshore. John Carter, Timo Mullen and Steve Thorp fill us in on a recent Redcar session, one of the North Sea’s top windsurfing spots.

Two Big Onions!

This month Harty sings the praises of Tobago, a very special island.