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.
Israel has much to offer a windsurfer, starting with the most important ingredient – wind! Originating from Greece during the summer, the winds are strengthened by several thermal effects, while winter brings regular low pressure systems. Israel has over 10,000 windsurfers, mostly in the north of the country and there are many windsurfing schools who enjoy a brisk trade, especially in summer. Back in 2004 Gal Fridman put Israel on the windsurf map with a gold medal in windsurfing at Athens. He had already won bronze in 1996 in Atlanta, but his 2004 Olympic title was the first in the history of Israel, which earned Gal a hero’s welcome on return to his country
Our trip to Israel came about after a meeting with another famous Israeli windsurfer, Arnon Dagan. Arnon is Israel’s windsurf champion who has been a top ten PWA racer for many years. With Arnon enthusing over his home country, we were keen to check it out for ourselves and booked tickets to Tel Aviv, considered the economic and technological centre of Israel. Many airlines fly here, but we found Turkish Airways to be the most board bag friendly one. We flew from Nice and it was just a three and a half hour direct flight, travelling light with three 32 kg board bags!
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