Review on trip to Australia!

Hello Everybody

It’s been way too long since I wrote on this blog, but in Australia I didn’t have to much acces to internet which made it pretty hard to make updates of my blog. Besides that I have to be honest I was also enjoying the trip way too much that I got a bit lazy and never wrote the blog. Now today I finally found some time to make a small report on my way back from school where I’m trying to catch up all my school work which is a big mission on itself but should still work out fine hopefully.

sunset at corronation 

I’ve been 5 weeks in Australia and sailed almost 4 full weeks out of them scoring a lot of wind and some really good sessions on the water. During the trip I’ve been to the famous Gnarloo which I just loved, the waves there are so perfect it’s just unbelievable, 9 turns on a wave wasn’t rare and this wave after wave, just perfect to improve my riding. Also on the trip I’ve been to the Area of Sharkbay just an amazing place, being protected for its unique nature it was a sick place to do freestyle all by myself with a nice 20 knts of wind.

Flat water and all alone! 

Besides that I’ve been mostly sailing in Geraldton at Coronation beach, feeling myself home in the conditions I saw it as the perfect training place with flat water in the front and jumping ramps in the back, I think I also spent the most time here on the water as I could use my wave and freestylboard perfectly on one day. Geraldton is the most windy place at the westcoast besides greenhead and which gave me a good reason to stay there for my last 3 weeks.

An evening jumping session, nothing better to end the day

Besides all the windsurfing I saw some amazing nature and met some really nice people, Australia is a country of nature, friendly people, wind and waves. With other words the perfect place to stay during the winter if living was a bit cheaper. But I’m off to school work again so keep you updated for my next trip to Tarifa which starts next week Friday for 3 weeks!!

besides a cold beer with this view from up the mountain! 

Cheers Dieter 

Last days at home and Big Trip Australia the beginning!

Hello everybody

After my last update I had 2 more great days of sailing. One was really good beeing fully powered up on my S1 4.3.   I went to a new spot for the first time with Z0 which worked great. You had a combination of death flat water and great shop to jump on. The ramps where so good I even landed 2 backloops on the lake! Beside that all the rest was going great also, it was a really nice session at home before I would leave to Australia.

View from the Fly mount, great to shoot other angles! 

On my last session at home the wind was really light and only strong enough in the gusts but apart from that it was great. Nice sun, not too cold at all and a perfect day for my last sail at home maybe for 2011 which made me enjoy the session even more than I would have normally done probably, after that it was coming home and getting myself packed for my 5 week trip to West-OZ! where I will be travelling the West-coast together with Laure Treboux and Timon Hagen.

All my camera gear together, Timon will still have much more to play with than this including a slide!

The items that are taking the most space in my suitcase are the camera utilities we are carrying.  All to make a good movie out of it!

My Sunwise sunglasses to protect my eyes from the strong Australian sun!

Now I’m in Bangkok, not like I planned 48 hours ago but with the strike of Qantas this was the best and fastest possibility, thanks to a lot of calling around from Timon it all turned out good in the end and we will only be half a day later in Australia than planned, so far the wind predictions aren’t the best yet but still good enough for some sailing in the morning with East winds.

My Camaro wetsuits to keep me nice and warm on the water!

Keep updated!

Cheers Dieter

October sessions at home!

Hello everybody!

Last week we had again 2 days of pretty good wind, actually one day with really good wind and the other with more light wind conditions but still great fun besides one thing, you can really feel winter is starting to kick in only getting around 12°C and pretty cold wind… Not really nice anymore to stand on the side for half an hour to relax between your sessions as your body really cools down fast! But I was already happy to be out again as October so far has been great with a lot of sailing days!

The first day it was wzw again and perfect for my S-1 Severne 4.3 and Flare 91 at Brouwersdam, sailing again a lot on the death flat water to improve my moves and try to learn new ones. The wind was a bit gusty but it wasn’t super busy on the water and everything was going well. You can see inbetween a few pictures of the day where I sailed 4 hours in total before I really got to tiered!

The second day the wind was less strong and it was just enough for my S1 4.7 also with wind more out from the north it really felt even more cold than the day before but not the less it was another day on the water with not too many people sailing and a nice sun shinning on my face.

The rest of my days I’ve been busy with school as I really also have to start working a bit on that before my trip to Australia which is coming closer and closer every day! In 5 days  from now I will be up in the air of to Down under for one of my biggest trips so far in my live, I’m really stocked about the trip and really can’t wait till I’m there!

Today I had another great session but more about that in my last blog update before I leave to Australia saterday! Also check my fanpage on Facebook for more pictures from Tuesday!

Cheers Dieter 

End of Sylt and Dutch Championships!

Hello Everybody

 JC/PWA

Like was expected there didn’t come any wind anymore in Sylt which left the days just passing by with not that much action on the water, I still did a SUP one day when there were still some waves but besides that I spent my days usually hanging around on the beach. We had a couple more tow-in sessions and one at night which was really sick on the last Saturday, never saw so many people on the beach all going up in the action, just amazing!

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 JC/PWA

After leaving from Sylt it started to get immediately windy at home, having already a nice evening session on Tuesday it really kicked in on Wednesday with a really good session on Brouwersdam sailing freestyle the whole day together with my father was great again! On Thursday I went wave sailing in Bredene sailing on my S1 4.0 and Quad 69 the whole day it was great to be in the waves again since Pozo last July. Also with the Belgium wave championships now in Standby every weekend of October I want to be used to sailing on the wave board and sailing in the waves.

On Friday it was still windy but I had to go to school to subscribe for my subjects and get my first books for the year. But after sailing 5 hours the day before in the waves all my muscles where really feeling sore so wouldn’t been the best for training anyhow. On Saturday we had a good forecast but in the end it turned out to be a cold, pretty gusty and rainy day. Standing totally without any pressure in the sail the one moment and being overpowered the other moment it wasn’t the best to train.

On Sunday we had the Dutch Championships of Freestyle at the Amstelmeer in the north of the Netherlands, it was a great competition with winds on the limit of sailability and pretty cold temperatures it were typical Dutch conditions. During the first heats I was getting more and more used to the system of 6 moves counting landing burners both sides and some good air funnels I was feeling pretty ready for the final. In the final I didn’t have my best heat but still managed to get into a second place behind Davy Scheffers and in front of Rick Jendrush who was sailing really well!

Monday I had another great wave session at Bredene, that day it was super windy being totally overpowered on 3.7 that I couldn’t jump for 30 minutes but the waves built up great! There was a nice size of waves and some good ramps for jumping. I could finally land some nice takas again and got my backside wave360 a bit more under control again. Besides that I just had great fun with friends on the water and landed some of my biggest back loops so far. The wave-pictures included  are from a wave sessions in May between Bonaire and Aruba as I don’t have pictures from the two wave days.

Tuesday was my best freestyle session since long time. Only sailing 2 hours was enough, just fully powered up on a 4.0 on death flat water was just great, everything  I wanted to do worked and I finally landed some new moves again which got me really motivated to sail a lot of freestyle also in West-Australia which is my big next trip planned. For the moment it’s pretty light winds here in Netherlands but it looks like next week we can get some winds again!

Cheers Dieter

PWA Sylt day 1-5

Hello everybody

JC/PWA

I came to Sylt straight after Dahab, going from the airport straight to Rick Jendrusch to leave to Sylt, this gave us 2 days before the competition on the island. And also gave us the only 2 days with wind. The first day I missed because I was sick, probably from the traveling and going from 35°C to 13°C in Sylt in just one day so I spent the whole day in bed. The second day in Sylt was a typical day in Sylt death onshore, strong current and pretty big shore break, good time to find out how difficult it can be to be sailing in Sylt, it was around 20-25 knts but with the current there was no chance of taking a smaller sail than my 4,7. So I knew already how Sylt could be for in the future.

JC/PWA

From the day the competition started the wind dropped out, we had one day where we had a good chance of wind when you where looking to the forecast with a SSW wind from around 20 knts it should be enough for Freestyle everybody thought. So Skippers meeting at 6.45 in the morning to make use of this wind as much as possible, but in the end the wind never kicked in strong enough for us, making the PWA decide to switch to Slalom because there was just enough wind still for the big slalom gear.  But in the end also there was not enough wind to finish a whole elimination.

The rest of the days I’ve been spending my time making a wave movie from Gran Canaria which came online beginning of this week and been doing a lot of surfing as there are still some waves good enough for some fun on my surfboard. But now as the wind has totally dropped it looks like there will be no swell left anymore and the only thing still going on is our Tow-in freestyle contests where we get pulled in with a Jetski.

JC/PWA

So far we had already 2 tow-in competitions where from one I made into the final. With the first one I had an extremely difficult or rather say impossible qualifying heat being in the same heat with Golitto who scored a 30 point move and Marcilio Brown scoring 27 I was really happy with landing my Airfunnel where I got 21 points for. In the end it was a great final to see again with an unbelievable amount of spectators on the beach cheering for the guys every time they came in!

JC/PWA

The second one was yesterday in much harder conditions; it was really choppy and actually really difficult to do anything which left a lot of crashing going on for everybody. In my qualifying heat I just made it through with a perfect funnel OH just scoring 19,5 which was enough to advance into the final. In the final I went too far away from the jetski coming out of the first corner giving me no choice besides letting go of the rope and go for a move which I crashed in the end. On my second try I wanted to try something I never tried before.  As everybody was going for burners alone I wanted to go for a Skopu.  In the end it didn’t even get close as it’s way harden than I thought but it was something different to the rest. In the end it was again Golitto going away with the first price scoring again a 30 point burner 900 in his first run already making him unbeaten so far this year’s Tow-in. That was all the action so far, no competition yet and looking at the forecast it doesn’t look like anything good!

Cheers Dieter

My Blue Lagoon Trip

Hello everybody

Last week Thursday me and some friends of me made a trip to the Blue lagoon in Dahab where everything returnes back to basic and the only thing you can do is just surf and relax. Blue lagoon is a great place from the Bedouins up north of Dahab providing always a little bit more wind than in Dahab and most important no society or big resorts which can break the wind, only a few huts of wood and beautiful blue water.

After taking the boot in Asala we had a nice 1,5 hour boat trip up to the blue lagoon, with an upcoming full moon we where all already getting exciting about making a great night session as the wind was already kicking in as we arrived in the lagoon. And indeed it was a great night session, it was the first time I ever sailed at night.  So couldn’t wait to rig up my sail and hit the water to first have a nice small one hour session before our evening food would be ready, just with 3 out on the water and a camera to get all our moves on picture giving really great shots! Afterwards we just left our gear just rigged up on the beach putted on a T-shirt and got a great meal before all falling fast a sleep in our hut.

The next morning I got the best wake up ever, wind was blowing already again around a nice 25 knts making it perfect to take my sail out again from the night before just putting on a harness and 5 min after I was awake I was already throwing my first freestyle moves while the others just got up, sailing for 15 min alone till all the other rigged up there sails and join me in my session.  As it was only 6 a.m. in the morning we still could do a nice long session before breakfast was on. Everybody was having the best time since long time on the water and everybody who you past had a big smile on their face. For me it was definitely one of my best session here in Egypt ever, nice consistent wind for my S1 4.3 and Flare 91 and only 5 people on the water making it already by breakfast worth the trip. Sailing upwind to our breakfast just made it all complete.

Afterwards we had another 3-4 hours of sailing before everybody was getting really tiered. I had a great time as it got a bit warmer than in the morning and the wind got even a bit more stronger making me be fully powered up on my S1 4.3 and landing my best flaka shaka ever in my life. In the end everybody was only thinking again about food as the wind was dropping a bit through the end of the session and we where all really hungry. Making lunch are last Bedouins food of our trip we all could look back on a great morning, in the afternoon there wasn’t enough wind anymore so we just spend our time relaxing and playing some games of poker while waiting for the boat to bring us back to reality and get us out of the total silence of nature.

To end the trip of we got a great star heaven with so many falling stars I couldn’t count them on both my hands. By the time the boot was picking us up the wind was already there again and gave us a fast ride back surfing the waves with a massive boot! All by all one of the best trips in my life! Now I'm in Sylt for the last PWA of the year, not windy so far..

Cheers Dieter

Dahab Part 1

Hello Everybody

It’s been a while since I my last update again although there has been tons of action going on on the water with a lot of days sailing at home in some strong freestyle and wave conditions before I could leave for my Dahab trip of 10 days, which is my shortest trip ever to Dahab so far but definitely worth it.

The first 5 days where amazing every day wind for my Flare 91 and S1 4.7 or S1 4.3 just sailing with board shorts and still feeling like it was a bit too hot was great after the colder sessions at home. The first few days I spent most of my days sailing at Speedy’s which is a pretty flat place at the main part of the bay and has the best winds as the wind gets an extra kick as it comes over a flat peace of land giving it the strongest wind in the whole bay but also a lot of other surfers.

After surfing every morning till about 11-12 depending on when the wind would die off, I filled my afternoons with teaching a friend of me who joint me on this trip how to windsurf as there was always perfect light wind for that in the afternoons before dropping totally at 4 p.m. Perfect to head back home on time to relax a bit and enjoy an amazing meal in Dahab city before falling a sleep well tiered!

Last Thursday we went to Blue lagoon again which was absolutely amazing having the best sail in ages with a full moon session and 5 hours of sailing! But more about that will come in my next update as soon as I have all the pictures! So stay tuned!

Cheers Dieter