Trip to Tarifa part 1

Hello everybody!

First of all, still a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year with the best wishes for 2012 out of warm Tarifa!

I’ve been already on a trip again for a good 2 weeks now and only have a few more days before we will be heading home again. So far the trip has been pretty all right, not the best of wind yet but for sure still scored some good sessions. We started the trip to the area of Quiberon where they gave a pretty good forecast and which wasn’t a too big way around on the way to Tarifa. Looking at 2 good days of wind it turned out on only one evening session of 2 hours in a cold 9-10°C. But it was at least something so already worth the detour. After 2 days of some side seeing it was time to leave to Tarifa as it didn’t look windy anymore in France and the forecast improved better for Tarifa for the upcoming week.

Arriving in Tarifa on Friday we scored our first wind on Saturday with a sunset session at Playa Chica in the town with a light Levante. Sailing just a small hour till it was too dark to still see the rocks on the side. The next day the Levante really kicked in at Tarifa blowing around 35-40 knts making it not perfect for Freestyle, I got a message it was great at Conil a small hour more west with a nice 25 knts side offshore. So decided to leave my 3.7 in the bag and drive to Conil to score a great session on 4.3 fully powered up with some nice small waves it just looked like Fuerte at Center 2. Sailing around for 3 hours the wind started to get a bit too gusty and knowing the next days still looked sick it was a good time to stop.

The next day we woke up at Conil already looking at a good 30-35 knts it was time to check out a spot even more west, it was time to check Valdelagrana. I sailed here 2 years ago also with waves with wind from the south but I heard it was a great place in strong Levante with death flat water. It was just liked they said, only that the wind wasn’t lighter than in Conil but sailing on death flat water I still could just sail my 4.0 fully powered to overpowered. That day was the best day of my whole trip so far with sailing around 3 hours again before the wind dropped out too suddenly I gave the best of myself! Making some big crashes but also some new moves it was a great training day of full flat water action!

The next day the Levante died again and it was only windy enough in Tarifa like it usually is with a weaker Levante, so Playa Chica was on the menu again with a nice sail for 4.3 it was another good day of sailing in Tarifa, trying to make the most out of it as the forecast didn’t look to good anymore it started to get too gusty already after 2 hours.

After that day we scored only a few more small sessions for about an hour every time, one more time with Levante and 2 more pumping sessions with Poniente (wind from the west). The rest of the time I finally found a place to test my SUP in the waves and catch some water action this way. The upcoming 3 days they give some weak Levante again and some waves so hopefully we can score some more action! Check out also my new pictures on my facebook fan page of my trip over here!

Cheers Dieter