Friday 27 April 2012

The Bonaire Trip!!


Hello Everybody


For my last training of the winter before the season started I decided to go Bonaire for some pure flat water training. I was invited by one of the young rising stars of Bonaire Amado Vrieswijk to stay together with him and his family for my 3 week so we could train together whenever he didn’t have school and it was windy.

Amado going big on a windy day in Bonaire!

With waiting on a good forecast before I would leave to Bonaire I had an awesome first few days with 4.7 fully powered up on the magical blue water of Lac bay. The first 2 days were in the weekend so I got some hours in sailing together with Amado going from the flat mangroves till the bit more choppy waters in front of Jibe city. Always keeping pushing each other with him trying to do moves I couldn’t do and me not wanted to be tricked out by a 16 year old always trying to add something extra to the move he did. It’s a great way to train cause you push each other to do more than whenever you are sailing alone and as soon as you hit the beach it’s again about what we were going to try the next session! He is definitely one of the guys to watch out for in the future if he keeps training and improving like this.

one for the camera

last evening session on 4.7 pic. by Caeser

After the weekend the wind got a bit less but was still enough to be planning on my S1 4.7 especially in the mornings and the evenings when it always got a bit more than during the day. I got 2 nice evening sessions in together with Youp Schmit sailing till sunset before heading home after a whole day on the beach. After 3 more sessions like this the wind totally dropped out for about a week with no sailing at all. That week was pretty much filled with doing some work for school, cliff jumping and just swimming at the beach. I also made it to the national park of the island for the first time which was a great experience!



cliffjumping to cool down!

After a whole week without wind I already almost came to my last week in Bonaire with another bad forecast for a week without wind making the trip pretty windless.. But never mind the forecast whenever Kiri Thode is back on the island. Being at the beach it seemed like there was a very little bit of wind not enough for planning consistently but maybe for pumping.   I decided to give my S1 5.0 another go as last time I didn’t really feel much of a difference with planning faster than my S1 4.7 but I knew I wasn’t going to plane on that for sure so I thought it was worth the shot. A bit different trimming and off we went on the water. In the gusts it was just enough to get planning with some pumping to do a freestyle move and wait again for the next one. After 15 min the wind picked up a bit more and we were planning almost the whole time with no pumping. After 2 hours the wind totally dropped again and there was no chance of planning anymore. Although it was light it was still a great session as it wasn’t expected! In the end I had one more good really late evening session till it was too dark to sail on my S1 5.0 before I left back home again.


Now I’m at Podersdorf where we will have the first PWA of the year. I will be posting blog updates as much as possible during the event so keep reading!


Cheers Dieter 

1 comment:

  1. This is awesome...to see you back and the set on itself too. I will enjoy this very much.
    Vans for Sale

    ReplyDelete