Why I love windsurfing...

Thanks to Austin Davies for sending me this photo of a (crashed) loop attempt at Daymer bay in December.

This short video clip doesn't contain any amazing action, but pretty well encompasses two things I love about windsurfing: going fast and jumping! (also by Austin Davies)

Tuning the Tushingham XR Race

I have made a tuning guide for the Tushingham XR Race. Watch this video to help you get the best performance out of this sail!

Top tip: let your outhaul off and pump downwind! (pic Paul Wright)

I wished for a windy Christmas...

I couldn't really believe my luck! I flew south from Scotland on the 20th of December, the conditions had been looking pretty sweet in Cornwall for a couple of weeks, surely the wind would disappear as soon as I arrived?

Actually, no, the wind disappeared the day after I flew back to Scotland haha!

It was really nice to be back home with my family and everything, not just windsurfing but also enjoying the outdoors near my house and playing a lot of music with my parents and siblings (it seems I am the official accompanist, so lots of sight reading for me!).

My sponsors had very kindly agreed to lend me a set of wave kit whilst I was in Cornwall - then I didn't have to drive my kit down or try and get it on the train.

So the day after I got back, I packed my wetsuit into my Overboard dry bag, drove west, and I headed out at The Bluff in cross off, float and ride. Maybe I got there a bit late for the tide, the wave wasn't massive but pretty close outy. 5 minutes later I took a wave on the head whilst trying to water start, and snapped the mast and broke the 4.7, oops! At least my car keys stayed dry in my Overboard case!

Luckily (thank you for ever!) I got a new mast, and was able to sail in 4.2 weather every session! The 4.2 Rock is a pretty grunty sail with a quite wide downhaul and outhaul range so it was fine, especially with the magic Starboard Kode wave 77, which planes in nothing, stays controlled even when I can barely hang onto the sail, goes fast upwind, and for wave riding is, well... slashy and slidey! Actually it took some getting used to because I'm used to a bit of an old(ish) single fin, and the Kode slides the top turn really easily, I just had to adjust my bottom and top turning styles (if you could call my turns a "style", I'm a bit of a shoddy waverider).

Anyway, I had some really nice sessions at Wonwell/Mothecombe in Devon. Just up the coast from Bigbury, it is a perfect storm spot in a S-SWly, being in a shallow esturary, at high tide, the waves break gently and you can go further out for bigger ones.

Also Marazion for Starboard tack cross on, fun, but actually harder than I expected to line up a nice ramp. I sailed for too long on that session and missed the tide for The Bluff, which looked like it had been really good when I got there. I still managed to get some waves at the rivermouth though so that was fun.

And Daymer! I love Daymer bay! I forgot how good it was. I had two sessions there, the first was perfect, a bit gusty, but most of the time full power 4.2, head high set waves, cross/cross on port tack, sunshine, with loads of other people out. I watched the King brothers stomping backloop after backloop, and tried some myself, rotated either too much or too little, but hey, I guess I've got to start somewhere, and actually, I'm feeling a lot more confident with my jumping now that I actually just go for it. My port tack forwards feel pretty dodgy though, think I need to bring the rig more across me, the movement feels more automatic on starboard for some reason.

Not forgetting the Raceboard! Most of the time it was a bit too windy, and when it wasn't there was nothing! I had two sessions at Torpoint: one in 0-2 knots and one in 3-9 knots, and one session at Siblyback in 5-16 knots. Raceboarding is fun, and I can still just about sail with a 9.5 sail and 377cmx67cmx260 litre board, so that is encouraging for the Race season 3 months away!

Keep an eye out for my tuning video for the Tushingham XR Race racing sail very soon.
Also, I've changed my website around a bit. Click on the "Website Home" button at the top of this page, go on, you know you want to!

Pictures by Sue Walker

 My Autumn in Scotland

Pic: Paul Wright

So it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, anyway, I’m doing it now.

As I write this, I’m in the departure lounge of Edinburgh airport, ready to fly home for a couple of weeks. Of course, it’ll be good to catch up with my family and everything, but I can’t help noticing that the forecast is for awesome wind and waves, and I’m gagging to get out in some proper wave conditions again!

I’ve been windsurfing a bit, and fife is a pretty windy place, but also a pretty flat place, so to get proper waves you have to be prepared to drive a fair distance. Actually I’ve been content to save money, stay local and play in 1-2 ft onshore mush, the result: shuvits and Starboard tack forward loops, yay!

My raceboard kit has been feeling a bit lonely in Cornwall without me I think, but I plan to become re-acquainted with it, and also make the Tushingham XR-Race tuning video that I’ve been thinking of doing since the worlds.

So what have I been doing other than bump n jump/mush shredding? Well… working, studying and mountaineering: the joys of having an industrial placement in St Andrews.

So with weekdays spent in the lab and dark evenings spent doing my distance learning, free time is the weekends. It’s been great to get involved with the university mountaineering club here, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to see the varied landscape and weather of the highlands. The short daylight hours get to be a bit of a pain, but as long as you don’t mind part of the decent with a torch, you can get rewarded with amazing views, quite possibly not at the top (in the clouds), but at least halfway up. Also, the lack of daylight does mean that what light there is during the day is pretty nice to look at, it is effectively evening all day! Check out some photos below: the crappy fuzzy ones are taken on my phone, the nice ones taken by my friend Martin!

Anyway, stay tuned for:

1.       More blog updates from my time in Cornwall, where a Starboard Kode 72 and some Tushingham Rocks wait for me.

2.       A tuning video to help you get the best out of the super adjustable race winning Tushingham XR-race 9.5.

3.       An updated website

Cheers, have a good Christmas!

Worlds: looking back, looking forward

It's been two weeks since the Raceboard world championships came to a close, and my achievement sinks in a little bit more every time I think about it. It was a pretty special experience for me, not just competing at an international championship, but also travelling across Europe and seeing new places.

Southwest Lakes Trust trailer in east Germany

It was a long way to drive, but we gave time to stay overnight at Hohenstadt near Nurenburg each way to relax. It's a beautiful area of Germany, with some quite steep hills coming out of nowhere, and miles and miles of forest cleared in places to make way for fields. The houses are also pretty, with very steeply sloping roofs.

One thing that you should know about driving in the Czech Republic, is that you for a 10 day permit to use the motorways. This is presumably so that they can rebuild them all! The slow lane is so, so bumpy, really bad in places, which isn't ideal for a rather old trailer stacked full of windsurfing kit! It was a bit much for it in the end, and one of the posts for the board rack sheered on the way home (it was a bit rusty): nothing a bit of string and an old mast extension couldn't solve though! I was pretty pleased that we didn't have a flat tire, the bearings didn't break, and Pauls plywood rig box didn't shake itself to bits! In fact, my car coped very well, and we didn't have any problems with it the whole 3000 odd miles, except when we tried to run our laptops off the car battery and realised that it was on its last legs! The car needed bump starting every now and again after that!

Some, well, ok, a lot of the journey was pretty boring, especially Belgium, which is lovely, with spacious feeling motorways and nice trees, but it is all the same (by the time we got to Belgium from Czech Rep we were pretty bored of driving anyway though)!

The south Moravian region of the Czech Republic, where the lake is, is very pretty rural area, with lots of farmland and vineyards. The aristocracy who lived in Mikulov, the nearest town had lots of fishing lakes etc. designed, but the lake that we were racing on is one of 3 lakes that were built to prevent the river Dyje from flooding the surrounding low lying farmland. The lakes are quite shallow, with a dam/embankment around much of it, but the southern bank (where the sailing club is) consists of a large steep hill with rows and rows of grapevines, and a rather imposing ruined castle on the top.

The event was very well organised indeed, and seemed to run without a hitch. There was a lot of sponsor support for the event, so a big thanks to them.

Team GB, ready to race

At the opening ceremony, there was a band playing traditional gypsy music, and they were fantastic.

Nice conditions on the training day

After a really fun training day in perfect, clean wind between 9 and 18 knots, the practice race was a little disappointing, with the wind blowing cross offshore and the course set in the lee of the castle, which made the wind unbelievably gusty and shifty, I got 2nd in the practice race (blue fleet) behind Curro Manchon, this gave me a good confidence booster for my speed in light-marginal winds, especially since I set my watch wrong and started about 20 seconds late!

Blasting

I was expecting a similar wind direction on the first day of official racing, but luckily the wind was quite cross-shore, and strong! Still pretty gusty, with winds from 18-28 knots in the morning and more like 12-20 in the afternoon. The moral to take home from that day is: don't be afraid to use a smaller sail then most of the top guys! This definitely let me concentrate on just sailing fast, and not have to struggle with a massive sail upwind. Downwind, even with my Tushingham Lightning 8.5, I was able to point very broad with a bit of pumping, and took some places downwind from they guys on 9.5's. My results improved throughout the day 4, 3, 3, 2 in the Blue fleet, with Patrik Pollak winning all the races but one, which was won by Petr Kucera. Curro got 2nd in the first race using his Tushingham XR Race 9.5, and I was fighting with him in many of the other races.

Pumping downwind

Time for some lunch

Whilst the two days of no wind and nice sunshine could have been a good chance to do some exploring, racing was postponed for 2 hours at a time, so there wasn't time to go far afield. We found time to walk to to the Castle, with some amazing views of the lake and surrounding countryside and across the border into Austria. Even with SUP racing and an inflatable climbing wall in the shape of an iso-line bottle (event drinks sponsor), I think we were all a bit bored and raring to go when the wind returned on Friday. At the competitors briefing, there was applause when the race officer reported 8-10 knots on the course!

Pumping!

The wind was a little gusty and very shifty on the last two days, so those who found the pressure and got the shifts right made big gains. The last day of the qualifying series saw me finish 2nd in each race behind Patrik. I tried not to be too risky at the start, and just concentrated in having space to accelerate in the middle of the line with options. This meant that although I was never first to the windward mark, I was consistently in the top 5. Frenchman Sylvain Dehouve was always close to the front, Pedro Corte Moura from Portugal was very good upwind, but I usually managed to gain on him downwind. I usually gained or sometime even overtook Patrik Pollak by getting a favourable shift and pointing higher than him upwind, but downwind, he was very fast indeed and won each of the races.

Me and Pedro upwind (Photo Martin Hales)

The final day left me in a pretty tight 3rd place, a long way off Patrik and Max in 1st and 2nd place, but with Petr Kucera, Sylvain Dehouve and Curro Manchon all snapping at my heels. The light winds meant that the most races we were going to get for the series was 10, which was big news for much of the fleet as it only allowed 1 discard. Luckily for me, Curro (who had got 2nd in every race on the penultimate day in the blue fleet whilst feeling very ill) had an OCS to discard, because on the final day, he showed me the way, counting a 3rd and two 2nds. Having to count a 7th from the first day meant that he finished two points behind me. Petr didn't have such a good day and got a 6th, 11th and 22nd, so slipped from 4th to 6th, which meant I got 3rd!!!!

Curro (Photo Martin Hales)

The last race was a bit funny, because after rounding the first mark in a good position, I knew that all I had to do was finish within 3 places of Curro to take bronze. I was in 4th and managed to overtake Sylvain into 3rd whilst Curro got 2nd, so I just had to pump a bit, watching that I was safe from behind, which meant I knew 3rd place was mine more or less halfway through the race, but I couldn't celebrate until it was over. When it was over, I felt some relief, but not a sudden rush of happiness of my achievement, maybe because it wasn't a very exciting finish to the regatta?

Yep, it's real, I've just got 3rd!

I still haven't quite got my head around it, having spend many years of my life sailing with, and finishing behind such people as Sam Sills and Connor Bainbridge, who dominated the UK events and achieved such amazing results at international events, I suddenly found myself winning UKWA events on Raceboard, a dream in itself, I never expected to get 3rd place at my first world championships since 2009 on Techno. Actually, maybe that's part of the reason for my success; I went there without expectation or pressure on myself to do well, and stayed focused, didn't take too many risks, and concentrated on sailing fast. So I didn't really make any mistakes, and when I did, I just focused on sorting it out and overtaking people, a few years ago I would have gone mental and started shouting at myself and my gear. I remember one race at the Techno worlds where I had a shit start, bad upwind, then when I fell off on a gybe downwind, started punching my board rather than getting up immediately and working my arse off to overtake some people!

Lightwind carve gybe

I hope that I can compete in the worlds or euros next year, but will have to see how things pan out. Unfortunately, I cannot afford any more events this year, so the raceboard will be hibernating in Cornwall until next season, hopefully I can get out on a couple of times, but I already can't wait to race again, the constant tactical, physical and technical challenge has me hooked. I came off the back of last season with 3 consecutive wins, so I had high hopes for this season with my new kit from sponsors Tushingham and Starboard, but to win every event in the UK and 3rd at the worlds is unbelievable!

I was very pleased with my equipment, and had got the XR Race 9.5 tuned up nicely across its wind range. I cannot emphasise the importance of getting out and trying different settings in all wind strengths, and would say that an adjustable downhaul is almost as important as an adjustable outhaul on this sail. Every time the wind changes a couple of knots, the downhaul changes, and the outhaul is continually adjusted through gusts, lulls, and between upwind and downwind. I have found that the XR Race can be set very full for light winds, and proved that it has what it takes against the competition in all wind strengths. I am going to look at making a tuning guide video over the winter to help people understand how to get the best out of this sail: watch this space!

Here's to 2014!

Massive thanks to my sponsors: Tushingham, Starboard, and Overboard, and to Paul Wright for his help with my website, encouragement with my windsurfing for years and years, and his company during the event. Also thanks to the Raceboarders in the UK, in particular: Mark Kay, Jamie Ingram, and Rob Kent for pushing me, I wouldn't be fast without them! Can't forget my parents of course, I wouldn't be here, wouldn't be windsurfing, wouldn't have ever gone to a competition, learnt to race in open training, zone squad, and national squad or anything without them, cheers!

Raceboard worlds Day 6: I got 3rd!!!!

The final day of the raceboard worlds had very similar conditions to day 5, with light winds of 4-9 knots SE and sunshine. There was a lot to play for on the final day, with a close battle for the title in both the mens and womens category.
 

Go!

Overnight leader Patrik Pollak SVK-1 didn't have it his own way, and found himself battling back through the fleet whilst Max Wojcik won all three of today's races to win the world championship in style. Spain's Curro Manchon was never far behind in 2nd in each race, and I recovered from a disappointing 7th in the first race to finish 3rd in the final two races and make it into 3rd place in the event.

Fellow Brits Mark and Paul found some form, with Mark coming close to winning the in the silver fleet, and beating half the gold fleet who had a 5 minute head start

Vita Matise and Marketa Vranova battling it out.

In the womens fleet, Latvia's Visa Matise won all three races, enabling her to take the title away from Jan Silova from the Czech republic dispite counting a did not compete from the first day.

It was a fantastic event with a range of conditions from 4-33 knots, everything was very well organised,and a big thanks to the event 
organisers and sponsors as well as the race committee for putting on a fantastic championship. There was a record number of 110 entries, showing that raceboarding is a popular and healthy class around the world.

Mens world champion is Maksymilian Wojcik

Results:
1. Maksymilian Wojcik - Poland, 1st lightweight 
2. Patrik Pollak - Slovakia,1st master 
3. Louis Morris - Great Britain 
11. Juha Blinnikka - Finland, 1st grandmaster and 1st heavyweight 
14. Kai Mannisto - Finland,1st veteran 
33. Anras Nikl - Hungary, 1st youth

Silver fleet:
9. Mark Roberts GBR-1118
41. Paul Wright GBR-788
Women:
1. Vita Matise - Latvia, first grandmaster
2. Jana Slivova - Czech Republic
3. Martina Hruba - Czech Republic

Visa Matise is the womens world champion

Full results here: http://www.wcr2013.org/en/information/
Photos and more here: www.facebook.com/wcr2013 

Raceboard worlds day 5

Today, 3 races were completed for all fleets in 5-10 knots and hot sunshine.

It was hard work pumping in the hot conditions and light wind, but everyone was glad to get some races done after two days of no wind.

Mens yellow fleet start

In the blue fleet, Maksymilian Wojcik POL-7 was pushed hard by Curro Manchon ESP-9, but it was the former who won all 3 races, with Curro in 2nd each time, although an OCS (over the start line) in the last race saw him end the day in 5th place. Petr Kucera CZE-15 had consistent results, which was enough for him to hold on to 4th place.

In 3rd place is Louis Morris GBR-730. I was in the yellow fleet, where Patrik Pollak won every race, and somehow I managed 2nd in every race. I came frustratingly close to catching him a few times, but his downwind speed was too much. Sylvian Dehouve FRA-89 was never far behind, and holds 6th place now.

Louis and Sylvian upwind

Tomorrow is the last day, and with the mens fleet splitting into gold and silver fleets, there is going to be some very intense racing at the front of the fleet. Petr Kucera is only 1 point behind me, with Curro and Sylvian not far behind him, so there will be a tough battle for 3rd place. Max POL-7 and Patrik SVK-1 both have 6 points, so it will be winner takes all for them!

Tough day for Paul.

Mark Roberts found form in the last race today with a 19th place, but unfortunately it won't be enough to see him through to the gold fleet. Paul Wright had good speed when the gusts hit, but struggled to replicate this in the light conditions.


In the Womens fleet, Vita Matise LAT-1 has been dominating with several race wins, however, she is still counting a DNC from Tuesday, so will be hoping to discard that tomorrow to move up from 3rd place. Jana Silova CZE-26 still leads the winners fleet, with a consistent performance in todays light winds as well as Tuesdays strong conditions.

The womens fleet starting.

The wind is supposed to be a little stronger tomorrow, peaking at 6-11 knots, similar direction (SE), giving clean wind, although it was quite shifty and patchy today. It will be a close final day for all fleets in tricky conditions, stay tuned at www.facebook.com/wcr2013

Results Summary, men:
1. Patrik Pollak SVK-1
2. Maksymilian Wojcik POL-7
3. Louis Morris GBR-730
4. Petr Kucera CZE-15
5. Curro Manchon ESP-9
67. Mark Roberts GBR-1118
90. Paul Wright GBR-788

women:
1. Jana Silova CZE-26
2. Hruba Martina CZE-251
3. Vita Matise LAT-1