I have been back on Maui for about a month now and we have had wind almost every day so we have been able to get out on the whole range of 2011 wave sails and I have been especially loving the fly 5.4 featured in this video clip that Kevin Pritchard very kindly filmed and put together for me!

Thanks Kevin and I hope you all enjoy it!

Click here to view video.

I have just finished uploading the video from this year’s spectacular world cup in Sylt.

Heidy did almost all the editing on this one, and I think she did a very good job!

I hope you like it!

After three years with no podium finishes since I broke my foot in 2005, I was very happy to be back in the coveted top 3 of the waves for 2009.

We had some of the best conditions ever in Sylt this year, we managed to finish a double elimination of freestyle, a double elimination of waves and four rounds of racing.

I had my best result ever in the slalom, finishing in 7th place, hopefully a result I will be able to repeat and improve on next year.

In the waves I was unlucky to break a mast doing a double forward in my last heat against Danny Bruch, leaving me in 7th place for the event and unable to move any higher than 3rd in the overall for the year.

Nevertheless, 2009 turned out to be my equal best year ever in waves, repeating my podium finish from 2005 and I was extremely happy to stand up there alongside a very deserving Josh Angulo and Kauli Seadi.

Let’s hope that 2010 will turn out to be even better!

I would like to thank my sponsors NeilPryde, JP and Harry Nass for supporting me through the last few years of recovery and of course all my family and my girlfriend for standing by me the whole time!

Now it is back to Maui for some much needed rest and relaxation, sail development and training for next year!

The thoughts of everyone in the windsurfing world go out to Baptiste Gossein at the moment after the horrible injury he suffered while surfing at Teauhopu last week.

I haven’t heard the whole story but from what I have read, it seems that Baptiste suffered a horrible wipeout on a small, building swell at Teauhopu while surfing at low tide.

Apparently he was launched over the falls and landed on his head on the reef. His friends who were surfing with him at the time rescued him and rushed him straight to hospital but he had lost all sensation in his lower limbs, and the doctors fear for his recovery.

Having attended the Maui Ocean Academy with Baptiste and known him since I was 15, I count him as one of my very special friends and obviously wish him all the best in this terrible time.

Everyone is praying for you to get better Baptiste and I am sure that you will have the strength to keep on enjoying life no matter what. All of our thoughts are with you. Good luck my friend.

This year’s Harry Nass Slalom Clinic in Dahab was an undeniable success. 

The whole group were shattered by the end with many holes in their hands and exhaustion etched on their faces but every face bore a smile and it was an absolute pleasure for Micah and I to have helped teaching such an enthusiastic and attentive group.

I personally had a fantastic time in Dahab. The conditions are so good for freestyle that I learned loads of new tricks in the four days I was there.

In the end, Josef won the coveted prize of a 2010 JP board of his choice and he selected a Freestyle Wave 85 after trying all of the boards at the centre.

Heidy and I had one last chance to get out sailing the morning before we left and on only her 5th day of windsurfing ever, she planed around for about an hour, which just goes to show how easy it is to learn in Dahab.

I would like to thank Harry and Elke for their wonderful hospitality. We really were sad to leave and can’t wait to go back next year.

Many of the group have said that they would love to come back again for next year’s camp so we are looking forward to trying to make it an even bigger success.

For information on Harry Nass’s centre in Dahab, please go to www.harry-nass.com and I will post information on next year’s camp here on my site as soon as we have confirmed all the details.

The Slalom Clinic is almost over now and I have to say I don’t think that it could have gone any better.

We had one afternoon of light wind for practising sail and board handling on the big beginner boards and the rest of the time, I was powered up on my 4.7 or 5.4, so the wind was around 18-25 knots every day.

We practised everything from starts and race gybes to tacks, duck gybes, carving 360s and backwind gybes.

I rekindled my love for freestyle and spent my time perfecting my flat water Shakas which are a move I have wanted to be able to do consistently for ages. I can Funnell now and do switch stance Chachos as well as Shoveit Spocks, so I really came on in the 5 days of sailing we had here.

The water is so perfectly flat that it makes learning anything an absolute pleasure because you progress so quickly.

Heidy has had four lessons with one of Harry Nass’s instructors, Marco, and she has gone from being scared and basically a complete beginner to beach starting and planing in the harness and the straps in just four sessions. It was amazing to sail upwind today to find her there planing around faster than me on my big beginner board!

Tomorrow is my last day here in Dahab so I will be getting up early to continue my Shaka practice and to try to get some photos of Heidy planing!

We have had great wind so far for the first three days of our slalom clinic here at Harry Nass’s centre in Dahab.

I had a go on the new JP freestyle boards and had a great time trying to remember all the old tricks I used to know and learn some new ones too.

All the clients on the clinic are really cool and it seems like they are having a great time. We have done some start practice, lots of gybing practice and some proper races so someone is already on their way to winning a brand new JP board!

I am sitting in Gatwick airport at the moment, we have a four hour delay on our Thomas Cook flight to Sharm El Shiekh.

Once we get to Egypt, I will be joining Micah Buzianis for our Harry Nass Clinic, and I will try my best to bring daily updates with photos.

This will be my first time in Egypt so I am looking forward to experiencing first hand the conditions in this warm, windy, flat-water paradise. 

Heidy is coming with me, so hopefully she will have the chance to learn how to sail properly too!

The wind failed to come through for us enough to hold any counting races on the last day in Turkey.

At 4:30pm, Juan the race director made the decision that there would be no more competition in the 2009 Pegasus World Cup which left Antoine Albeau in first place, Finian Maynard in second and Bjorn Dunkerbeck in third place.

I was disappointed to finish 17th as I seemed to have found my pace and started racing better at the end of the event and would have loved some more races to climb up the table a bit more.

In the end, my counting results were 17, 17, 16, 11, 11 and 10, so you can see how close the racing was that those results left me in 17th position, one point behind Arnon Dagan in 16th.

Anyway, we have a welcome break from competition now and Heidy and I are going to Dahab with Micah Buzianis for our Harry Nass clinic, so I am looking forward to exploring a windsurfing location I have never visited before!

I have just finished uploading the video I made of the slalom in Fuerteventura this year.

It was the windiest year we have had in Fuerte since I started going 10 years ago, as we had between 20-40 knots every day.

Hope you enjoy the clip, located in the videos section of this site!

I had a better day today here in Turkey, making it into the semi-finals in both rounds.

I was qualifying for the final in the second round until Antoine’s foot slipped out of his strap right before a gybe, and made him straighten out, pushing us both way past the mark and allowing 3 people to pass us. Antoine recovered quick enough to make it through to the final but I had to settle for the loser’s final.

I managed to come third in both losers finals though, putting me in 11th in both rounds, so I moved a few places up the leader-board. St

Still two more days to go, so I am hoping that we will get two more rounds each day to give me a chance to overtake a few more people.

Another frustrating day here in Turkey again today.

I seem to be going faster than ever but just keep making tactical errors. It finally broke me today and I had to go and sit on my own for a while and think about what I had done!

Then Ross came and got me and made me come out and test some fins and the activity felt good, especially since I found a slightly faster set up so I am looking forward to getting out there again tomorrow and trying to put everything together on the race course!

On a brighter note, here is the latest cover of Boards Magazine, and I also found a Pegasus Airlines magazine with me on the cover today, so I will try to take a photo of that tomorrow.

After a long, hard journey to Turkey this year, we had to get straight into racing today.

I had the chance to test all my gear last night and felt that I had good speed.

I made it easily through my first heat, but then Marco Begali crashed into me on the first gybe of my first quarter final. After the crash I was in last place, but managed to catch back up to 5th, just missing out on qualifying for the semi-final.

In the next round, I had a tough first draw but had a good start and managed to win my first heat. I was pleased with my speed as I managed to pass Bjorn and Cyril on the first reach, so let’s hope that the wind holds up tomorrow to give us a chance to get three solid rounds of racing in!

I had mixed results this summer on the PWA tour.

We started out in Costa Brava where I came a respectable 9th in the slalom, my equal best result to date in this discipline.

Next, I went to Gran Canaria a month early to train but was plagued with bad conditions. The usually ever-windy Pozo was as flat as a mill pond for the first three weeks I was there, and the smallest sail I managed to train on was a 7.8!

The last week of training however was productive, and I felt like I was sailing well enough do do really well in the wave contest.

Unfortunately for me, I got as far as 9th place where I lost to Alex Mussolini in a 2-1 decision. I pulled off a perfect double, a high one handed backloop and a nice pushloop table top in the heat, and had one waveride with a frontside turn, a backside, a taka and a forward off the lip but I lacked a second wave.

This 9th however, left me in 5th overall in the wave rankings, so I am in a good place going into Sylt and hoping for some good conditions to try to get up onto the podium!

In the slalom, I was going faster than ever before, but unfortunately, crashing and making silly mistakes. I chose to register the JP Slalom 92 this year as my smallest board, gambling on the wind not being too strong in the Canaries, but that wasn’t to be as I only completed two rounds on my 6.2 throughout the whole of Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura and the rest of the rounds, I was on 5.5 or 5.1!!

The board proved to be extremely controllable though, so much so that I even managed to lead one final in Gran Canaria all the way to the last gybe. Unfortunately though, as was my luck throughout the event, I managed to crash right before the last buoy, allowing Antoine the rest of the pack to pass me by.

I finished 16th in Gran Canaria and then 15th in Fuerte, but I was always 7th in the semis that I didn’t make it through, with 6 people advancing, so I felt that I was on the pace and that all I needed was a for a little more luck to be making it to the finals consistently.

With Turkey coming up, I am looking forward to some more good racing and a chance to jump up the rankings in the slalom discipline.

It has been really windy in Maui.

Slalom training has been difficult because we hardly have small enough sails. It has been good to get ready for Gran Canaria though.

We are only allowed to register 3 boards this year for the whole year on the PWA so it was really good to get this windy weather, to be able to decide on the smallest boards.

Here are some photos of Antoine, Ross and I getting blown away on our 6.2’s.

Thanks to Manuelita Cabrera for the spectacular images.

Once again we were amazed with the quality of the conditions in Cabo Verde!

It seems that this place never ceases to amaze. 6 days of amazing windsurfing and one day of the best surf I have ever had in my life summed up what was probably my best windsurf/surf trip ever!

Needless to say, either I or one of my friends was always on hand to film the action, and now I am back on Maui, I have had a chance to put together a short edit of the event.

Please check out the videos section on this site!

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Unfortunately, this year, I was only able to make it to a disappointing 9th place in the PWA World Cup in Cabo Verde.

I was sailing better than ever, and the conditions were unbelievable but I had a made what at the time seemed to be a small mistake in the semi final of the single elimination, going too late on a wave, which I shouldn’t really have been on, and I ended up getting pushed onto the rocks.

I never got my rhythm back after destroying both my 5.4s in that heat, and ended up losing to Josh Angulo and Francisco Goya.

In the double elimination, the waves were slightly less consistent and the people who could pick off a wave that reeled all the way into the bay were getting big points from the judges. I sailed the best I could on my two counting waves in my heat, scoring a respectable 7 and 7.5 for my best rides but all of my waves petered out after just 3 or 4 turns, and Ross Williams and Marcilio Browne managed to find longer waves and ride them all the way into the bay and advanced into the next round ahead of me.

Nevertheless, this year was probably my best trip to Cabo Verde. We had three amazing swells in the 10 days that we were there, and windsurfed or surfed every day except one. It is probably my favourite place in the world, as far as windsurfing and surfing conditions go, so I can’t wait to be able to go back there again next year!

After a whole year of waiting, the PWA tour is going back to our favourite wave event of the year, Cabo Verde.

All the sailors who went down there early this year seem to have been having a great time, so let’s hope the swells keep on rolling in for the contest! I am currently in San Francisco Airport waiting for my flight, and if all goes well, I will be arriving in Cabo Verde on the night of the 10th, so keep watching for photo and video updates!

After 2 solid weeks of great sailing here on Maui, I have finally had a chance to sit down and edit the podcast from all the great video footage we got at Lanes the other day.

Please visit the video section of this site to check out the action!

At around this time every year, the swell maps on Maui begin to turn deeper and deeper shades of red, indicating massive waves tracking their way across the North Pacific.
This year, we have been particularly unlucky so far, with only a handful of swells coming our way. The next week or so look to be different however, with already 2 epic days of Kona Winds Lanes under our belts and 3 more back to back swells on their way.
Here are a couple of Photos kindly sent to me by Anita Harris and Igor Merk. I will put them and hopefully many more up onto the photo gallery as soon as I get the chance.
Of course the video will be on it’s way too :)
Today looks like we could get another of Maui’s rare treats as the winds have gone onshore and we will be heading over to S-Turns, one of the longest and most enjoyable right-hand windsurfing waves on Maui.