Windsurfing A Way Of Life

Good wind today.. Rigged a 5.7 and took the Mistral Beast 84 out to the swell with Toby and Mike (one of our guests). It was a bit of a wobble out to the speedy but once around the corner planning started straight away.

It was a nice constant wind which kept the three of us outside for a good 2 hours or so. Not such big swell at the moment as the wind has been light the last few weeks but huzzzah it looks like its back for a while now.

Today I start a few weeks of moving around, leaving for the UK this afternoon for a few days of work and to see my Mum for her Birthday. Then off to Germany to the Club Mistral HQ for a quick meeting and on the Monday off to Morroco for the Manager Meeting so updates may be a bit few and far between, sorry about that.

I am hoping to get an hour or two on the water before I have to rush off to Sharm to catch the flight Inshallah the wind will play ball.

Best wishes and happy windsurfing.

Well today was very strange. No wind this morning and not really any wind forecast until tomorrow so none of us were expecting to get out on the water. As you can see it didn’t stay like this all day with a force 4 South wind blowing in.

South wind always sends everyon crazy here as it always feels stronger than it actually is, but as you can see it did create quite a nice shore break. Hmmm just like being at home on thge South Coast.

After a quick sail with a Mistral Syncro 115 and a Duke 6.9 (Which i was quite pleased to almost land a loop with hehe) I had some lunch and then took out a Duke 6.4 and a “Mistral Syncro 102. Both the Syncro were great fun I absolutly love all them the 92, 102and 115. They are all fast and easy to Gybe and plane early they are GREAT!!!

Other happenings today. It seemed that someone had stolen Svetlanas bike so a whole saga unfolded which invloved a trip to the Tourist Police with pictures etc. After much unhappiness Said had a call from the Police to say they had found the bike dumped in the bus station so we can only assume it was kids mucking about with it. Still it was quite a shock to find something missing the crime rate here is almost zero.

Thats about it for today. This evening we enjoyed some curry thanks to Simon from Planet Windsurf who was kind enough to bring us over some Pataks Curry Sauce…big thumbs up Simon thanks for those.

Take care everyone and happy windsurfing

WINDY AGAIN!!

Pretty much the same format as the last 2 days. Did some admin in the morning, chatting with the guests and then in the afternoon managed to get out for an hour or two on a Beast with a 4.7 big smiles.

Extra treat today was the very nice waves running down alongside the reef, really smooth and some quite big 3 - 4 meters.

Same forecast for tomorrow yipeee

Best wishes from Dahab and Happy Sailing

WINDY IN DAHAB AT LAST !!!!!

Well what can i say yesturday the 29th it was blowing like hell between 25 and 35 knots very windy. In the morning I had a quick sail with a guest on a Mistral Syncro 92 and an Ice 5.3 which very quickly became very overpowered as yu can imagine. Still it was nice to get that blasting feeling after poncing around just powered up on freestyle boards for the last few sessions.

In the afternoon I went out for a look at the swells on my Beast 84 with a 4.7 and this too was quite a handful I reckon it was probably 4.2 weather but you always need a bit extra to get back inside the lagoon still I had a little too much extra and it was an absolute no style session but still fun.

Today 30th of Jan sailed for a couple of hours on my Beast 84 again with a 4.7 and this was absolutly perfect today. In the gusts it was a bit big but mostly it was great. I also had an extra treat in that the swells were moving in the right direction for me to be jumping right hand forward hmmm which was great. I made quite a few nice forwards today a few table tops and had some nice rides on the big swells PERFECT and the forecast is looking the same for the next few days big smiles.

Tonight a dinner in Nesima with some of our guests, so signing off for today I’m off to meet the guys in the bar for a wel earned beer. Sorry there are no pics but been windsurfing.

Best wishes from Dahab and happy windsurfing wherever you are.

Sliding backwards today yipeeeee

Ok so here is a quick progress report on my Vulcan attempts.

Day 1. Getting used to sailing in a new way. Freestyle board with giant foot straps, and i mean giant straps so big you could wear a pair of moon boots inside. First things that was happening was everytime I wanted to jump i was actually jumping off the board so made some interesting transitions with only the sail.

Day2. Getting more used to big straps and started throwing myself into the move. Ok this was the first attempt so all was going horribly wrong and as I wrote before quickly settled into the jump 90 degrees fly off the back of the board. Or jump 180 degrees land fin in the water and fly backwards off the board.

Day 3. Make some progress mostly crashing but a couple of slides

Day 4. First half of the session same old jump around and crash but then suddenly after a quick tip to look at the mast foot from Manolis i started sliding. End of the session getting around most times and sliding backwards. Now I guess if I don’t somehow forget how to do this the next time there is wind the next step now is to learn how to deal with the sail i guess.

Total time spent on Vulcan tries so far 5 hours.

Result sliding now, back aching, knees aching, ankles a bit stiff. This is all from the sideways landings in the beginning, I did notice today that when you start to get around and slide its actually not too much stress on the joints so hopefuly not too many sideways landings left to go.

Tomorrow if there is wind I will take the video camera with a guest and try to get some nice crashes filmed for everyone to laugh at .

Happy Sailing