I have finally arrived back in Europe after a very (extremely, even) long stay back home in Australia over the Summer. For the first time in over 3 years I have tasted the Australian winter as normally I’m over here enjoying the European Summer by at least April/May. Admittedly, the temperatures are much the same but Europe just “feels” warmer in 12 degrees C, because the locals will all be wearing t-shirts but back home we would be in snow jackets!
My first stop was back to my old home in Dokkum, Netherlands to pick up my van out of storage and (finally!) pick up the remainder of my 2008 windsurfing gear. I haven’t even had a chance to test drive the new 2008 Gaastra Vapor sails as they are difficult to come by in Australia but waiting for me at my training partner Markus Bouman’s house was a new 10m, 11m, and 12m along with a few masts. Along with my stash of gear there are another 5-6 Vapor sails, a box of masts and Kashy fins and 2x Vapor FW boards all belonging to Arnon Dagan (ISR-1). Arnon is currently in the Canary Islands doing the PWA slalom events so Markus and I will bring his gear to Poland for the FW Europeans at the end of July. In the meantime, we have some new Kashy fins to test out!
Its great to be back in Europe and out of the impending cold in Australia. I’m now in the process of stickering up my new sails (which is a bit of a mission but something we must all do with the new gear!).
The forecast for the next few days is 30 knots so I think we’ll even have time to do some speedsurfing with Markus and the Dutch crew before we get into the serious formula training later in the week.
I’ll be writing as much as I can on the Tour-Diary this year so stay tuned and keep up to date!
