This week, myself and Markus Bouman caught the ferry out to the small Dutch holiday island of Ameland. On the northern side of the island, in the North Sea, there is perfect ocean Formula training conditions which will be similar to what we’ll expect at the Formula Windsurfing European Championships in Poland the week after next. We are here for the entire week, testing out a big selection of Formula fins and keeping fit on the mountain bikes – including riding up one of the biggest hills in Holland (which we estimated to be around 8m high. EIGHT METRES HIGH…. INCREDIBLE!!)
On a more serious note. We’ve got a big collection of formula fins to test here this week; including some Hurricanes, Deboichet R20’s and new fins from Kashy and some proto VMG Blades of mine. The conditions have been fairly windy the past few days – up to and around 18-25 knots – with waves of around 1.5m breaking at the beachfront so its been fairly hard work for Markus who has an 11m TR-4 as his smallest sail!
This morning we went for a good 2 hour mountain bike ride through the small forest here on the island. For those who don’t know Holland, its pretty darn FLAT so to even find a hill is a semi-incredible accomplishment. We managed to find Holland’s BIGGEST hill which took nearly a good 14 seconds to ride from the bottom to the top. The view was simply incredible; we could almost see the top of somebody’s roof. Incredible.
Tomorrow the forecast is for +25 knots a little more onshore which will mean the swell will increase. As I’m fairly confident with my highwind fins we might have a more relaxing day tomorrow instead of sailing and wait for Thurs/Fri where there will be light winds and I’ll finally get a chance to rig up my new 12m sail (its still in the plastic!).
Brilliant first picture. Can I copy it on a feature I’m writing about mountain bike climbing and the effects of altitude?
No problem, go for it!