Back in the desert :)

We have been back in El Tur for one week now. Its great to be back and luckily a not so good forecast has provided two days surprise wind to test out my new 5.0, as well as some super strong southerly wind too providing ramps and swell in the bay, very unusual for this location.

Luckily for me, although I have mostly been behind the lens taking the photos this week, Imanaged to get Dan to get a couple of shots of me back on my 'home' ground. I particularly like it that the guy behind me on the massive slalom kit is not planing and I was on my 4.0m :)

The other pics show the Oceansource team testing our new kit out in the brief minutes we have had to play on the water, things are super busy out here right now, and with 25 students arriving on saturday its only going to get busier.

Home for 5 mins

We are now back in the UK seeing friends and family before flying to Egypt next thursday. The end of our trip to Cape Town was great, windy, wavy and hot. There are not many pics due to us being desperate to get every minute possible on the water. Phil managed to break nearly every piece of kit he had throughout the trip, saving the best till last shredding his 4.3 in two! I'm just thankful he didn't break himself, so this means we'l be seeing some shiny new 2010 kit in my future pics :)

England is good, cold but good. Looking forward to getting back to home waters at the end of the week, we'll have a lot of work, but hopefully lots of wind too.

Happy camping up north

Save us driving too much we pitched a tent and spent the night right by the sea, very nice too :) The windsurfing wasn't epic but it was (sketchy) 4.7 weather and more than we'd had if we'd stayed down in Cape Town.

More days up the coast...

We had a good couple of days on the water up north again last week, one for freestyle at Langebaan, followed by a long day waiting for wind at Paternoster, the boys got out surfing, and eventually we got some very light 4.7 weather with big swell. I found it pretty scary as the wind was so light and the waves were logo high or more in the sets, but we went out, had a few waves each (you can see me disappearing in between two in the pics!) and then we hit the road home in time for a party round our place!

The wind has been a little disappointing here this year, we've had a good amount but unfortunately had to do a lot of driving to find it. Next week though it looks like we will get some good wind here in cape town finally, so hopefully our last 2 weeks will be action packed and really get us some awesome down-the-line action before we head back to England and then straight onto Egypt.

Witsands, mast high and wind from the right!

Today we had some wind from the north, providing us with a session on starboard tack. Unfortunatly the wind was super gusty, strong and offshore and the waves had picked up to mast high in some sets, and so it wasnt easy for me. I quickly took to the camera so you can see how big but also very nice the waves actually were.

Paternoster playtime again! Love it!

So we have had little wind this last week, the best of it was to be found up north of Cape Town, in Paternoster again. We had two days up there, both times on arrival it looked a little dodgy conditions, marginal wind and not much waves but both sessions proved to be really good fun for me. It was pretty crowded, and getting waves was sometimes a battle with everyone, but i had some great rides and really good sessions, and then ended each of the days getting some photos for mates. I really love it up there, the waves are so clean and long and easy for someone of my ability. Even when it gets big its easy to get out and easy to ride.

We had an interesting journey home though as our merc broke down in the middle of nowhere. Luckily we rolled it on to the next town, found some KFC and some few hours later were saved by the car company, who gave us a lovely banana yellow Hyundai Atos, one of the smallest cars ever!! Pretty funny although not really working for us on the windsurfing front...its howling outside and we have to wait for a mate to take us to the beach :( A good night out last night means everyone's pretty sleepy today too...sure we'll get there eventually!

At the Aquarium

We went to the aquarium, and had some fun with my fisheye lens. It was really good fun and amazing to see the different creatures of the sea. I have to remember now that all the sharks we saw are only real in the aquarium, and they don't really exist in the sea where we windsurf ;)