Long distance fun!

May 14th we had sun and a very steady nice breeze, albeit straight onshore. I took my good old 100 liter freerace board and my new Sailworks NX 6,2 and took off for some long distance fun along the western Texel coast. Actually quite good training for the upcoming Defi Wind 2011 in Gruissan, France. I made my reaches about 15 km on each tack, which will be the distance we'll race in Gruissan too. I had up to 2,5 meters of swell and windchop crossing the swell making it a very bumpy ride as I was going flat out fully powered up. Open ocean racing is I think one of the best things in windsurfing. In the picture you can hardly spot me, but the picture (taken by Caren) shows the beauty of the coastline of Texel under classic Dutch skies.

    

The quest for a speedstrip

For speed De Hors can be good with NW, but in this blog I've mentioned our quest for a good speedstrip for SW/W winds. We sometimes surf this spot near De Cocksdorp in the north and it's fun because you can make very long reaches and just have flatwater fun on freeride stuff. The scenery is unspoilt and vast. I love it. You can park your car right at the waterfront and jump on your board, so no long muddy walks etc. The windfetch is great and the winds are very laminar.  But the current here is quite strong and usually it spoils the true magic carpet you need for hard core speed. But we've noticed that there is a very, very small window between tides when it can get very, very, very smooth. So hopefully one great day it will all come together here!     

Arjen and Marco having fun at The Hors

In the last post I wrote about a great session at The Hors. Arjen, Marco and Bart (who made all the pics) were on a mini roadtrip (and slept in 1 Van!) and visited Texel. They left after thi ssession to France to catch the swell there as the wind would ease off at Texel. I think they had a blast: Arjen's in the air and Marco's coming up from behind. I'll post some more pics later of them.

  

Spray time

I windsurf my bottom off here on Texel, but it is rarely caught on camera. So when it does, I'm always stoked. These pictures are from the beginning of April at The Hors taken by Bart Veelenturf. Arjen, Marco and I had a great session. We were joined later by Dorian and Adriaan van Rijsselberghe and the two friends came over from Den Helder too. I'll post some great pics of the others later. I'm first going self-centered here. My theme of the day was Spray Time and making most of the mini waves we had. The wind was classic De Hors side-offshore, consistent and strong.  Here goes: nrs 1 and 2,

I was on my Sailworks Hucker 5,6 2011 for the first time. I just know we're going to be best friends for a long time to come. It's fast, stable, neutral, powerfull and just sweet. It'll come with me to Defi Wind 2011 too.

OK, nrs 3 and 4: the frames with the lighthouse of Den Helder in the background are just great, aren't they?

OK, just some more.

I like this one too.