First off happy new year everyone.

So with the new year I have a new van!!! Exciting I know…well actually I’ve had it for a couple of months but just haven’t had the time to kit it out until the last few days. So what is it… well a 2005 Ford Transit SWB Low roof, so much like the old black one but newer and with 50,000 less miles on the clock. The best bit is… it’s bright orange, so the ultimate ginger-mobile. It’s a bit too dark now for pics, but I’ll get some in the morning and then at the end of the day tomorrow. To show the work that I manage to get done.

Being an ex RAC van it took me two days to strip all the fittings, wiring, random other bits and pieces out. Then the last two days I’ve been kitting it out with a ply-lining set I got from ebay, much less hassle and I think it is actually cheaper than buying the wood from the local timber yard (except it doesn’t fit that well, so I have to keep making alterations, still less hassle then measuring and cutting each piece to fit).

I was lucky enough to pick up a few really old masts from my sponsors at seasprite a month or so ago and am now the proud owner of probably the worlds lightest double bed! Oh yeh… Also the van is equipped with an internet cable…I’ve yet to try it out but hopefully I can hack into the RAC network… mmmmeeeeeeee! Or more likely not and I’ll just attach a dongle jobby to the end of the internet cable jobby and have the same setup…or just use my iphone!

Finally I’m off to Cape Town in two days…good news for everyone at home as the wind looks like it is filling in here and disappearing out there!! Anyway its 30 degrees out there so I’ll just take my red surf board out with me… der…der……der…der…..der..der..der.der..derderderderderderderrrr!!!

Anyway more tomorrow on the van and what I’m packing for Cape Town!

…and this is what happened…

CLICK HERE

… thanks to my new sponsor SPARTAN wetsuits for keeping me warm on the water and of course the legendary RRD for making me look suuuuuper cool in those speedos (for Jai…inside joke) and of course http://www.silte.co.uk for making me look just as raaaad off the water!

Merry Christmas everyone!

So just got back from a weeks skiing in St Anton, well we stayed in Lech but it’s all the same area.

Two highlights: the powder was over chest deep on the first day and sometimes I found it going over my head as I put in a turn. Never skied in anything quite that deep before, the rest of the week it was waist deep. Absolutely scored it on the snow front then. The other highlight was this toboggan run we went to, where you get the cable car up, have a meal then toboggan down on these tiny little sledges. I made a quick video of me and my brothers having a few crashes on the final bend of the run. Awesome fun and I massively recommend it to anyone who gets a week or two in this year.

more soon…

Not much to say really just read/watch this – http://www.boardseekermag.com/features/windsurfing-action/sims-cold-session.html

So went to Whitstable yesterday… still alive…!

So here is a little clip of a vision Josh and myself have had for some time.

http://video.mpora.com/watch/GQK5MZZ0W/

We plan to film a video that is almost completely unique, it is something that we don’t know how long it will take and how big it will be but we really hope it will be something special. I’m not going to rant on about it, just post snippets from it from time to time. When we decide that we have collected enough footage to begin editing the final picture we will set a deadline…and let the www. know about it!!!

For now, this session was at Whitstable, last night from 8-11pm, 40 knots from the west sailing on my 4.1 Superstyle and 88l Twintip Twinzer. It was fairly warm, in-fact warmer than the session we had this morning at 10am… straaange!

Sailed at Camber this morning, nothing unusual about that except it was sub 10 degrees and about 40 knots!!! Super windy, super stacked, super cold and double ice cream hands! Perfect, winter is here then!

Bubble met me down at Rye station, he even decided to get the train for this ‘epic’ session, getting up at about 6.15 this morning for it! It was good fun..generally… but not quite what we had in mind. We preped the video cameras and waterproof housing the night before, thinking we could do a bit of filming as well but our power hour finished when the tide got a bit on the high side and the wind picked up even more! I think even holding a video camera, let alone trying to press filming buttons in those conditions would have been almost impossible!

It’s sessions like that where you think if I can land this move in these conditions or even learn something new then that’s one ticked off the list of being able to do it in all conditions. Shame it was the puneta show and I didn’t land anything new but did get close to a new combo for me…so learnt something! Time to crack out the gloves and hoods…

On my way home yesterday and thought I would stop off at Weymouth for a quick power hour of glassy flat freestyle.

Feels like ages since I’ve actually had a fully dedicated freestyle session, aside from the 5 gusts I caught at the lake at Aussie Kiss! Turned out to be an amazing session on the 4.9 Superstyle and 88 Twinfin Twintip. Busting out all the old moves and even a couple new ones helped me keep up to date with a lot of the new moves/combination moves that are coming out at the moment.

It was pretty gusty but that freestyle board was unreal, so spinny, still fast and with loads of pop!! Off for more practice now and even more tmrw! 14/15 degrees and we are in Nov!! 25 knots+ wind forecast for almost everyday this next week and 25 knots+ wind pretty much everyday for the last week!!! Happy days!!

Also noticed someone taking photos at Weymouth yesterday… would love to get hold of them if anyone knows who it was?!

So a quick write up on the event…

Seeing the forecast I decided to head down a couple days early via Exmouth and thanks to google maps for taking me the slowest route possible. The conditions were amazing, fully down the line, with head to logo high sets, probably the best I’ve ever seen anywhere (in real life). It was certainly a good days practice considering as all my wave sailing I do at the moment only seems to happen during competitions.

photo: JC

Competition day (92l RRD Twinfin/84l RRD Hardcore Quad and 5.3/4.9 RRD Superstyle) – the wind pretty much did as forecast and picked up all day…until the final… but with the dropping tide this meant we had some pretty decent conditions for most of the comp. I was pretty careless in my first heat, just going for broke and trying to hit the latest possible aerial I could at the end of every wave, resulting in a lot of crashes. This left it pretty close to the mark and put me a bit on edge. Playing it safer in the second heat saw me score a reasonable early wave but then I couldn’t pull it together for the next wave. So for the rest of the heat up until about 20 seconds to go I was struggling with the one good wave and nothing else particularly special. Getting worked for about 4 minutes with no wind to water-start didn’t help matters. This was after they had already abandoned our heat once already. Anyway with about 20 seconds to go I tacked onto a wave, nothing too big but made the most of it, scoring a small aerial right at the end.

photo: Globalshots, Jay Haysey

Thanks to everyone that has helped this year, particularly my sponsors providing me with all my RRD needs, Jai and Wouter at SeaSpriteSports and also Mike at TurfDog. Also Jem Hall for some acceptable abuse and good pointers/coaching tips. The support from my parents and girlfriend and all the good work from the guys behind the BWA. Last but not least, good work to Big Davey (fellow RRD team rider) for winning the masters at this event and overall 2nd!

Having received a few really nice shots from JC yesterday has kind of inspired me to write up how Tiree panned out for me.

We had a pretty epic drive up, stopping at Boardwise on the way for Bubble to pick up some gear and for Greg to grab some much needed fast food. It was cool to see the Boardwise shop, sooo much gear there!!! Arriving in Oban we stayed at John Bainbridges house the night, which we all massively appreciate as it meant sleeping in beds instead of upright in the van!!! Up early and on to the ferry then as soon as we arrived we drove straight to the Maze, where we scored some pretty decent conditions, head high 4.9 conditions on the 84l hardcore quad. The next day, we were hoping for the same before the start of the competition, but the wind failed to come through and the swell was not really happening, so sacking in the down the line mast foot high Maze we went for some shoulder high side on jumping at Crossapol, it was good fun on the 5.3 and my 88l freestyle twinfin as the ramps were very few and far between so I managed to make the most of them being on the plane the whole time.

Then the competition began… a serious amount of mincing was undertaken, especially with virtually no phone signal and limited internet access, as we were all trying to use it at the same time! That said the organisers arranged some form of entertainment after lunch each day; volleyball, rounders, football and of course the tow in windsurfing. JC got to warm his camera gear up with some incredible photos from all over the island which we got to see on the last day.

Thanks to JC for all the pics.

Right off to Aussie Kiss now for the next stage of the RRD Road trip, a student style demo weekend. My van is literally rammed with more kit than you can shake a stick at. In fact more gear than I’ve ever had in my van.