Fun in the south of France at the Funboard centre!

It was the first time in 11 years since I’ve been back to the south of France. 420 blog posts later and the French name of my blog makes sense a bit again! One of the first stops after we arrived in Provence was to check out Le Jai Beach right by the Marseilles airport. I’d taken a selfie there years ago:

Visiting my old windsurfing spot - Le Jai

My blog post from 11 years ago (they repainted the statue)

Still busy at the end of October

Foiling is popular

View from the Le Jai car park

Jen and I are now visiting her parents and decided to take a trip to the Almanarre / Hyeres region and see what the different Windsurfing spots had to offer. I had been there just once in the year we lived in Provence. I was eager to get back and see what the conditions were like.

Gonna be fun at the Funboard Center!

We drove first to the Funboard Center. We talked to Eric Thieme the owner (and famous PWA sailor) and it looked like pretty good wind but maybe a bit side offshore and sheltered to get going until it built a bit more. He had got windsurf and Windfoil gear but no wing foil gear. So we decided to take a look at a couple other spots including spinout.Fr

Fanatic gear at Spinout.fr and Almanarre in the distance

Checking out the east side kite beach

East side kite beach panorama

West side beach panorama

There are lots of other kite surf beaches but no other rental gear I could find. It was interesting that pretty much everywhere we went there was an equal mix of 1/4 Windsurfing 1/4 wind foiling 1/4 kiting and 1/4 wing foiling. The French really seem to be getting into every kind of wind and water sport. What was really amazing was for Wednesday at the end of October how many people were out on the water in all of the different locations. Of course it helps that the weather was 24°C! 

After looking around a couple of different places we decided to go back to Funboard Center. We had some nice quick delicious salads but I was eager to get going. I took a Tahe 130 with a pretty big foil underneath it was perfect. I just could head out of the wind shadow a little bit with the 6.2 Neil Pryde sail and get going. I had both feet in the straps and was cruising on the buttery smooth water as there’s a nice long and low peninsula that keeps the water smooth but the wind pretty steady.

I sailed for the full hour that I had rented and got to see Jen out stand up paddle boarding a bunch of times on my jibes on the way in. It really is spectacular to be here.

Nice to support a fellow Fanatic school!

All smiles!

Erik Thieme and me!

Windfoiling in Almanarre - halfway down the peninsula 

My GPS trail shows that I did 18 km in the hour I was out and was planing for 60% of the time. I think I need to get back down here at least another time in the next four days that we’re here.