Our first time windsurfing in Greece

I managed to arrange our last two weeks in Europe to include a week of windsurfing in Greece. I'd heard of Club Vass from UK windsurfing magazines and friends. It has been great so far.

The wind filled in here as it normally does on 3 of our first 3 afternoons. Apparently it was gustier than normal though. Even with the up and down winds, we've been having a great time.

My daughter out practising.

My 10 year old daughter got planing and in the harness for the first time yesterday! We are all very excited for her.

Today there was a set of slalom races and I came in 16th out of 40 entrants but since most of the competitors were locals and instructors, that was good enough for 2nd amongst the Vass guests. It was a lot of fun to have my family cheering on land as I crossed the finish line in each of the 3 heats.

The wind here is very peculiar. It is light onshore in the morning. It fills in at force 4-6 for a few hours blowing down the side of a mountain in the afternoon and then shuts right off again.

Dry land training.

Club Vass is awesome. The staff are largely very friendly British students working for the summer. They have a fun kids club, which my daughter can't wait to get to every morning and afternoon. The gear is all brand new JP boards and NP sails rigged on 100% carbon masts. My kids love the JP young gun 115l board.

Jumping lessons at the pool from Pro windsurfer Max Rowe

We all get windsurfing instruction mornings and afternoons. One of my coaches is Max Rowe, who is currently #15 on the PWA tour. How cool is that? Hopefully I'll land another Vulcan!

Last session in France

Click to enlarge
You can see 100 windsurfers starting a race...

It is a melancholy feeling realizing that my year of windsurfing-en-provence is over. In the 10 months that we were in Aix, I managed to get 31 sessions on the water. 3 sessions were failures. 4 sessions were in Egypt. 6 sessions were on rental gear here in France. The entire year was a blast.

I did manage to get in one more session after the one where I miraculously sailed away from a Vulcan. This last session was at Le Jai on June 11, where they were hosting a mini Defi wind. I didn't have time or the equipment to sign up for the racing, but it sure looked like fun. There were 120 windsurfers on the water with a ton of gear on shore. There were only 50 kiters out down at the kite beach.

I failed on the 3 vulcans I tried, but got 3 nice upwind 360s in the straps.


Upwind 360 from Canadian Guy on Vimeo.

The busy French beach scene

I've packed up the board and sails to take back to Canada. Luckily Lufthansa allows windsurfers as baggage and the Fanatic Skate 108 board is doing fine after my 20 sessions on it. I'm also taking home the Turfdog land sailing board.

We are also making one last side trip in Europe before we go, this time to Club Vass in Greece. I'm thinking I'll get a few good days there and look forward to adding a few blog posts on that.

I'd recommend France as a windsurfing destination. The beach culture, the stores, the local clubs all make you feel welcome. The wind is pretty good too, certainly better than Ontario, Canada. I'm lucky to be able to travel and find great windsurfing locations!

Success captain - my first vulcan?

Does it count as a vulcan if:

• You jump
• Turn the board 180 degrees in mid air
• Slide going backwards
• Get both hands to the other side of the boom 
• Stay in the footstraps the whole time 
• Fall in a bit (my butt got very wet) 
• Basically do a waterstart switchstance 
• Start sailing away switch 
• Switch your feet and start planing?

If this counts, I did a vulcan at attempt #155 at 46 years of age. What do you think of the video?


Success captain - my first vulcan? from Canadian Guy on Vimeo.

I headed up to the new beach I found, hoping that the flatter water there would help me. My first try #135 was close, and the next 18 were all over the place. Finally the wind was dying and I was staying close to the launch, sailing very upright trying to stay upwind, I hit some chop, twisted and voila...

If my butt was that wet on a jump gybe I'd be fine with it.. However this didn't feel elegant, kind of like falling in on the other side when doing a shortboard tack but still getting away with it. I need to read up on how to "pre-load" my hips for the 180, I was trying twisting both ways.

Anyway, I hope that I'll get it looking better, and am already starting to read and am thinking about how to turn the Vulcan into a full spock 540 - I can dream. All of the comments from blogging friends (yes you Aaron) and the ABK facebook forum helped. Definitely doing 20 a session like I have the last few outings helps more than doing 2 or 3 like I was doing at the beginning of this quest. Maybe that is why it took me over 1.5 (correction 2.5) years to get one.


There wasn't anyone to actually see me and provide verification. In fact the beach was so deserted I took a picture of it before I left.

The shadowbox recording in the video reveals that I basically did an "in the straps rail ride" for a moment before getting the board flat again. Especially looking at the CGI graphics, since it just pastes a sail at right angles on the board, it seems kind of unreal that I sailed away from it.

Ok, on to the Star Trek bit for anyone who stumbled upon this thinking that it was a Trek post. Here is a "success captain" sound bite from Spock.






While we are on Star Trek, did you see this? The geek in me thinks it is brilliant.

I hope she said "make it so..."

Defi Day 3 - Le vent est mort

The wind is dead: Long live the Defi wind

The wind reports this morning confirmed what most had suspected would happen; Le vent est mort. I cancelled the last night of my hotel stay, packed up my room and headed to the beach to de-rig my last sail.

A light rain kept things pretty subdued as many of the remaining competitors were washing and rolling up their gear.The famous Tramontane wind had given up.

A quieter day on the Defi beach in Gruissan

I got an email from my new UK windsurfing buddies that they were already on the road. They were hoping to catch some English channel wind and waves on their way home.

I never did meet up with the one other north american competitor but I did see pictures being taken of him with the US stars and stripes during the international flags photo shoot.

I did meet New York Times photographer George Steinmetz who had flown in to do a photo essay of the Defi windsurfing tribe. I think the action from last year's sunny and very windy event may make for better images, but there is no masking the passion the tribe here has for our sport. I'm very much looking forward to seeing his pictures. Here is my favourite shot of the event so far, captured from the video link below...

Nice shot of the start. The boat raced to the beach with us
windsurfers passing behind it at full speed.

I began the drive home through the rain and noticed a lot of campers and cars with trailers with Gruissan bumper stickers heading north. I put in the fabulous band Las Vegas Wedding's CD that I bought at the concert last night and relived that awesome part of the Defi. I'm sure I'm missing a good party tonight too, but I hope to come back some day, maybe with my kids as competitors too?

The car is packed; but I'm sad to be leaving Gruissan and the Defi

PS while I was in Gruissan, I found out there is another windsurfing race next weekend right at the Marignane Le Jai sailing spot closest to my temporary home in Aix-en-Provence. I may hold on to the rental slalom gear for another week. I'm loving the French passion for windsurfing and racing events and plan to make the most of my last two weeks in France.

Here is a great video of the Thursday race at Defi 2011.

Defi Wind Day 2: Results

I was very happy to get to the beach this morning and see the results of yesterday's race.

I came in 197th place out of 870 registered riders.  It looked like 767 had picked up their lycras to compete, but only 551 people actually started and/or completed the whole course with results. So I was in the top 1/4 of entrants or top 1/2 of finishers. Either way, I'm pretty stoked to have achieved my goal!

The results are in - I'm #197

The top finisher Patrik Diethelm did the whole 35km course in 45 minutes; the last to complete the course took 2.5 hours. My time and speed chart is below. It is interesting to see just how much time my fall in the water at 20 minutes used up. The rest of the slow periods were just a result of slogging through lulls.

Defi race GPS, max speed 44km/h, avg 25km/h.
Time for 35k, 1h 18min

My Defi day 1 GPS track - 35km of racing;
40km including getting to the start and back

Today the 8am skippers meeting was reasonably well attended since the wind was looking around 8 to 15 knots. Unfortunately it wasn't quite enough, so they kept us on standby all morning.

I had fun taking pictures and checking out the shops and gear. The sun came out and there were more non windsurfers on the beach too as Gruissan is really a family resort town, especially when the wind dies.

Safety boats on standby

What yesterday's winners Patrik and Karin
did while waiting for wind

The demographics of the Defi were definitely younger than the few events I've been to in North America. There are 100 teenagers under 20 competing, with a few 12 year olds complaining that they can't join the race until next year. While there is some grey hair on the beach, the vibe is energetic with kids just happy to get out on the water. Windsurfing in France is really big. Naish sponsored a girl power event where a cool group of young women windsurfers were interviewed. The NP RS:One races in the light wind were hotly contested.

There was a broad range of equipment being used yesterday at the Defi. There were a few guys sailing SUPs. There were some vintage boards and sails being used too. My Le Jai acquaintance Maarten from Holland was sailing an old BIC Vivace 290. But most people had cambered sails, and the pros had full on race sails with slalom boards. (While I have the soapbox, please don't ever let friends who want to learn windsurfing buy an old race sail. That goes for shop owners selling used gear too. Old race stuff is just too hard to rig and sail.) Today, it was great to see so many kids out enjoying the wind and water on pretty simple windsurfing gear and SUPs.

The afternoon ended with a huge helicopter group photo shoot. My thoughts of getting wet on a rental or demo SUP were dashed as they were all in use by other enthusiastic water sports fans.

Defi aerial group shot - I'm in the lower part, in amongst the sails

Later in the day Levi Siver and Jason Polakow made a quest appearance, signed lots of autographs and posed for pictures. They joked about riding one of the long rubber tubes down Jaws some day. They were also on hand at the evening video presentation of their new Oxbow movie Walls of Perception. It was a good flick showing how surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing share the same passion for water and waves.

There was also an amateur movie festival, with the funny documentary about a man's obsession with the Defi taking top honours.  The 2 man band Las Vegas Wedding absolutely rocked the place, and later the vibes were very cool as Bonaire windsurfer and musical poet Ruben Petrisie kept the crowd dancing with his rapping at the mike. I had to head to bed at 1am, as I am still sore from yesterday's race. All in all, a neat day on the beach hanging around with lots of cool windsurfers.

It is pretty amazing that windsport has picked up my blogs and posted some to their site. Check out:

http://www.windsport.com/news_article?news_id=1166

There are also a lot more pictures of day 2 at:
http://www.facebook.com/LeDefi

Day 1 Defi wind race report

A successful race on the first day of the 2011 Defi windsurfing race in France.

The wind continued through the night and I arrived at the beach in Gruissan at 10am to start rigging my gear. The plan was to have everything ready that might be needed for the 3pm planned first race start.

The parking lot is a parade of international license plates. I parked next to two British sailors who made the trip to the Defi with a massive collection of new JP boards and NP sails. Thankfully they knew how to help me rig the cams on the Gaastra sail (with a broken batten) that I had rented. I paid it forward by helping a French guy rig his NP V8 for the first time - I've got one of those at home. It took a while to get 3 sails and 2 boards ready to go and down to the crowded beach.

The beach scene at the Defi

After a quick bite of lunch (fois gras was available at the beach but I'd had some the night before) it was time for the 1pm skippers meeting. The hour long introduction to the Defi had all the important points nicely translated into English for us visitors. The race is a marvel of safety and organization and thankfully so as the course is set in a direct off shore wind. 50 support boats are out on the water. 40 markers are lined up 800m off shore to serve as a course boundary and as last resort rescue stations for anyone who might break down. There are sign out and return forms to ensure that everyone who goes out comes back. It sounded like there were around 800 racers participating this year that needed to be accounted for.

The race route was basically a 9km run down the beach, a gybe, return close to the start, gybe again, back to the first mark, and then back to the starting line. Apparently there is more wind as you get farther from the start line. But most of the sailors who were already out on the water had two speeds - fully powered or slogging as the winds varied from 9 to 30 knots. The big question what what gear to take. My choices were a 7.5 sail with 135l 85cm wide slalom board, or a 6.0 broken batten sail with a 91 litre speed stick. I decided to go big.

Wind at Gruissan 9-30 knots after the race start at 15h

Going big turned out to be the right decision. I was pretty comfortable in my few reaches over toward the start line. I didn't try to get too close to the several hundred sailors who were slogging right at the line where the boat would go by as it traced a rabbit start from offshore up to the beach. Instead, despite being late over the line.I was fully planing and passed around 100 sailors in the first minute of racing. I continued to catch and pass people for most of the first reach even though I was getting tired from going 9 km in the same direction. It was finally nice to see some of the fast sailors coming back at me and it wasn't as hard to find room as I had expected when 400 sailors are going one way while 400 are starting back another way.

At the gybe, the wind had dropped so there was quite a bit of action as sails were being dropped and people were floundering. I made it around slowly but cleanly and may have been one of only a few people smiling. Hey, I was 1/4 done, and maybe, just maybe I would make my goal of being in the top 1/2 of the fleet. Of course, just as I was thinking that, I got catapulted. I had a hard time waterstarting the 7.5 and got catapulted twice again right after each waterstart.

I took a deep breath, relaxed and started out more cautiously, and finally got my foot into the back strap. Most of the 2nd reach was pinching upwind to try and stay close to the beach and make it to the mark without needing to tack. I did make the mark and had a good gybe heading back downwind. Now I was over 1/2 done. It was scary a few times to bear off and take on full speed in the gusts. There were also a few big lulls, where for a moment I would plane longer and pass the people in front of me, only then to be passed by some others after I stopped planing.

The last gybe went well for me as well, as I had realized it was right in the shore break. Keep your head up, don't look at the wave, but know that it is there. Leave lots of room around the people who have fallen or are about to. I started back to the finish line, and again had a good run. A bit of slogging right at the end, but I managed to finish the race in what felt like the first 1/2 of the fleet. It is amazing to be out on the water with so many other people. Everywhere you looked there were windsurfers with yellow lycras.

Pretty happy to have finished!

Two boats were recording the numbers on our race lycras at the finish line. I'm really hoping they saw my number. We'll have results in the morning I'm told.

After getting back to the beach and signing in, I took some pictures and enjoyed a tequila flavoured beer. We all started storing and/or derigging our gear. I met up with the nice Dutch guy I'd met at Le Jai a week ago and we all watched the opening ceremonies. Each of the 25 countries' participants were called on stage and indeed I'm the only Canadian. There is also one sailor from the US. International sailors did well, with Patrick Diethelm of Italy being the first male, and Karin Jaggi of Switzerland being the first female to cross the line.

The big crowd at the opening ceremonies

I'm thrilled to have completed another one of my windsurfing goals. Sorry for the length of this post, but I'm guessing you can tell I'm pretty excited to have participated in the Defi wind. The wind looks questionable tomorrow and they have called an 8am skippers meeting just in case there is still some wind in the AM. I'm off to bed now as I am more than a little tired.

The one Canadian guy being interviewed at the Defi.

Defi windsurfing race starts tomorrow

Back when my wife suggested we take a one year sabbatical in France, I had already started hatching a plan to try and experience the Defi wind 1,000 person windsurfing race. Now the first day of racing is only 18 hours away.

I got up this morning, checked out the wind online in Gruissan and it was blowing 30-50 knots. Wow. I loaded up the car with my rented slalom gear and started the 3 hour drive to Gruissan, site of the 11th annual Defi wind race. The signs on the highway were actually warning about Vent Violent!

Today was a windy day in France
(not my picture though, I was driving alone)

With my late start, a good but longish French lunch, and heavy traffic on the roads in advance of a 4 day long weekend, I arrived at the registration desk late in the afternoon. I got my lycra with my favourite number 810 on it. But I didn't decide to rig up for another test session.

I'm registered, I've got my Lycra and
I am looking forward to tomorrow!

There were around 80 people out practicing in the gusty offshore winds. And many more were in the parking lot rigging gear and setting up their campers and tents for the weekend. Wisely or lazily, I am going to save my energy for tomorrow and the following 3 days of possible racing. (Well, maybe the cold, rain and a lack of sleep after enjoying red wine at my French cooking class the night before were contributing factors too.)

Arriving in Gruissan feels like the first time that I arrived in the Gorge or Maui. You don't feel so alone as a windsurfing enthusiast. There are cars with boards stacked on their roofs, campers with windsurfing stickers on the back, and a huge variety of gear trailers. There also seem to be a lot of sponsored team riders here. License plates are from all over Europe, and apparently over 20 countries are represented including Peru! I'm looking forward to seeing if there are other Canadians.

The town of Gruissan is a beautiful French resort town, with nearby vineyards, marinas, a small convention centre, a huge beach-front, and plenty of flowers. It is listed as one of the Villes Fleuris because of the care taken to add flora and fauna to the streetscapes. Gruissan also has the ruins of a 13th century château/fort nearby. This weekend it is all about the windsurfing though, even the big screen municipal announcement board was showing video footage of last year's Defi as I drove into town.

I hope to be able to report about a completed 40k race tomorrow.

The Gruissan beach and Race central in the background