Friday 17 August 2012

100% Totally Professional.




This week I had the great pleasure of a visit from one of my bestest pals in the world, Ian "Chucky" Ross. Ian had had a busy summer at home and just needed a get-away-from-it-all break, so he got in touch and booked a last-minute flight to come over and stay at Casa Gibson for three days (his previous three year ban on staying at ours for gross misconduct, issued by Caroline, had recently been lifted). Although he needed to relax, he was also very keen to get in as much sailing as possible and he hit lucky. After a calm period of almost a week, the wind kicked in on Chucky´s first day and we sailed the first two days at Punta pretty much from dusk til dawn, 8 hours at the beach, over 5 hours water time! Fantastic! The last day was looking good for Sotavento so we did the hell-drive (1h20, not that bad really) and ended up getting a bit skunked. The wind was pretty strong for our 4.5s and building when it just suddenly switched off after half an hour and never came back!


Anyway, apart from the sailing, we had an amazing few days. Anyone who has ever met Ian will know he is great company and incredibly likeable, and we had a great time sailing together, drinking beer and generally having a laugh.



Apart from relaxing and having a darned good laugh, we also managed to squeeze in quite a lot of informal tuition as there were a few things that Ian was interested in learning/improving on. Again, what a success- he was consistently landing vulcans by the end of day 1, we tweaked his starboard forward rotation so he lands smoother (and doesn´t burst his eardrum any more), and he is getting ever closer to that elusive first flaka! For sure, we would have completed the mission by learning ponches down south on the last day if it weren´t for that pesky wind (Ian has tried before with me and was almost sailing away from them when the aforementioned eardrum stopped play). After the first day at Punta, when we had ticked almost all his boxes, I got it into my head that day2 would be the perfect day for Ian to learn air chachos. I gently introduced him to the idea in a spanish tapas bar after quite a few beers, and he was very receptive (and/or very pissed). So, the next day, we arrived at Punta with a whole new plan. Chucky had holed his window the day before sliding across it after (another) flaka crash (get used to it, amigo, I crashed like that for a year before I finally cracked them!), and used the opportunity to spell out the words "DO IT" in duct tape on his window to remind himself, he said, not to be a pussy. Well, it must have worked as I saw him fly into his first ever air chacho attempt after about 20 mins on the water! Well done, I admit it was a massive crash, one of the funniest wipeouts I´ve ever seen as he ducked the sail mid-forward, missed the boom and went flying off about 8 metres downwind of his airborne kit. Brilliant! I still have that photo in my mind and hope it stays there for a good while. In the end, he tried three and the last one was perfect, just a little low; he´ll get them when he tries back home. I´ll let Chucky tell you in his own words. " So today Gibson started the punishment with flakas. After crashing into the boom and sliding across the reef a few times he mumbled something about AIR CHACHO´s. Off he went and did one. DO IT he said, so 3 runs later I am being done by it and flying through the air while my kit is flying through the air nearby! Funniest wipeout so far!! 3rd attempt was the best but not quite high enough (the wind and waves had dropped a bit!) But I managed to duck the sail and go into the rotation. I have to say though it is the scariest windsurf stunt I have ever tried...I mean why would you try to duck gybe in the air, while doing a forward?!! But I have to thank Stephen for being so good at convincing me to try it...It was emotional!!! (not in a gay way!!)" Fair enough.

I could go on for hours about the fun we had, the great sailing, the little in-jokes blahblahblah, but instead I´ll leave you with this little video which captures perfectly the seriousness with which we approached Chucky´s 100% totally professional training camp. Enjoy...

Chucky´s "training camp", Fuerte 2012. from Stephen Gibson on Vimeo.


Saturday 11 August 2012

Puravida training, July 2012.



As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a week (10 days actually) training with team-mate Lucy Robson at the end of June/beginning of July. I don´t need to go into detail about it as Boardseeker did a feature on her trip with pics and vids, but we got some cracking photos courtesy of SailboardsFuerte Photoshooting, which we weren´t allowed to share til the article was released. Well, it´s out there now ( http://www.boardseekermag.com/features/travel/one-week-in-fuerteventura.html ) so I can show you a few of the photos. There are loads so I´ll probably make a facebook album and share them all eventually. Anyway, for now, here´s a few pics from Lucy´s visit, and be sure to check out the Boardseeker piece above...










Friday 10 August 2012

Summer videos.





You may have noticed that my blog suddenly went awfully quiet over the last couple of weeks and you may have induced that this was due to an unusual lack of wind over here at the height of summer. Wrong! The wind has been blowing non-stop (I´ve been told), but I´ve been living it up in mainland Spain on my holidays, kicking back with friends and taking a break from the "stress" of my day-to-day life, haha (see pics above).
During the month of July I spent a week "training" (read: sailing a lot and having fun) with my fellow Puravida/Fanatic/North/Ion teamrider, the immensely talented Lucy Robson. We got some epic conditions, epic photos and also shot a ton of gopro footage which my mate Jimbo has edited into this sweet video.



Gibson and Robson Puravida Team Training, Fuerte 2012. from Stephen Gibson on Vimeo.


Kind of captures the mood of a really fun week of sailing. Shortly after, I had the pleasure of my good mate Hobbsy from Cardiff (already documented in a previous post, black eye ring any bells?) and he shot a load of video aswell and used his incredible editing talent to produce the following masterpiece. Check this out for an edit, enjoy...


Stephen Gibson, July 2012. from Stephen Gibson on Vimeo.


As you can see, it´s been an incredible summer over here and I fully earned my ten-day sunlounger stint to recover from the non-stop action! It´s not over yet, though, by any means, I have my good friend Chucky headed for these shores tomorrow and the forecast is looking good. On the menu are vulcans, flakas and we also have a bone to pick with the ponch (burst ear-drum) from a while back. Gonna be great, watch this space...




Welcome to the site!
Aswell as regular features and news updates from Fuerte, I am going to be using this site to promote my windsurfing clinics.
After 15 years on the island,having competed in the PWA freestyle world cup and now representing Fanatic Boards and North Sails, I have decided to give something back to the sport which has given me so much over the years.
My aim is to provide clinics "tailor-made"for each individual, with a strong emphasis on practical in-the-water instruction, backed up by on-the-beach tuition and video analysis. The consistent conditions here in Fuerte make learning so much easier and, perhaps equally important, more fun than the typically inconsistent, cold UK - why not come over for a week and improve your windsurfing by a year!!!

I can help with any manoeuvres from carve-gybe through to advanced jumping and freestyle, just email me with your wish list and we'll take it from there! Over the next few months, I am going to be video-chronicling manoeuvres which you can check out on the right in my tricktionary sections. This will give you some idea of the things we can work on, or, if you can't make it over here, you may find them useful to help understand and break down a manoeuvre you would like to learn (hopefully, the slow-mo will help in this respect!).Just click on the trick and scroll down..........
Anyway, keep checking it out as I have loads more in my bag of tricks and will be updating as and when I get the footage.
If you're interested, e-mail me on gibboinfuerte@yahoo.co.uk
See ya in Fuerte?
Stephen.............