Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Forward loop part 2- the second coming!

My friend Thomas from Belgium has just paid a return visit to our little island, his main aim this time being to crack forward loops on starboard. You may remember he came over in April and was a total star, nailing forwards on his more comfortable port tack in record time, eventually sailing away from some big, stalled ones. Awesome.
Well, we got some great wind but, unfortunately, at the start of the week it was all northerlies so we sailed Glass and Sotavento with wind from the left. On these days we worked on carving 360s(and one-handed 360s!), heli tacks and spin loops off chop, all of which he typically learnt with ease (although I´m sure he´ll have scars on his shins forever now from the 500 360s on the first day at Glass!).
For the last two days the wind turned northeast and we headed over to Punta for the much-awaited forward sessions. Despite being fairly doubtful as to his chance of success due to never having even jumped on starboard before, we built up to it and eventually did two hours on the last day of full-on forward looping, resulting in Thomas waterstarting out of four decent forwards and sailing away dry from a fantastic one right towards the end of the day! Once again, incredible progress in such a short space of time and proof that commitment is the key to learning any manoeuvre-we sailed for an average of four hours every day and Thomas never wilted at any time, always listening and giving 100%. It was great to sit on the beach at Punta on the last day and watch Thomas cruise out, pop a forward then carve a planing 360 on the face of a wave then head out back to helicopter tack, smiles all round......... hopefully I´ll have some pics and maybe even some video to put up soon but the forward loop, especially the last, perfect one will have to remain as a memory as we weren´t filming at all that day. Good times.
I´ll leave you now with a short vid that Thomas put together of his second day in April, remember two days earlier this guy had never tried a forward in his life, enjoy...........

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)



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.............