Monday 24 November 2014

Storm's a brewin'...

Last weekend saw the Canaries on 'orange alert' for an approaching Atlantic storm and it hit us, in a disappointingly mellow fashion, on Saturday. I say mellow but it rained really heavily for a couple of days and the wind did actually get up to a very strong 60 mph just after I finished sailing at el Hierro. In fact, it picked up to that while I was derigging and I've still got some of the Saharan dirt in my ears. Probably. Anyway, to cut a short story even shorter, we rocked up to the northshore on the morning of the predicted storm and  had a quick look at La Caleta, which was small and a tad too offshore then had a spy at el Hierro, a renowned surf break which can occasionally produce the goods in a WSW or ENE and were fairly inspired by the conditions there. Last time I sailed there it was massive and I was overpowered on 4.0, but this time was nice little head-high sets and wind for 5.0 (in the beginning at least). Great, fun session with the wind and waves building all the time until, like I said, it fully kicked in while I was derigging to the point where I could only see about 2 metres on the track on the drive home. Wish I'd taken a photo actually. Luckily for me, however, a friend of mine Gwenael Marche was on hand to get some nice pics of the sailing before all meteorological hell broke loose and we retreated to the shelter of our little house to hide from the fury of the ensuing storm...






 

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