I got lucky

I was offered work in Dubai, so I went for it!!!!

At fi

rst I was a bit worried about if I would like it there, but in fact it was awesome!

I had to work most of the time, but had the time of my life! Great to work with the crew on a ship in the Dubai Drydocks and on my day off I had a great tour into the desert!

Many thanks to Rick Martini for the tour and making photo’s while I was doing the Palm tree Asana and surfing the sand dunes!

I think the Burj Khalifa is the prettiest high building I have ever seen, and the dancing fountain is full of grace, I had to dance with is, couldn’t help it

Sommigevrouwen

This is nice Just got this email with photo’s from a dutchie ” Frans”. This might be confusing…. a dutch guy named Frans, he is not French. See below:

Hoi Julia,

De beloofde foto´s van jou en dat leuke winkelwagentje. Danwel geen eerste prijs in de PWA, maar wel voor het creatiefste transportmiddel
Groeten,
Frans

Well, the competion is finished, the wind has finished, the waves are finished; it’s time to go back home! I fly back tomorrow night and have all my gear already packed. It has been a wonderfull time and I am so happy to have been here. I am really motivated for training and I want to come back here next year and wind a PWA prize El Medano is a lively, relaxed and very mixed town and the conditions can be so good! Thanks everyone who has supported me!

MAHALO!

 Here are some awesome pictures made by John Carter for the PWA.

In the “opening” ceremony, we had fantastic music! It was awesome to be dancing in a parade behind the musicians with their drums! We carried the flags of our countries and danced through the streets of El Medano. It was a bit strange to do the cermony on sunday, while the final had been on saturday already. Still, it was great!

 The winners of saturday’s final were honoured. The men who had won: First place Philip Koster, who is only 17 years old!!! And lives on the beach of Vargas, Gran Canaria, with his family, but the are originally German.It’s amazing his windsurfing; he seems unbeatable!  Second place is Danny Bruch, who comes from Tenerife. He became second because his waveriding is very good. Also because he knows the spot very well and knows how to pick the best waves.Third place was for Jaeger Stone from Australia! On this picture you see the three of them on the stage. On the right is Philip Koster holding the German flag, then Danny Bruch in the middle and on the left is Jaeger Stone holding the German flag.

Also the ladies were honoured! All of the winners are Spanish! Let’s get Spanish   As always, the Moreno (one egged) twins become first and second! But the news in this ranking was that (finally) Nayra Alonso had beat Karin Jaggi of (ever so often) third place!

I think everyone was very happy for Nayra. The conditions here in Tenerife were really good for waveriding and this is Nayra’s great talent. Here’s a picture of Nayra riding a wave in a heat! Masthigh!!!

Yesterday, I got a second chance in the double elimination round. Now, the conditions were extreme, it was just after hight tide, masthigh waves and a lot of wind. I took my smallest sail which was still too big! It was really challenging and I hoped I could do this heat without any accidents…  Again in the beginning of the heat I was a bit too nervous but later it went better. I had some nice waves and didn’t get washed by these big blue hollow monsters!

My opponent was Alice Arutkin from France. Her homespot is Wissant, a very nice windsurf spot, I have been there once. She has a lot of experience and when I spoke with her before the heat, she seemed really relaxed, quite amazing to see that! At the end of the heat she wrecked her sail in a big washing. Anyway, she did well and won the heat, but I checked out the grades we got from the judges, and it was not a big difference. I was happy I did well and I hope to find some pictures of the heat, since it was really awesome.

Other windsufers told me this is by far the nicest conditions of any PWA women wave competions; in Sylt there is either no wind or crude conditions, in Pozo it was a matter of survival. So I am so lucky that I got to be here and that my heat was just after high tide with the biggest waves of the day!

Waka Nishida, my room-mate, won her heat in the double elemination, against Amanda Beenen who is also from Holland. I felt sorry for Amanda but it is really awesome for Waka.  To get here, she had to travel 24 hours and it was not all for nothing…. Because she had won, she had to do another heat. But now, it seemed the wind had dropped a lot and she could not even start, broke the fin of her board on a rock, and since the heat was still on, asked for my board. I couldn’t say no and gave it to her, but it went terrible and she nearly wrecked my board on the rocks. I was really affraid I would lose my board there…. but it got only a small dent which can easily be repaired and she has to buy me a new fin, this was also fractured. Amanda managed to wreck all her gear. On thursday her board, yesterday her boom and sail. Heike Reiman sailed her whole fin off on thursday and lost her heat because of that. But won one heat in the double elimination yesterday!

I’m going to the skippers meeting now, I guess the will finish the double elimination today. Have a look at live video’s at www.pwa-worldtour.com

I’m a looser baby….   Yeah I lost… I was so nervous I nearly had to cry before my heat started. My waveriding was not as good as it was supposed to be because I could not think very clearly the first half of my heat; the tide had suddenly dropped a lot and I should have gone more upwind where the waves are better then straight in front of the judges tower.  Also I felt as if I was not surfing as normal and it was hard to time my clock well, so I had one great wave at the end of my heat but apparently, it was too late!

After the heat I became more calm. I realized that now it is over and I regret this… But perhaps there will be a losers round the next days. Would be nice to get some more experience here.

Off course it is great to be here  but I just don’t like losing…

Woooohoooo! Have to compete my first heat against Karin Jaggi! I think she is on the PWA tour for 15 years already, she is the most experienced and I believe the last competion, she was third! So this is extra tough to win from but an honour to sail against off course!
I am in heat number 17 b, will probably be around 17.00 today if all goes as planned. Could also be tomorrow…. The wind forecast says it will pick up a little bit, so I will probably be on 4.7.  I Haven’t rigged yet… go and try to relax a bit, visit the fysio, meditate. Hope to be feeling very good by the time I have to start! Keep your fingers crossed for me