Last weekend saw the final ‘core’ event of the student series, Nottingham Pondlife! This was my first time to Nottingham and the event certainly did not disappoint with 2 epic nights out and 1 day of wind it was almost the perfect competition weekend. But it was so COLD!!! I have no idea what the temperature was but in 7 years of windsurfing this was the most painfully cold session I’ve ever had.  

Nonetheless on Sunday we had about 15-22ish knots of wind, enough for a freestyle competition! I grabbed my 5.5 Rock, which although is aimed towards wave sailing it’s a perfect light wind freestyle sail. As with sod’s law, the wind died as soon as we started competing, so the first rounds turned into lightwind freestyle flick-flack but thankfully the wind picked up just enough for the final. With it being so gusty on the lake and Louis’ ability to plane in almost no wind I started to worry in the final as he was doing a lot of old school carving freestyle, whilst I was bobbing around in the middle of the lake waiting for a gust. Thankfully half way through the final that gust came and I managed to flaka, which impressed the judges enough to win the competition.

The bitterly cold conditions at the weekend convinced me that I needed to get away in the summer for a windsurfing holiday. So just yesterday I booked flights to Fuerteventura with my girlfriend for windsurfing in the sun, we’ll be going during the PWA event at Sotavento in July, can’t wait!

For me its back to the dissertation for another month then I’ll be competing at my last ever student windsurf event, the student nationals. It’s sure to be a big finale. See you there!