So it only took a week or so to get round to it but I recently had the pleasure of heading up to Hamburg for a visit to Sailloft’s Sailloft. It’s the second time I’ve been there so nothing new upon arrival apart from the fact that I would be sleeping literally in the Sailloft and I would be there for 48 hours. It was actually really cool as I felt like I was in a real part of windsurfings core. We all know that Germany is the biggest windsurfing nation in the world, and if you didn’t you do now, so to be at the HQ of one of the leading brands and to spend 48 hours developing brand new prototypes and really having deep discussions about why things work and what solutions we could come up with without resorting to materials that we really didn’t want to go near, was great.

From top down – Sails boxed and ready, the bed rolled up, the sail being worked on, the tools of practice…

The main aim for my trip was to help develop the Quad range, to see if we can do anything to it to suit the PWA freestyler as much as the weekend warrior (a very hard task seeing as it works so well at the moment). In the end we cut and stuck two prototypes ready for the next stage of testing and have a whole stack of ideas for the coming year. So the R’n'D process will continue for the next 6 months with input from all the international team riders and hopefully then be ready in time to produce a fresh new 2014 sail, for 2014.

To be honest that’s about as much as I can say right now but I’m stoked to be a part of a brand that is so pro-active and avoids cutting any corners to make a quick buck. On top of that is the Sailloft Quad+ which won the top spot in the recent German Surf Mag test. Pretty good going especially as they took the top spot for the original version of the Sailloft Quad last year.