Hookipa 3 6 08

Great day yesterday. A bit crowded, but a lot of fun.

The best photo of the day award goes to Patrick Bergeron that yesterday was on fire. This is a sick table top aerial off the lip. Good job...


This one is pretty sick too. Francisco Goya duck jibed on the first wave of his session and rode it switch stance... !!!


I wonder if he can win this brain challenge... I can't:
While sitting in a chair, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. While doing this draw the number six (from the top) in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction. There is nothing you can do about it...

This photo gets the main page because:
1) it's me
2) I love the spray of the wave
3) I love the colors of my superfreak


Another advantage of having such a sail is that when you sail next to Anne-Marie and yell to her:"nice bikini t-shirt combo!", she smiles and replies:"thank you... hey, it matches your sail!"
Anne-Marie you are officially invited to a photoshoot laying down with your bikini on my sail...


Or maybe if you buy a white superfreak you can paint it the way you want (and try to impress girls...).


Andres was trying out a 2009 Smack prototype. He loved it.


Keith Taboul and Jason Prior figure eighting. Thanks to Glenn for taking some of these photos.


This photo gets the main page NOT because it's me, NOT because of my lame turn, but because of the turtle in the wave in front of me.


More photos in the slide below. More and MUCH BETTER photos on Ray's website.

the diving bell and the butterfly

I saw this movie the first time a couple of months ago.

It hit me hard.
Then I read the book.
Yesterday I saw the movie again... it hit me even harder.
And this morning I'm even happier than usual to just be alive and I'm going to enjoy even more the surf session I'm about to have.
Merci Jean-Do for your incredible effort and your extraordinary spirit. I'll ride a few waves for you.

PS. Thanks to the MACC for bringing non-mainstream non-hollywood movies to Maui.

Goya 90l custom wave series review

As mentioned in earlier posts, I recently had some awesome light wind wave riding sessions.
This was also due to some pretty damn good pieces of gear I put my hands on. Specifically:
- a great board
- a great fin
- a great sail.

Today's review is about the board. The reviews of the other two components will follow soon... stay tuned.

I my search for the holy grail of light wind wave sailing, I've been testing a bunch of big wave boards lately. Finally I put my hands on something that got me stoked from the very first wave. The reason is that in this case I didn't have to adapt my style to the fact that it was a BIG wave board...
In fact, I ride it the same way I ride my smaller boards and that's something remarkable, considering that I can easily uphaul (both feet at the water level... my weight is 70kg/154 pounds), float through the lulls and yet rip on the wave.

This video has been shot in very, very light wind conditions. The board is so floaty for my weight that I didn't even need to rig my biggest wave sail: a 5.5... the advantage of having a lighter 5.0 with a shorter boom was huge.

Have a look, because I believe that the enthusiasm that you can feel in my live comment is more explicit than a thousand words...


Here's the board.











By the way, I have now enabled the comments again, but with my moderation. That means that the comments won't appear directly, but I will have to approve them.
I need to test this system, so I encourage you guys to post comments and let me know what you think and if you have specific questions about the board.

Aloha.