Hossegor France

After browsing for flights to Brazil (£800!!) I decided to take a much cheaper September trip to France. Before doing some Turfdog promotion in the North of France, my girlfriend and I decided to do some surfing in the south of France in Hossegor. This area at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay is famous for its long sandy beaches and barrelling waves which feature in the ASP Surfing World Tour in late September. I though it unlikely that it would be windy enough to windsurf, as this area is usually pretty light at this time of year, I was lucky enough to have 3 out of 5 days sailing. The conditions were windy enough to float and waveride, with some side/side off conditions making for some good windsurfing in the punchy waves and in a warm slightly less expensive location.

One of the best things about this place is the fact that even in very little swell the waves can be really nice and finally we had a day with 6.5 ft swell, giving up to triple head high faces at some of the breaks. I was pretty excited as in the last year I haven’t had the time to do much surfing and this was the first really good day. In one of my more special moments I decided to take off right on the inside and do a nice air drop wipe out then over the falls with the lip, all on my fist wave! This lead to a good pinning to the seabed followed by a board straight to the head (being too lazy to change to my longer leash) and a nice little gash in the side of my head!! Note to self: THINK!!!!

Bank Holiday Weekend

Finally after a 2 months wait I got my new shipment of 100 Turfdogs. I picked them up on the Wednesday before the bank holiday. In the process of this I discovered my vans breaks were a little warn (all the pads and disks were shot). This meant I spent Thursday and Friday morning figuring out how to replace them and building boards for my awaiting Turfdog customers! Finally finished by mid Friday, I set of for Worthing for the UKWA Freestyle and Slalom event. After half an hour suck in the usual bank holiday traffic for five and a half hours for a two hour journey!!



The Saturday of the event was pretty light for windsurfing, but perfect Turfdog conditions, so naturally spent most of the day demonstrating!!! the boards.


Team Rider Adam Sims Showing off his skill.

Sunday proved a bit better for sailing, with good wind for the first half of the day. It was quite interesting helping out with the judging off the freestyle event, seeing the perspective other than just a competitor. I also managed to get quite a bit of sailing done in-between heats.


Judging with the help of Nick and Ant Baker.

With the event over on the Sunday I was itching for a wave sail. The wind was filling in on the east coast I headed back home to Suffolk on the Sunday night. I have never sailed in Norfolk and with the conditions to off shore locally I headed a couple of hours up the road early Monday to North Norfolk, Cromer. I found this to be big, but to on shore with the wind was bouncing off the cliffs making it light. I was pretty gutted I had driven all that way for nothing until one of the locals told me to check out a place called Waxham down the road. It was a bit more side shore, windier and with some head to logo high waves. I managed a good riding session and a bit of jumping. I will defiantly make the effort to sail Norfolk more. The wave also packed a bit of punch unlike most waves further down is Suffolk and a lot of places on the south coast.
All in all a pretty good bank holiday weekend.


Testing out my new Gopro boom mount mid forward.