Tenerife 2015

This summer I spent 3 weeks training in El Medano, Tenerife. Now that I have retuned I finally have some time to do some typing. I sailed 2 to 3 times everyday for 3 weeks in  a good mix of sailing from very marginal  5.0 flat to hanging on to my 4.0 wishing I had brought my 3.3 !

Big thanks to Julian Salmonn for letting me stay with him for the first week. Really good to have a local contact and ripper as a friend.

This is all my packing that I hauled to Tenerife by myself. 

New sails

Luckly for me these beauties arrived just before I packed my bags. I got a 4.2, 4.7 and a 5.0 and I must say I love them ! They are fantastic to sail, They feel so light and responsive, Plus they are nice and bright !! I am really looking forward to trying them out with the new 3 batten option while "proper 'wave sailing at home. Big thanks to Jeremy at Jamie Knox for getting them to me before I left.

Week 1

My first week in Tenerife was epic ! On my first day I arrived at 4 O'clock, got a taxi at 4:30 and by 5 o'clock I was out sailing on the water ! I had a great time sailing with Julian and Tim Van Dam, It was great for us top push each others sailing standards. We had wind everyday varying from 4.0 weather to 5.0 sailing, So we had a bit of everything whilst training for the event.

Training before the event

Week 2 

The Opening Ceremony

Week two was the week of the Competition. For this week I was staying with my Dad who had just arrived, We were living right on the event site at Cabezo which was pretty cool but that wasn't the best part of that house, Downstairs we had a kit storage room which we happened to be sharing with Robby Swift, Marcilio Browne and Ricardo Campello ! This did mean we didn't have much space for our kit but it was still pretty amazing ! By the end of the week they all knew me by my name which is something I couldn't of really imagined ! I also made good friend with Alex Mussolini and Alessio Stillrich. 

Hanging out with Alex Mussolini and Adam Lewis

View from our house ! for the comp week, event site and judges tower

Riging up in our stacked kit room ! 

At the start of the week the event forecast was looking very poor and pretty worrying as it looked like it may be flat and windless (whilst unfortunately back home in Ireland was pumping!). But after the first two days the forecast began to change for the better. Sadly for me I didn't exactly get the better days of the forecast. My heat was run in tricky conditions and against very tough compeition of Loïck Lesauvage and Romain Cordier. Our heat was the first heat of day 3. It was held in light  5.0 weather with 2 waves,no jumps. Sadly for me I didn't make it through this heat, My main downfall in the heat was the fact I landed on the reef ( the only time in 3 weeks)  and spent half my heat getting myself and my kit beat (the only time i has happy to be on a old board) up on the rocks and when i did get off I only had one fin left, which didn't help :P That was it, there was no time for a double elimination which was a shame.S o that was pretty unfortunate but before that happened I was happy with how it was going. And in the end i finished up in 9th place.  The top 4 youths are damn good !  Julian lost too 3 time world champion Philp Koster by half a point after getting the local wild card into the main event.
I was also Robby Swift's caddy for the event. which was a real good experience especially seeing as that he ended up with 6th place beating the likes of Dany Bruch and Thomas Traversa.

One of the waves from my heat

I was also really amazed by Jager Stone's sailing ! It was epic what he could do on the waves whilst everyone else was struggling to do anything. and also very impressed by Crazy Antoine Martin  and his triple push loop attempts.

Stickring up my new sails

Week 3

For the 3rd week I was joined by Eoghan ,a friend from Ireland. It was a nice change to have an irish person around the place. With Eoghan arriving I still found time for Sailing everyday, The sailing also felt quite odd sailing Cabezo without 30  of the worlds best all trying to get the 2ft waves !

Exploring Tenerife

 During my 3 weeks of sailing I have really improved my sailing in all aspects, Onshore wave-riding, jumping,and just all round a better sailor.

Backloop photo from behind the bunker 

After running up La Montana Roja mountain.