Sean O'Brien, Pro Windsurfer – seanobrien.com.au™

So once again we hit Sylt, Germany for the biggest windsurfing event on the PWA World Tour calendar, the epic Reno Windsurf World Cup, and after 10 days of sitting around waiting for the wind we were sent home with NO VALID RESULT for this last contest of the year; despite running a few of the first round heats on the Tuesday where I was in a nice qualifying position holding out Bjorn Dunkerbeck in my heat. That being said, around 100,000 tourists came to the beach over the week to watch the (non) contest and enjoy the insane festivities, beach parties, pro-rider signing sessions, nightclubs, tow-in freestyle competitions, SUP races and all things crazy that is SYLT! Enjoy a few pics from Carter/PWA and ContinentSeven.com.

We’ve just finished the 2011 PWA World Tour Grand-Slam on Fuerteventura, Canarias. This is one of the windiest locations on the tour and this year was no disappointment with super high-winds each day and even 2 full days of winds close to 50 knots !! I had a fairly shocking event not handling the nuking days too well but I did have one super round where I managed to get 6th in my FIRST World Cup slalom winner’s final !! Nice one. So at least I took something away from the event. Also spent most of the week commentating with my buddy Kurosh Kiani as you can see in the first pic; good times.

Photos by PWA/Carter and Dennis Boisen

Not much wind for the last few days of my trip to Tenerife so most of the time was spent with the Point-7 Pro Team running up the mountain next to El Medano where we were staying and a few sessions out on the big sizes of the new slalom gear. Here are a few snaps of the team out on the water and on the flight back to cold Italy.

We’re currently out on Tenerife, Canary Islands at the moment with the Point-7 Pro Team getting some training in and shooting some videos. For the past 5 days there has been ZERO wind so a few of the boys thought we’d go and check out the nightlife in Las Americas, the bigger town on the opposite side of the island to where we’re staying. I don’t think I saw one Spanish person all night; plenty of clubs, tons of people out, but all just English tourists here on cheap holidays and most of them were in fancy dress. Say hello to Big Bird, some NFL giants and a lot of guys dressed in Morph suits. WTF.

Today we visited FoxSports in the north of Holland to pick up some new iSonic slalom boards! FoxSports are the Starboard importers in the Netherlands and there I picked up a brand new 90L and 107L to compliment my 127L for this season. It’s a good feeling picking up new gear; keen to get them on the water next week in Italy. A carton of beer for the boys at Fox for their troubles and we were on our way…

Well, that was my first experience of the PWA World Cup on the island of Sylt, Germany. This was the biggest and final event for the year with over $150,000 in prize money and 10 days of competition. Unfortunately for me I let the cold weather get to me a little and missed the first few rounds of racing when I caught the flu that was going around up here. Still haven’t properly recovered the week later however I did manage to have a great time and learnt a lot so the experience was never a waste! Photos by PWA/Carter, myself and Tommy from Point-7.

Arriving at an airport with 30 bags (900kg) of excess baggage to check-in between 6 people only 25 mins before your international flight leaves is no easy feat. Here, Alberto Menegatti, Andrea Cucchi and myself explain how we not only checked it all on for free, but had time for a drink and sandwich after.

After the closing ceremony of the PWA World Tour event in Alaçati finished up, the windsurfers took our VIP bus to one of the biggest clubs in nearby town Çeşme – Babylon Aya Yorgi! Live bands, DJ’s, crazy sunglasses, Burn&Vdoka shots and the most I have ever paid for a taxi ride to get home later; it was Sunday morning and we were back at the beach.

After a week in Italy without clean clothes (due to my missing bag) I’ve made it down to Alaçati, Turkey, for the next slalom leg of the PWA World Tour. After three days of no wind and blistering heat, Turkey lit up on the first 2 days with 5 rounds of slalom completed. I’ve had some gear troubles not having a big enough fin for some of the tight courses but it’s still early days in the event. You can follow the progress on Twitter as the internet connection at the beach is too slow to update my site. Photos by PWA/Carter and Rémi Villa.

We’ve just finished up on the desert moons of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, for the PWA World Cup. Despite blowing +35 knots the previous week we trained the wind failed to produce during the event and I was a little caught off guard having not brought my biggest sails and fins with me. None the less there was plenty of racing and action during the week and an opportunity to finally get out on the water with my new boards from RRD! (Photos by PWA/Carter).