The 2012 Asian Windsurfing Championships (and Singapore Open) are about to kick off on Thursday here in warm and sunny Singapore. Get the live reports from me with all the inside action by clicking the picture above!

Literally JUST getting off the plane from Europe I arrived back home to Brisbane and jumped in the car to drive 11 hours to Sydney for my first formula contest of the summer; the 2011 NSW Formula State Championships. All the guns were there, and this weekend I was doing a “full-Rick” (ie, using a completely brand new board, sail, mast, harness, fin, that I had never, ever used before) as I’d picked up a new 11.5 and 10.5 AC-1 ‘Handcrafted’ Series sail on the way home from Europe and had a new F167wide formula board sitting in the garage in the plastic for 2 weeks already before I got home. The wind was pretty light, and I managed to take 3 bullets from 3 starts winning one race by over 2 minutes on completely new gear and an old fin I found in the garage (happened to be a sweet one though!). Certainly great to come home to a win, and certainly great that my gear is going fast with absolutely no tuning.

Here are some shots we took the following weekend back in Brisbane as I had no cameras in Sydney. The photos were shot by the awesome David Kramer at Kawana in the surf in about 25 knots with no uphaul or chicken-straps on the new board; argghhh.

The 2011 Formula Windsurfing World Championships are about to kick off tomorrow here in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Get the live reports from me with all the inside action by clicking the picture above!

About 6 months ago I got some emails from some sailors in Mauritius asking about formula sails and fins. With +10,000 islands surrounding Australia, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to quickly throw Mauritius in to Google Maps and just check exactly where it was………. They had heard about me from my blog (www.CarbonSugar.com) where I’ve written a lot about training for Formula Windsurfing so it was good to see I am still generating hits on that site when I’ve had no time to write anything on there in the past year!

The dialogue continued for a few months and eventually the guys over there asked if I would be interested in coming to Mauritius to coach their elite Formula Windsurfing team. Coming up in August is the Indian Ocean Island Games; a mini-Olympics for the nearby islands of Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and Madagascar involving many sports – with the two sailing disciplines this time being Lasers and Formula Windsurfing.

I have a good background in coaching having coached Australia’s most noted women’s Olympic rep Jessica Crisp to her first ISAF World Cup win in 2009 on the RS:X, and running RS:X/BIC Techno programs in my home town and a few Formula clinics around the globe for over 3 years. I saw this as a good opportunity both to get myself tuned up for the upcoming Formula World Championships in Puerto Rico in early July and also to get out of the European cold back to a tropical island with climates I am used to. 14 hour flights later and I am in Mauritius trying to remember the horrific, tiny bit of French I learnt in Year 6 at school.

The Mauritian team consists of 4 guys, all kitted out with the latest equipment thanks to their Sailing Federation and Gaastra and blessed with a sailing club to launch from in Grand Baie, an incredibly beautiful, green-water bay that opens out in to the ocean full of dolphins, flying fish, turtles and local fisherman. For the 12 days I have been on the island we’ve had +20 knots each day, making it the perfect place to get my 11m dialled in and also get a chance to tune up the HWR which I have not spent so much time on having just picked one up at the FW event in Riccione the previous week.
My training regime consists of 2 sessions per day; in the morning we spend time working on technique and stance – drills, drills, drills. Making the boys sail endlessly around some slalom buoys making sure their gybes are perfect each and every time. After a fantastic lunch provided by our good friend Michael’s seafood restaurant down the road, we’re back on the water in the afternoon to do a bunch of short races, where I make some specific rules for the race to practice which particular skill we’ve been working on in the morning. If the wind is too light in the morning for an early session we spend the time on the beach going through tactics and rules and discussing situations that happened during the races the day before and how we can improve in those situations. There is no down time!
With this system in the 12 days I have been here we have made some really good progress, which is great because actually these guys are at a really high level already, pushing me in many of the practice races – amazing since they are so far isolated from the bigger international events elsewhere in the world.

On the ONE day of my trip we had no wind we spent the day exploring the main part of town on the other side of the island and seeing the local culture. My accommodation for the trip was to stay in a luxury resort on the waterfront in Grand Baie (Veranda Resort), with all meals provided and a very pimping room outside the multiple swimming pools to relax in after training each day. Having lived life like a king here it was interesting to see the other side of Mauritian life heading in to town and seeing the differences when you visit the more poverty stricken areas where people are living in tin sheds without roofs and mud all around. I guess this is still Africa in some respects…

Right now I am on the plane back to Italy before I start a horrific series of flights to get to Aruba for the PWA World Cup starting next week. From here I go Mauritius, Paris, Milan (9 hour stopover), New York, Puerto Rico (to drop off formula gear), Miami then finally Aruba. My rule of thumb is if you are flying more than 40 hours then you are definitely going to lose ALL your bags!!!! Let’s hope my rule is wrong this time.

So happy to have seen this amazing island although next time I will be bringing a Quad 82 and 5.0m because each day we sailed past some amazing reef breaks with logo to mast-high sets coming in from either end of the island. The coaching gives myself a refresher on all the things I need to think about when racing so I feel like I’ve learnt as much as the guys I’m training have while I’ve been here. I am confident the Mauritians are going to take the Gold medals home when they travel to Seychelles in August for the Indian Ocean Games… in the meantime, enjoy some photos from the island.

Just got back from the first Formula Grand-Prix World Tour event of the season in Riccione, Italy. We had ultra-light winds all week with only 4 races being held. I’ve had a busy season already just arriving back from South Korea the week before from the PWA Slalom World Tour event so this was the first opportunity to get out on my new sails and boards in an international event.

Here are some comments about the event from an article on Point-7.com:

“Because of the financial climate in Europe last year we actually had ZERO pro Formula events the whole of last season. So it was kind of surreal being down at Riccione and feeling like none of us had done any solid event training in so long. Normally you get a chance to see what everyone has been working on over the season with their gear tuning and know what you have to do to prepare but this time almost none of us had actually raced each other in over 15 months. I hadn’t had a chance to roll out the new sails and actually had a bunch of new fins and a brand new board that I’d never even got wet yet (not the best preparation!).

This time we’ll be prepared and the winds should be much stronger! Luckily on the event side of things, everything was fantastic! Great Italian hospitality and all meals provided at the beach with great entertainment each and every night; couldn’t have asked for more!”

I’ve won my 5th Australian Formula Windsurfing Title!!! After a 4-day battle with some of the best windsurfers on the planet, competing at an event I helped organise, I have managed to put myself on the podium coming in 3rd at the 2011 Downunder Pro as well as being the first placed Australian and winning another National Title. Check out a few photos above from awesome photographers Rob Plim from New Zealand and Adam Craven.

The 2011 Downunder Pro – Formula Windsurfing Championships is about to kick-off tomorrow at beautiful Hawks Nest, Australia. The Nest is an incredible beach only 2 hours north of Sydney, with incredible spots to go surfing, SUP, windsurfing, fishing as well as playing golf, lawn-bowls and generally kicking back and enjoying the Australian summer. You can check out all the results and photos on the Official Website and see a few photos from my helicopter shoot yesterday above! Photos by Paul Santelmann in the chopper

On the weekend of New Years Day, amongst the festivals and other parties I managed to put together a photoshoot with a few of my friends including Jesper Vesterstrøm who is out in Australia training this summer. The man behind the lens was the legendary Adam Craven (who is also a fellow windsurfer!) who volunteered his time for the shoot. The location was a small bay in Sydney Harbour launching from Clontarf which allowed us to sail right up to the cliffs along the bushland forest areas of the Harbour; an amazing location. Here is a few of the pics from the shoot.

Here are some photos from the FW Brasilian Championships which just finished this afternoon here in Fortaleza. The Grand-Prix World Tour event starts on Tuesday at the same location and as always, you can watch the live coverage from me right here on AUS120.com at this link.

I’ve just arrived in Fortaleza, in the northern part of Brasil in time for the Formula Windsurfing Grand-Prix World Tour event starting next Tuesday. I’ve re-started the live-event page so everyone can get the full coverage while I compete at the GP and also the Brasilian FW Nationals which are taking place on Fri-Sun at the same venue. Check out the live-feed below: