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

Wow. Miami. What a place. Took a quick flight in with my good mate Kurosh to compete at the 2011 IFCA North American Slalom Championships. Rented the most obscenely pimped Ford F150 truck I’ve ever driven. Windsurfed all day, cruised South Beach all night … great times! I finished 3rd at the event behind Wilhelm Schurmann and Kurosh but points were tight and we each had a few wins a piece in the 12 races we managed. Miami is such a fun place to visit and my friends there (shout out to Diego, Alex “the Legend” Morales and Rick “Maui Malones” Randall!!) really looked after us and made sure we had a legendary time. Enjoy some pics and soon a quick video I shot with Kurosh driving our truck around the streets of Miami!

We just finished the 2011 Pegasus Airlines PWA World Cup in Alacati, Turkey. This was a super tough event with some uncharacteristically windy days in Turkey up to 35 knots. I didn’t have my small board with me at this event so I found it tough on the windy days and also had one of the worst crashes of my life after one of the races totally destroying my ankle halfway through the event. Managed to continue racing but now back in Italy a few days after the event I have been unable to walk on my ankle since! Enjoy some photos from the racing … all photos are by Tommy Della Frana from Point-7 apart from the first two which are by PWA/Carter.

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

This year the PWA World Tour traveled to a little Caribbean island called Aruba. Think blistering 35 degree heat, warm tropical waters and 25 knots everyday; perfect for windsurfing right? The water was super flat making the racing quite spectacular and challenging as not many guys were crashing in the turns like usual so you had to have good top speed to get through to the finals. I had a good start to the event but fell back a bit during the week and ended up in 30th. Not too bad I guess in only my 6th slalom event on the World Tour. To cap off a fun week some bandits robbed a bunch of us sailors at the beach and took off with my Canon 7D camera and a few other things – soooooooooooo devastated.

We’ve just finished up my first PWA World Cup Slalom event for the season in Ulsan, South Korea. I skipped the first event of the tour in Vietnam and thought I’d kick off in Korea as I really like this spot. As usual, it was a week filled with rice, language breakdowns, super strong winds, crazy hotels, more rice and bottles and bottles of Korean Soju. I finished 24th overall after the 7-day competition which is my best result on the PWA World Tour so far and kept me in the prizemoney.

On the first day we also had a “media race” with all the competitors starting together which I finished 6th in to add to the cash. Enjoy some of the photos from the event by PWA/Carter and as usual all the ones from the event party were shot by me.

I had to make a separate post for the windsurfing photos as there were just too many taken in Egypt! Dahab is an incredible place to sail and over 2 weeks we had conditions from super light to nuking +35 knots and sailed in many locations from the flatwater freestyle spots of Speedy Bay and Kamikaze (near the surf-clubs in the tourist areas) to driving north past the famous dive locations like Blue Hole, to find our own private reefs! I brought with me all my new Starboard iSonics to test and a bunch of sails from slalom to wave kit. Travelling with me was Markus Bouman and of course as always, the 400kg we managed to check-in for FREE with AlphaStar airlines also included all the camera gear I could muster.

Sadly, I lost one of my small cameras when I stupidly let a tiny piece of hair fall in to the waterproof housing which broke the seal whilst I was snorkelling (hello, waterlogged camera) and also took a full-wave over my Canon 7D which did actually manage to survive somehow! Good times. Enjoy the pics!

Getting ready to drive up to Sylt, Germany for the 2010 PWA Super Grand-Slam World Cup; the final slalom event for the season. Sylt is a miserably cold island facing the ferocious north sea and gets plenty of wind and big waves. It will be the first slalom event this year at a beach that isn’t flat water so I’m really looking forward to it! Should arrive sometime on Sunday morning – drive by night through Germany! Watch this space for more action …

Over the weekend I drove up to the west coast of Denmark for the WaterZ International Multisport event. A massive 30km downwind slalom race for over 220 competitors against 80 kiters was on the cards for us windsurfers. On top of this there were SUP competitions, a best-trick contest at the Cable-Wakeboard park and a massive party on the Saturday night in a fish market. Plenty of sitting on the beach twiddling our thumbs took place on Friday and Sunday with no wind on both days however Saturday for the downwind’er brought in 20 knots and plenty of mist. Impossible to see the gybe marks we had to follow a massive boat leading the way. Some of the guns including Albeau, Cucchi, Volwater, Kiani, Williams and Swift were in attendance and it was a good opportunity to make it back to DK and catch up with some of my old Danish friends. Check out more action on www.waterz.dk.

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).