Urgent Help Needed!!!

So my external hard drive seems to of been irrevocably damaged and I need some help recovering data from it. Please if there's anyone out there who is a skilled computer technician or could recommend one, I need to recover my photos from the drive for an article.

This is what I felt like doing once I realized the "back-up" drive with all my photos on it had stopped working...



I guess I'll have to start being obsessive and back-up my back-up. So I'll have to pick up two new drives. Oh my, the joys of technology. How quickly digital photos can be lost.

- Scott

Gear Liquidation!

I'm selling everything, EVERYTHING!!! That's right, all my windsurfing stuff is for sale and must go. Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up on the sport (although it's tempting given the lack of wind this season), I'm just choosing to reduce my quiver to 1 board and 3 sails. To make that work I'm selling everything and starting fresh.
**You can find all items for sale at the bottom of this post.**

I'll be looking for a Fanatic Freewave 86L or a AllWave 84L as my one board, and then a quiver of 3 sails (4.0, 4.7, 5.5). The sails will be either the Severne Blade or the Gaastra manic.

So I'm taking what I have now, 4 boards, 6 sails, 3 booms, 4 masts, and narrowing it down to 1 board, 3 sails, 1 boom, and 2 masts. Much more precises and efficient.

The plan is to shuffle my windsurfing money over to a new sport: Whitewater Kayaking. So when the wind is up and the conditions are good, I'll have the board and sails to get out, and when the conditions aren't good enough for the gear I have, then I'll get the kayak out and go do some paddling.

I'm eager to get this windsurfing gear out the door so I can get my new paddling gear in the door and on the river. I rented out a Dagger Agent 6.2 from Trailhead last weekend and took it to Meech Lake to practice some rolls with it and have some fun. It was a bit small for me (length wise), but it was really fun and I had some success with rolling it (thanks to some help from JF).

When I get my own kayak, I'll be looking at the Freestyle or River Play boats. Some of the manufacturers I have in mind are: Pyranha, Riot, Dagger, WaveSport, Bliss-stick, Jackson, and Fluid.

Ottawa is actually a world renowned location for whitewater kayaking and hosted the 2007 World Freestyle Championships. Check out some of the action right here in my home town on the Ottawa river:



For Sale:
2003 Starboard Hypersonic 105L
2005 Starboard Kombat 95L
2006 Starboard Pure Acid 73L (like new)
2007 JP Slalom 84L (inc. Tectonics Maui F-1 Falcon speed fin)

Chinook formula boom (~220-270cm)
Chinook Competition Boom (~165-214cm)
Chinook 45cm ex
Chinook 25cm ex
Sailworks adjustable outhaul system (inc. Chinook Double Sail Pulley)

2006 WindWing 7.6 (like new)
2007 KA Koncept 6.6
2007 Sailworks Hucker 5.6 (like new)
2005 Severne Blade 5.3
2005 Severne Radiator 4.5
2006 Gaastra Manic 3.7 (like new)

Powerex Z-Free 460cm mast
Powerex Z-Taper 430cm Taper mast
Prolimit TeamWave Harness (medium)

**If you're interested in any of this gear, let me know by leaving a comment and I'll get back to you via email.

- Scott

A newly published photo and a new photo Assistant

One of my photos from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, made it into the Summer 2008 issue of Windsport. It was featured as a 2 page spread for the "Forecast" section on page 8 of the magazine. The talented sailor in the photo is Mike Fischer, thanks for modeling Mike! I'm really happy with the way it printed and glad I was able to add a short caption to the image this time to give it some context.
On another note, I have a new addition to my photo and windsurfing team, although he may not be the best photo assistant, he sure is a great dog! I thought I'd post up a few short videos of my new friend just to get some fresh content on this blog. I know it's been awhile. His name is Kona (after the winds in Hawaii) and I adopted him from the SPCA of Aylmer on July 10th. We've been having a lot of fun together, but there hasn't been any wind at home here in Ottawa since I got back from the Canary Islands, so he's still waiting for a chance to try some surfing. He'll get out there soon.

-Scott

A little video test

There hasn't been any wind today so I took a bit of video with my laptop camera so I could try posting some on the blog.

Tomorrow's my last day here in Spain. I'll try to get some more video of the area, maybe the OTC and the beach area. For now all I have is the view outside my new appartment from our balcony.

Other then that, today I just relaxed, and walked around town. When there's no wind in El Medano it's extremely hot. The new place I'm staying in is about a 35min walk to the windsurfing center, so it can get pretty hot on a day like today.

Yesterday I decided to check out the surfing at the point by the mountain. Took the camera with me and got some shots for the blog. In the background is the town of El Medano and the OTC is located at the far left on the edge of town.

This is what you call Stand Up Paddling (SUPing). It's a new craze in the water sports world. You basically stand up on a larger size surf board and use a long paddle to get your self around instead of laying down and paddling with your arms.
It takes some good balance and is supposed to be a good upper body workout. Or if you're really good you can use it like Robby Naish in this clip, as he explains why it's a good alternative to traditional surfing when the conditions aren't great.

And if you want to see some good windsurfing action from Cabezo beach ( local wave spot) here in El Medano, check out this video from last year when it was blowing 50+ knots. Just crazy stuff.

We didn't get any conditions that wild while we were here, but Devin and I certainly had some good sailing and an overall fun time here. It's a nice mix of bump + jump sailing as well as intermediate and advanced wave sailing.

Tomorrow evening I take off back home. I'll try to make one last post.

- Scott

Last few days

I'm coming up on the last few days here in Tenerife. Devin left last night and at this point is probably sitting in pain on the flight home. He sailed hard and really learned a lot while he was here, but that much sailing in such a short period of time can be quite hard on the body.

Luckily before he left we were able to get some action shots of each other out on the water. Here are a few of me trying to surf some of the small waves we had that day.



Not much wind today, but it's nice to relax and work on some things from the East Coast trip. We might get out on the water this afternoon, hopefully because this will be my last day with gear. Tomorrow I'll probably just relax some more and go exploring, take some more photos.

That's about it for now, not too much happening.

- Scott

New Discoveries

Today was one of the best yet. Found a new board that I like, had some nice wave riding, and threw two killer jumps.

The day started off with a 4.7 and 82L. I went up to the Harbor Wall for some wave sailing and found Ben Severne sailing there on a 2009 Severne S-1 and a 2009 production Starboard Evo Twin fin. After sailing there for a while, I headed back downwind to the beach to have lunch and switch boards.Afterwards I went out on a 74L board made by a small company in Fuerteventura called Witchcraft. It’s a triple fin design similar to what you’d see on a surf board. The nose of the board also had some strange design with extra volume and a weird shape on the bottom. The board also had some different style footstraps made by Prolimit. They were very wide and looked more like something you’d see on a kiteboard, but they really formed to my feet nicely and were the only footstraps so far that didn’t cause the tops of my feet to hurt after an extended period of sailing. All things considered, I was blown away by the board. Like nothing I’ve ever sailed before and certainly my favourite now. It’s really light, drives hard in the bottom turn on a wave, powers upwind pretty good, and has excellent lateral foot control with those Prolimit footstraps.

I must say that board seems to just flow with my riding style. All the issues I’ve been having with every other board just disappeared when I took it out. I’ve had the chance to test 12 different boards so far both in wave riding, jumping, sailing upwind, and just cruising, and I can say with experience I pick this board over any Fanatic, JP, Goya, Naish, Tabou, F2, RRD, Exocet, or Starboard. That’s not to say I don’t like some of the other boards, just that if I’m doing any wave sailing, I’d go straight for the Witchcraft if it was an option.

Near the end of the day, one of the other sailors from the OTC center, who was trying out the Fanatic NewWave 73 team edition, headed out one last time to the harbor wall to try some more wave sailing with our boards. On the way I scored two of my best jumps yet. The first one happened when one of those huge rolling swell just happened to jack up at the right time but slightly upwind of me. So as I approached it I did a quick carve upwind to hit it straight on and it sent me shooting straight up really high, but the initial upwind carve sent me quickly into a huge backloop and because it was unexpected and certainly much higher then I anticipated, as I started coming down I bailed out and threw my kit away because frankly I’ve never tried a backloop that high let alone landed one, so I had no idea how I was going to finish the move safely.The second jump was on the next tack up towards the wall, and I saw this one from a distance, a huge whitecap just slightly upwind of me and sure enough with a slight adjustment to my course I was set up with a perfect ramp that sent my full speed towards the sky. I quickly rotated into a table top and really tweaked it, holding it for a good length of time. Felt so good.

Once at the wall, the waves weren’t as good as they had been earlier because the tide was higher and there was a lot of rebounded chop bouncing off the wall into the waves. But on the way out you could score some decent jumps. One time as I headed out, one of the local sailors was following close behind just as I went into a solid table top, and after landing it this guy passes me upwind and looks back with a big smile on his face giving me the thumbs up. It’s funny what a simple thumbs up can mean sometimes. For myself, it was satisfying to get some acknowledgment and a thumbs up from a local must mean I’m doing something right, considering the reasonably high level of riding around here.
All in all, it was a great day and I can’t wait to get back out on that board again tomorrow. Devin and I are trying to arrange for us to get some photos of each other, probably during our lunch breaks. So hopefully next post will include some photos of ourselves.

- Scott

Life in Tenerife

Our friend Ben Profit, who gave us a place to stay, took off today for Pozo, Grand Canaria to fulfill his duties as a Fanatic Team member at the upcoming PWA wave event. He’s quite the impressive windsurfer and certainly inspiring to watch.

Word around the windsurf center is Ben Severne will be arriving here on Monday. Ben is the owner of Severne Sails, a very popular sail manufacturer, of which I have two. Today was a great day on the water. Good wind, building waves and lots of gear to test out again. For all the windsurfers who read this, so far I’ve tried out the following sails and boards: Severne Gator, North Ice, Simmer Icon, Ezzy Wave SE, Gaastra Poison, Gaastra Remedy, Starboard Evo 80, Fanatic Freewave 95 and 84, Fanatic Allwave 92, JP Real World Wave 82, and Tabou Rocket Special Edition 105.
So far my favourite board is the Fanatic lineup, Allwave for the waves and Freewave for just cruising and jumping. My least favourite board so far is the Starboard Evo. I was using the wood edition and I found it to be very stiff, very rough in chop and I don’t like the way it turns, more like a pivoting turn then a nice drawn out turn.
As for sails, there were some things with the Ezzy I didn’t like and although it has a big range and lots of power it wasn’t one of my favourites, I’d say for now the Simmer Icon is probably my favourite of the ones I’ve tried.
Everyone working at windsurf center seems to be from the UK. In fact a lot of the clients/tourists seem to be from there as well. It’s really interesting to see how different the windsurfing culture is in Europe. It’s a much more common sport there. All the magazines at the center are the European windsurfing and kiting mags, so I look through them and see a totally different style of publication. Plus I get to see work from other photographers, and how the big names in the business use certain strategies to get their content published in multiple magazines. Like similar photos but used in a different way, or what looks like the exact same photo but is actually slightly different and obviously from a sequence of multiple photos.

It was also interesting to talk with Ben (Profit) and hear what he had to say about Fanatic photos shoots and what photographers they use and how things work…the inside scoop.

I had a good time on the water, some big table tops like I’ve never done before. There were two jumps that I had good hang time which let me really tweak the table top maneuver more then I have every before. It felt really good because I’ve known I could do them much better but rarely have the right conditions back home to do them in, so when I get those nice floaty high jumps I just let’er RIP!

I also went over and checked out Harbor Wall today, which is one of the wave spots here. To get to it you have to make a long upwind journey (about 5-6 tacks). It’s was pretty intimidating in today’s condition. It’s called “Harbor Wall” for a reason…ie. The waves break out in front of the stone wall so it certainly takes some commitment to drop down into one of those waves because it’s taking you quickly towards the wall and as you do a bottom turn you can tell the water is only about 5 feet deep. BUT, it’s so addicting so I had to just keep dropping in because the waves were so smooth and even getting in just one bottom turn was so nice, just slipping into the wave down the slick face of water and then leaning right into a turn at the bottom…mmm. Wave riding is where it’s at! Apparently as the conditions get better now that the wind is back, the wave starts to break further out and gets bigger, so I’m excited to get some more riding in and try some jumping on the way out too, maybe throw in some loops and super tweaked table tops.

The wind for the next few days looks very strong. The waves should keep building and the conditions should just keep getting better. I’m planning to leave Tenerife and head over to Lanzarote on the 27th and then head back home on the 29th. Looks like I’ll have to book a flight to get there, but shouldn’t cost very much. I should have a place to crash with Phil (Soltysiak) as he’s over there competing in the PWA Freestyle event. While I’m there I’ll be getting photos of Phil and possibly another North American sailor for a potential article about younger North American sailors competing in the PWA. I may also do an interview with John Carter about what it’s like to be a windsurf photographer. We’ll see how things go.

View from our apartment window of the courtyard.
Inside the apartment complex.

That's it for now.

- Scott