Fuerteventura update

Hi All !!

So that’s that! 2 weeks in Fuerteventura have come and gone in a flash as I expected. Fuerteventura is probably one of my favourite competitions on tour. I think the spot is magical. For one reason or another my level goes up a notch and I’m able to land moves I only dream about. In the past two weeks I’ve become quite consistent in landing culo’s and burners and I got some skopu’s in there as well. Next up are hopefully the double popping moves!

I think I’ve only sailed freestyle for about 4-5 weeks in the last year so then naturally I wasn’t very confident about my freestyling skills and quite nervous for the competition. Sailing in Pozo before already helped a lot to get back in the freestyle swing though! I arrived one week before the event and sailed everyday like there was no tomorrow for 4 days straight. I was on my new 4.4 or 4.0 Pure’s everyday and really enjoyed being on the water with all the riders. It’s very motivating to have the best freestylers in the world flying around you. One best session in particular was the 4th day I was there. We were about 10 ( gollito, Quincy, Bubble, Max Rowe, Rafael, Adam Gavriel, Balz muller etc.) on the water all lining up and doing one move after the other right next to the beach. It felt great to be around the freestyle crew again after a year. These are all vey motivated and creative riders. I was super overpowered on 4.0 but pulling off everything I wanted to. Everybody else was ripping! After these 4 days I was completely exhausted and couldn’t sail for 3 days after that. I guess I’m not used to sailing that much anymore.

On the 20th it was time to register. There were about 11 girls competing. I think more than half were new faces actually ! So that was really nice to see. Even Karin Jaggi decided to join in on the freestyling fun. I did miss Laure Treboux there. The forecast for the competition was pretty good.. (So I’ve heard.. I never checked) but in the end it wasn’t as strong and wavy as everyone expected. I sailed all week on 4.4. and 91 l flare. With my 16 cm maui ultra fins ( probably should use a bigger fin as the choppy water makes for a lot of spin outs). By the end of the event we did 2 single’s and 2 doubles.
On the first day I was really nervous and way more tense than usual. However Every time the green flag went up I was fully focused on performing the best I could. My first 2 heats were really good actually ! But I think afterwards my energy dropped so my final wasn’t that great. But I did win the final against Arrianne who has improved her sailing a lot, and was happy about my performance for the day. As the competition progressed I got more and more confident on the water and I managed to sail some of my dream heats. I think especially my final heat of the second elimination was really good as i landed a clean toad, planing kono and a burner! This is the 6th time I have won this event and in the end I am quite happy about my performance.

Once again Fuerte was a great event and I saw so many friends again.
Big thank you to my brother Quincy for all the help on the beach and everyone else out there for the support and encouragement during the competition !!

At the moment I’m back in the Caribbean spending time with my family. I’ve had some great sessions back home in Aruba. I’m super motivated to get as much sailing in as I can this summer and I’m so much looking forward to the next events in turkey and Holland!