First off, I need to give a huge thanks to Gil for putting this all together and taking such good care of the riders! It is an amazing weekend here and we are treated very well!
The even overall is cool. There is some BMX demos, Motorcycle Trials, Quad, Mini-moto, and lots of other entertainment through out the afternoon. We open and close the show with a freeride demo.
First in the water is the East Coast Team, (Fred, Max, Aurel) they ride for 10 or so minutes. Then Gil, Marc, and I get in the water to finish the opening of the event.
Surf today is UNREAL! And Hossegor is just an amazing wave. 200 yards down from where the event is being held is the beginning of a spot called La Nord. Which is where we have been surfing, we towed and rode the last few days about half a mile up from there at a place called Gaviotas (or something similar.) La Nord begins to work at about double over head. And is this kind of mellow right that starts way outside and finished with huge shore break on the sand. What is crazy about this place is that right in front of the even venue, it is basically flat. So on days like today, the biggest sets are like 15 foot faces and the right just peals from 300 or more yards out. There were several tow teams out there and one of the guys was some kind of European champion...and he was just killing it! There was another guy on a hydrofoil getting towed in to some pretty good waves as well...cool to see someone ride a hydrofoil in person.
Basically where we have to ride is just down slightly from the event site, so we are in this massive shore break! The biggest sets had like 8 foot faces and were breaking 30 feet from the shore. The smaller sets broke right on the beach. Tough to ride in, but easy to line up tricks. Martin got my loner ski running, it had a broken reed yesterday and today it ran pretty well. But...I dunno, I can't ride this ski. I sucked. A couple flips, rolls, and flairs, but no variation and really small flips because I just can't control the rotation on this ski. I would come to find out later that, although there is no trim lever on the ski, there is a trim system that set to be about half way trimmed all the time. So for tomorrow I'll fix that and change a few other things. Riding today was tough.
The other guys rode really well, it is a lot of fun to be in the water with all of them! Hopefully I can learn how to ride for tomorrow.
