Again some time ago since my last update, but no news is good news.
2014 started of just perfect here in Belgium, we had lots of wind, lots of waves so that means: Lots of FUN!
To bad most of the time the wind blew from the South, so we had to drive a lot to Wissant and Wimereux. But the waves are always higher and more powerful than on my homespot Ostend so no complaints! Just had to fill up my dieseltank a lot....
Some pictures of a couple of sessions in Wissant:
Wissant: Heaven!
Millers, Thieu and Mang prepping gear
Got slapped by the lip but managed to keep going, lucky...
4.7 overpowered evening session, 3 guys on the water. Perfection!
Actually landed this one
My new K4 Ezzy 2° sidebiters doing their thing!
Sorry Mang :)
Good size!
Oli Pas going mental!
I sold my K4 1° Ezzy sidefins to another Witchcraft-owner, so Zuidwest6.nl sent me a pair of 2° Ezzy's now, I was pleasantly surprised that the 1 degree toe difference had even rmore effect on the liveliness of the board. It was already good with the 1°'s but it got even better! I can push the board even harder in the turns as you can see:
Nice to see the sidefin breathing a little ;)
Snappy
Stalled front
Backloop landing
Little tweaked stalled front
Some pictures from a session in Ostend, thanks to Filip De Meester and Peter Absolon for the footage:
Crowded at the webcamspot, always nice to have good friends on the water!
In the next update their will be some good news about new support and gear, but that will have to wait a little longer :)....
I've been very busy getting my new van ready the last months and there almost wasn't any wind too so again a long time since the last update!
Last few weeks were pretty windy and we got some good action and waves here.
We had to do quite a few kilometers because there was a lot of Southerly wind and then the North of France is the place to be.
The biggest day of them all was when the Belgian Championship was held last Sunday, the 27th October, the day of my birthday!
To bad I had to miss out on the single elimination on Saturday but tried my best on Sunday.
My heat against Wout Burman was very close, just a couple of points, but I didn't make it.
That made my overall result 7th in the Belgian Championship Wave with the contest in the beginning of the year counted in too.
I'm going to do my best to get a better result next year for sure, I'm already pushing harder each time I'm on the water!
Also congratulations to Jonas Handekyn for winning the overal Wave title 2013 and Nick De Wannemaeker for winning the Wissant-contest!
After I finished the contest I decided to go for something I already was thinking about for a long time.
A DOUBLE FORWARD!
I put on an impact vest and helmet, camera on the rig and went out pretty overpowered on 4.0 in Wissant.
First good wave I saw I pulled hard on my backhand and just kept on going for a second rotation.
Must have been the best feeling ever entering the second forward, I felt I was pretty high up and saw I wasn't going to crash head first. I landed on my back with sail flat on the water so I managed to waterstart and I almost couldn't believe I just did 2 forward rotations hahaha!
More will definitely follow, maybe even this weekend!
See video of double forward and a tabletop forward here:
Thanks to Michiel De Vogeleer for filming!
And some photos from Sunday during the Belgian Championship:
Great conditions to go wild!
Giving my K4's a handful!
High tabletopfwd
Epic!
Tweaking a tabletop, but a little bit too low...
On Monday 28th October conditions were really great too in Bredene! Thanks to Dirk Handekyn for pic!
Big thanks to Laurence Demeulemeester Lodeo Photografie, Dirk Handekyn,
and Jeroen Aerts from Deining Media for the great pictures!
already a month ago since my last update here.... time flies when it's windy!
We had a couple of really good days here at the Belgian coast, the weekend of 22nd and 23th of June being the headliner. See a new little clip about that weekend here:
On Saturday Sam and I rode to Wissant France and had a great day with 4.7 and 4.0.
See some footage below from a harnessmount I made out of an old boom-end:
Tabletopforwarding the hell out of rainbows!
Good waves in Wissant, just love the 77l Witch
Grip!
Forward
Tabletopfwd again, nice view
This was a hard one, made my camera shift down unfortunately
Cutback
Learned this one on Saturday, One footed forward. Tried about 2, then landed them pretty much consistent
So much fun when the waves are almost perfect
Big shove it
On Sunday the wind picked up a little bit later on the day. I was already riding with 5.4 that afternoon and decided to keep the 5.4 on to get used to the big sail in somewhat high wind. Everybody always complains about the Boxers being backhanded and unstable when overpowered but that is a thing of the past. Yes they have a lot of power, but when you can handle it the sails are really stable and provide awesome lift when overpowered.
On the 5.4 I even landed some backloops and some nice tabletop forwards. For the size, it's really manoeuvrable.
Some pics of Sunday, thanks to my girlfriend for having cold toes and filming me!
One footed front on film!
Againnn little tablefront
First backloopwave of the day!
Yes!
Little tabletop
Now the wind is completely gone for already more than a week, and it looks like it's going to stay away some more time.
In the meantime I got some time to do some emailing...
K4-fins and Zuidwest6.nl offered me a very good deal on the yellow fins and got 4 sets for my 2 boards.
K4's are plactic moulded, and more felxible than G10 alternatives. Which is more suitable for multifin boards nowadays. The flex provides more drive and speed in the turns, en allows to push the board really hard in the cutback.
Also the price is way more interesting compared to a MFC or MUFFIN-finset. For example you pay a minimum of 216 euros for a MFC trifinset, but at K4, you can get a trifinset for just 69.50 euros!!!
That's a huge difference you could use to pay your gas...
For the Witchcraft K4 provided the new Ezzy assymetric fins. They are available in 1 and 2 degrees of toe-in. For my WC the 1's are most suitable since the boxes already have some toe. Got them in 10 and 12cm, can't wait to rip it up with them!
Here an article about the new Ezzy's and a test with a Quad board:
For people interested in testing the K4's, I have available:
-Flex twin 17cm US (can be used for a quad)
-Stubby twin 16cm US (can be used for a quad)
-Stubby center 13 & 14cm US
-Ezzy's 10 & 12cm MT
Contact me on facebook for possible spots we can meet.
That was it for this update. Next time I'll hopefully have some pics with the K4's under my boards!
Thans a lot to K4 and Zuidwest6.nl for giving me this support!
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