Long update!

Hi everybody,

It's been a while since the last update, but with no wind at all for about 2 months here in Belgium there wasn't much to update!
In the meanwhile my knee and ankle got a lot better and no problems anymore on the water.
I went to Wissant a couple of days in those 2 months, but the conditions were far from perfect. Small waves and gusty 4.7 wind.
We had some fun and it was just good to be on the water with friends again.
We were getting pretty frustrated as the weeks passed without any wind and waves.

Some nice waves in Wissant but just nog enough wind sometimes.

Fail in Wissant!

Also I was in contact with Jeroen Aerts who wanted to do an article about Belgian windsurfers who go to better places in wintertime. We all had to write a little section about our stay in South Africa.
To bad the names got a little mixed up, with my picture is a line of Robin Caris, and the other way round.

A picture I took

Sketchy backloop-pic

For the first time I decided to compete in the Belgian Championship Wave, never did any wave-contest before so I was quite nervous for my first heats.

Friday 10th of May was the first day of competition for the single elimination, my first heat was against Annelies Brak which I won with a nice Tabletop Forward.

Next heat was against Jonas Handekyn  ( Last Belgian Champion) which I knew I couldn't win on forehand.
I tried my best and until the last 2 minutes it was very close but then Jonas did a nice Taka and a one-handed  backloop and that was it for me.
Note to myself: Get on those Takas!

Jonas Handekyn with a Taka in our heat. Congrats Joñas!!

Backside

Almost 'till the end one-handed

Me, Jonas and Dieter (Congrats to Dieter for winning the event!!!)

So my day of competing was over but there was still another day for the doubles.
Saturday the wind picked up very late, around 15.45. First start at 16.15 with the new guys.
My first heat was in the 4th round against Stijn De Pauw.
I didn't know a lot about Stijn and vice versa so it was a guess how I would do.
I decided to trim my sail with a little bit to much power to make sure I could do enough jumps and have enough power to wave-ride.
That was a good guess and it payed of, I did a high stalled forward, a tabletopforward, a good one-handed forward and a very clean cheeseroll. I don't know what the judges scored for but I won this heat.

Getting pumped up!

Matthias and me going out at the beginning of the heat

Incoming!

Next time I'm tailgrabbing it!

Next heat was against Tom scheirlinck and too bad for me but the wind died a little and I didn't manage to plane for the half of the heat so couldn't give my all. I lost this heat and that settled me for 7th place.

My goal was to be in top 10 so I'm quite happy with 7th place result.
Now I'm even more motivated to learn some new moves to hopefully get a better result  next year!

Check my facebook for full sequences of pictures. https://www.facebook.com/maxim.debuck

Special thanks to Sam Dekeyser for the nice pics and Twinsclub photographer Patrick Kindt.


So let's cross fingers for awesome conditions here in Belgium. A hardcore 4.0 session would be very welcome!

See you next update !!!