Maui Monthly no. 45. January 2009

no. 45. January 2009

Maui, Hawaiian Islands Photo : www.miamiwindsurfing.com

MauiSails welcomes Gonzalo Costa Hoevel in The Team January of 2009 was a very special month for me, I got all my new sails!!! I started the month going to a competition in Bariloche, in the Patagonia of Argentina 2000 km south of Buenos Aires where I live. Bariloche is a small village on a lake, hidden by mountains that offer the best ski resorts during the winter and a great windy spot during the summer. I had a great time there with some friends.

After that I went to Miami for the North American Formula Championships. I got my new TR5 Formula sails and I was stoked to sail on them. I had some very good races on them and had very good impressions of the sails.

Now I am enjoying beautiful Maui with my girlfriend, Delfina, sailing every possible day with my new TR5 slalom sails. So far I sailed on the 5.9, 6.3 and 6.6 and they are all sweet.

Hopefully the wind stays up for the rest of the month so I can continue my tuning.

Best regards, Gonzalo Costa Hoevel, ARG-3

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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 45. January 2009

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

January in Western Australia for Peter The month of January has been good for wind on the West Coast of Western Australia. I started off the year in Perth on the 1st of January celebrations at the Perth cup event with a good friend and went straight back down to Margaret River for more epic wave sailing. My folks are here visiting, so its been good cruising with them.

The swell has been pumping, days were spent on the water without getting much else done, what a shame! From 08-11 January there was the Lancelin Ocean Classic that turned out to be a fantastic event again with great stoke on windsurfing and seeing many familiar faces. Oh... did I say I won?

Back down to Margies and a fun session on the coast 350 km South. Later in the month I sailed up at Coronation / Geraldton 600 k’s North which was good jumping practise, and I was at Greenhead for the Wave classic. I finished second there behind Jaeger Stone, who is sailing really strong at the moment. I was able to beat Glen, a local ripper who won the last two years in a row, and won my heat against Boujma. I had never sailed at Greenhead, which offers a combination of good riding and jumping conditions, good training for the upcoming PWA wave events.

In the Margaret river area I sailed a spot I had never sailed before called Gallows, and was really impressed with the conditions there, very different to anywhere else. I think it’s the best fun to sail new spots you have never sailed before, especially when you need a 4WD to get there. It really feels like you are exploring. The last week of January will stay windy, and I don’t think I missed a day of sailing yet so far - stoked!

Psyching in Sal! We’ve had a lot of preparation leading up to the World Cup next month. As the host island we are very busy preparing for all our visitors. On top of that we have had one of the best winters to date, with consistent days of 25 kts winds and lots of swell, so all the different spots on the island have been working. I have my new slalom boards that just showed up and look forward to my TR-5’s coming in by air any day now. Its really just been a busy month with work, sailing and preparation. Just how I like it .. See you soon in Sal, or be sure to follow all of our action at www.anguloboards.com and www.caboverdeworldcup.com Much Aloha, Josh Angulo

Aloha Peter Volvater NED-24

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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 45. January 2009

Time to focus for the events After all the great moments from last month it’s time to focus again for the coming events. I’ve been sailing with all my equipment because this month it starts to rain a little bit here in Fortaleza , so we have all kind of conditions.The north swells are coming more constant this time of the year and I had some good wave sailing sessions with all my friends together.

I’m going everyday to the gym with my aunt. She help me a lot there with nice exercises and I think I lost a lot of fat this month !!! Now I’m looking foward to arrive on Cabo Verde. I will be there on February 1st and for sure I will have a lot of fun. It will be a good opportunity to practice slalom and surf some waves.

Aloha, Gabriel Browne BRA-50

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

Favourite month of Dan’s January is my favourite month. Apart from the fact that it always starts off with a hangover, it’s nice to start a new year and it contains my birthday, which is an added bonus!

I sailed as much as possible here on Maui, but the wind has been all over the place, so there hasn’t been that many good days. Saying that, when it did blow, Maui delivered, and I was lucky enough to get some perfect waves and high speed slalom sessions, so no complaints really!! With more days than usual without wind I had to find other ways of getting out on the water. So I got back into surfing. I always like to surf but it’s normally so windy that I don’t have much time or energy left for it! My next non-windsurfing activity was SUPing. Pete Volwater left his SUP board at my house and although it’s kind of narrow, it’s great fun on the wave (cheers Pete)! Not content with just Windsurfing, Surfing, and SUPing, I’ve also been catching a few waves on Jessie’s dad’s Kayak, which is more fun than I thought it would be.

The wind is back for the last few days of the month and I look forward to that continuing through February, when I hope to be able to leave the other toy’s in the shed and get back to some serious Windsurfing!!

I hope you also have another great windsurfing month, Aloha Dan Ellis, GBR-52

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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 45. January 2009

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

Lets work on 2010 toys January’s focus at the loft has switched over to wave and freestyle sails. At the beginning of the month I got the sail graphics ready and we then moved on to sending some new 2010 designs for prototyping.

We also started planning some exciting new material options. After having a busy couple months finishing the TR5’s and getting started on wave sails, it was time for a little vacation with my wifey and daughter.

We were lucky enough to have a perfectly timed ski trip to Utah, arriving the day after a big storm.

We dropped our 3-yearold in ski school to give Amanda and I some time to take advantage of the fresh pow. In addition to having some killer runs with the wifey, a major high-light of the trip was riding up the chair with my daughter for the first time and watching her cruise down the mountain like she was born on skis.

Returning to Maui is always nice and I got back to work just in time for the new wave protos to arrive. The wind and waves cooperated and gave me 3 consecutive sessions on the new 5.0 and 5.3 Legend protos and the sails feel great. We have also been getting some excellent feed back from team riders like Josh and Peter and this is very valuable in advancing the designs to the next level. We are continuing to evolve the sails for that perfect combination of power and ultra-light handling. The sails must have enough power to get you going when punching out through white-water in marginal conditions but they must also stay stable in the big gusts and release flawlessly when cranking a hard top-turn.

Aloha, Artur Szpunar www.mauisails.com | 0

Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 45. January 2009

January for Phil Time for rest and relaxation downunder. It’s always good to go back to your roots and this trip for me was all about that. I headed out of Maui the day after Christmas and flew into Sydney. Flying over the City and the Northern beaches is amazing. The airport is very close to the city so you see everything from the plane, all the harbor, Botany Bay which is a great windsurfing location and where Captain Cook landed when he discovered Australia.

Summer is Australia can be very hot, but in Sydney we are blessed with the Sea breeze every afternoon and it keeps things usually below 35 degree’s. I was staying on the Northern Beaches at a small Beach called Bilgola. As kids we would spend a lot of our summer’s there, fishing, boating, hanging on the beach and just being teenagers in the surf and sun. My brother also lives close by so I got to spend time with him and his family. They are so funny, but I see myself all the time in my brother. My Mum is amazing too, she’s 72 now and still going strong. She would come to the beach with me in the mornings while I did my swim workout and then we would come up to the house and have a leisurely breakfast together.

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

So cold... everywhere i was The cold is relative when you live somewhere that has frozen water all winter, but here in Hawaii we have had to get out the extra blanket and close windows and doors at night. The new year came in with a big blast of air from the far north and left us all shivering and wishing for those summer trades again.

Then I had to get in the germtube and go to China for a session in the factory to work on general QC and see the TR-5s getting assembled. We also made some first protos of 2010 Legend in normal and XT versions so we can be testing early in the big surf of winter. The visit was very productive and I am now in the process of finalizing a long list of points for their constant observation. This was one of the coldest times I have ever experienced on any visit to China. In the area where we go (Qingyuan) the people say it has never been cold and raining like that. They have no heat in factories or even the hotel. It was two pairs of socks and multiple shirts and a hoody the whole time I was there. Mind you, it was only about 8C so I am just being spoiled, but for our tropical blood it was nasty. ...

I would get on the computer about 3 hours a day and make sure I was up to speed on everything in the Maui Sails World.

I also managed to get in some biking and running as well. I put back together my brothers 20 year old road bike, which weighed about 25lbs or 12kgs. Man it was hard to peddle, but a really good workout.

There is always so much happening in Sydney, it’s a very large city and with a population of about 5 million there is people everywhere, especially on the weekends when its sunny, everyone goes to the beach.

So I was in Sydney for two weeks, then headed back to Maui and get back to the grind stone. We had some strong kona storms in January and Lanes was going off. It’s wave sail time so we are looking for that perfect sail to do everything well in the waves.

Aloha, Phil McGain

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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 45. January 2009

Maui, Hawaiian Islands

The stay was a day shorter than normal and with everything done I packed my quiver bag and headed for Japan where I was met by Norio Asano and his lovely wife, Yumi. They took me to a nice warm hotel (it was 3C when i arrived so having heat in the hotel was real nice). In the morning we went to Yushi Beach near Tokyo and rigged the TR-5xt 8.4 and TR-5 6.6. An interview with HiWind magazine followed after lunch, and finally a good sunset session with a photographer finished the afternoon. Through all this I was perfectly assisted with translation by Keiko, one of Norio’s team of good sailors. She wants to organize more events for women and get more of her ‘sisters’ into the sport.

You can see also how important chafe protection is for all sails used in Japan as they are often rigging on concrete or sailing from stone beaches.

The flight home left late that day and was easy. All was fine back in Maui, except it was still cold! Almost cold enough for two pairs of shorts! Now with Art back from his snow trip with his family, work on 2010 sails is ramping up, Gonzalo is here to work on FW tuning, and we are getting ready to have the rest of the team show up for a good session before Calema Midwinters.

Aloha, Barry Spanier

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