hookipa 4 12 11 + over a million readers

This late winter/early spring season will be remembered for the sideoff wind.

Usually, sideoff is the best direction for wave riding. I experienced a lot of that in Ireland, South Africa and Oahu (never been to Cabo Verde unfortunately).
But, in my opinion, at Hookipa that's not true anymore.
Or better: light sideoff is great (but that also usually means a lot of surfers out), but strong sideoff gets just ridiculously gusty.

Nonetheless, there have been waves and we have been riding them. Gusty, choppy, crowded... whatever. As I often declare, as long as there's waves you won't hear complains on this blog.

These are the photos from yesterday April 12. Photo of the day is also the very first one I took. It's so easy to take good shots of Jason Polakow...


Laurent.



Leo Ray.


Leo Ray.


There were still some sporadic sets. Casey (might be his first blog appearance).


Leo Ray in Mark's emulation mode.


KP.


Aurelien.


Glenn broke his extension in the landing of this aerial and his board was immediately gone with the wind. A lifeguard jumped on his rescue longboard and helped him get it back. Those guys are really stepping up these days.


Laurent surrounded by the spray he created.


Philip Koster rotating off the lip. We just shared a surf session this morning. I doubt that either of us will remember it for long...


Now, this is a bit of a mistery. This photo shows ok as a thumbnail in Windows Explorer, but when I open it with any photo viewer program, it shows like this. Some even say:"file is corrupted". Never had this before and hopefully never will again.
In the meantime, brother Glenn got another shot on the blog!

These ones instead are from Monday April 11. Visiting aussie blog reader Rick took them during my 11 to 11.30 session. That's how long I could hang on my 4.2 before feeling overwhelmed by the gusts. Thanks Rick!
I remember this one. I wasn't even tempted to try to hit that heavy lip in that big gust...


That's more the kind of lips I hit at Hookipa... the Kanaha looking ones! :-)


Why am I so cautious? I think this photo clearly shows my lack of skills...


Now look at my line and compare it to the one of Polakow's turn...


And everybody is saying that I'm sailing better! Imagine how bad I sailed before!!! LOL

Message to all sailors out there: doesn't matter how good you sail, all it matters is how much fun you have. And I feel like the world champion in that field.
Till next post... aloha.

One more thing. Clearly the past couple of days have seen a huge spike in the blog traffic. I hate that the reason for this is an accident to one of us, but I like that the day I put out the cheeseroll into backloop jump got more unique readers (3,752) than the day of the accident. I'll take it as a good sign.
I also noticed that the global counter (which unfortunately I didn't put from the very beginning of this blog) has just passed the one million mark.
I would have never imagined this when I did my first post in January 2005... everything is possible you guys!
Would love to link that first post, but because of a Blogger update, all the old posts got fragmented. Still kinda readable though. Here's the link to that first month of Jan 2005.
Thanks everyone for reading!!!