Finishing the year with 7th overall in the World Tour

I am now home from Maui, what an amazing place! And an unexpected trip there too as we only booked a few weeks before in Sylt once the PWA event had been confirmed. I didn't think I would be going back there for a long time, as we had been planning on going to Chile to finish the year, but this will have to wait until I have saved more pennies! Maui as always was incredible and I was so happy to meet all the AWT girls and locals who I hadn't met before. Living in a house of 6 girls (plus lucky-or unlucky?! Stef) was really fun and there were a few celebratory parties-one for Thomas Travesa who won the World title this year and also for the closing ceremony for the PWA and AWT.

Here are a couple more pictures from the Aloha Classic from John Carter, such a blue face to carve up on that wave!

So I am pretty happy to say I am 7th in the World this year! My goal was to be top ten, so I am happy I have achieved this. I didn't get my best result in Maui, but I think from competition you have always gained something, no matter where you come you learn about things you can improve. For Maui, I need a lot more time on cross-off starboard tack, I haven't spent very long riding there at all. I have learnt where I need to improve my riding skills, mostly in my top turn and aerials and also that it is most important to just have fun on the water-which I did! It's also a good lesson to learn that competition sailing (especially for me) is so different to my normal style of go for more, normally crash more. The first heats at Ho'okipa were on a bigger day so it forced me to be more controlled and safer in my riding, to the detriment of my style a little. I need to spend a fair amount of time making my normal style more consistent so that I know I can make it 95% of the time and then I will start to do better!

I would love to keep competing and I think with more training, I could do better again next year, but I go back to full time work in January and also I am lucky enough to be getting married next June! So I am not sure how many PWA competitions I can do next year...we will see! For now though, I am going to focus on windsurfing and surfing as much as I can in Cornwall until Christmas, keep training in Crossfit, swimming and breath holds, and see where this gets me! I would love to do some more big wave surfing and windsurfing, so we will see what the UK Winter brings!

Here are some other pictures we took, from a snorkel boat trip:

From the road to Hana and round the back of the volcano:

From Kanaha, windsurfing on my new favorite board, my custom 63l! These are from the GoPro with the K4 harness mount:

At the PWA closing ceremony we were lucky enough to see the premiere of the RedBull Storm Chase movie. It was amazing! So inspiring and absolutely crazy too! It reinforced my love of the UK and cold water windsurfing too, as Steffi Wahl said-my heart beats for Europe! I am hoping for some good conditions this Winter, I hope Cornwall delivers!