It's Hookipa photo shoot time

It's that time of year when the windsurfing manufactures show off their preview of next year's gear (that would be 2011) for the upcoming magazine issues (which I guess would be published in late summer 2010). It's a bit like the fashion industry - you see the spring stuff in the fall and vice versa. Which to me was always a bit confusing. I mean, it's spring and I want to see summer clothes and bikinis. But the fashion industry is trying to get me excited about winter coats. That's just how it is.

Anyway, the 2010 kit is in the shops and this is what we are now buying - well it's what you should be buying, I've already done my part. But at Hookipa, the equipment looks a bit different all of a sudden. The colors are new, the shapes slightly tweaked. You just can't stop the gears of progress. The 2011 models have been designed and are now on the runway. The photographers are all out on the water along with twenty or thirty teams crowding onto every wave trying to make the best statement. Actually it's very cool to see all the new tech and riders in action.

Meanwhile the trade winds have been blowing strong and steady for the past few weeks. Almost too strong in fact. The no-pac high has assumed a dominating position and all storms have been shoved far away. In other words, not much swell lately. But still fun sailing. Julia and I have stuck mostly to uppers lately, but we managed to sneak up to Hookipa to watch the action and take a few shots. The only problem is I have too many photos and I'm suffering from picture overload here.

I'm working on incorporating some fancy web techniques so I can show thumbnails of photos which can be clicked to see the bigger picture without loading a different page. The idea is to cram a lot more photos into a single post without overloading your internet connection. I'm always thinking of you my friends.

For now I can only show a small subset of the 128 pictures I took the last few days at Hookipa, and for now mostly people I know so they'll buy me a beer later. I'll post all the pictures in one form or another as soon as I have time.

[ updated ] per Brian's request - ladies first.

Elena Pompei

Junko Nagoshi

Nayra Alonso - (she has a nice blog too)

Sarah-Quita Offringa and Julia

Sarah was out earlier ripping it up before we arrived. Sarah and Julia look good on and off the water.

Nick Warmuth

Conner Baxter

Casey Hauser

Sam Neal

I have about 100 more pictures. You can see all of todays here:

2010-04-06

And pictures from 04/03 here (preview of 2011 Goya sails in there somewhere):

2010-04-03