The Day Off

No wind today!! At least, there was wind, but in only one place - the legendary Ho'okipa!

We spent the entire day, apart from an hour or so wandering around the shops in Paia, not buying anything, down at Ho'okipa Outlook. The first impression is how small it all is, for somewhere so utterly famous (in the tiny world of (wind)surfing). Really. It's not much larger than say,  Portreath, although less sheltered. There is a monster rock shelf right in the middle at the beach edge, launching is from the left end where about 100m of beach sand actually leads out to sea without rocks. You go over to the left and go out in front of the infamous rocky point, the final destination of much kit over the years!

Loads of really seriously good windsurfers were out today, let's try listing a few:

• Jason Polakow
• Robbie Swift
• Riccardo C
• Ben Profitt
• Phil Horrocks
• Levi Siver
• Dave Ezzy (famous sail designer)
• Kauli Seadi
• Thomas Traversa
• Camilla French
• Bernt Roediger, 14yr old genius (he was pretty good!!)
• Mullet, who spent a lot of time swimming!
• Guy Cribb, who caught one wave...
• A cast of veritable thousands!

One of our guys, Mark, went out too, but really struggled to get board speed to catch a wave, and then when he did catch one, it wasn't really big enough. He did a lot of swimming too!

One of the more unusual things to see was the cameramen, working for the JP/NP team photos which were being done here too. They have the 2012 gear of course... The photographers wear bright red or orange fluorescent helmets to mark them out, because they just swim out, with flippers, in a wetsuit, and hang around in the waves basically all day!! At least, I saw them go out, and didn't see them come back until everyone was more or less done. No flotation, just the camera in a waterproof housing.

So we sat and watched the guys and gals for pretty much all day, apart from a brief and pointless interval where we went to see if it was windy elsewhere but it wasn't. That was ok, as a break, but that's all.

Dinner was from the Paia Fish Market again, blackened ahi with caesar salad - excellent. Went to bed stupidly early, and only woken by a call on the non-silenced iPhone at stupid 'o' clock.