9th September 2010
So that's a wrap of the European leg of the IBA tour. Looking back to 2008 I am the happiest guy when I won my first IBA event here but this year the Ferrol event went to the well deserved Australian back flip machine Jake Stone (Stony). I got knocked in the quarter finals by Yeray Martinez, I only needed a 6 point score and it went down to the last 10 seconds as Yeray was blocking me for the last 5 minutes. I was able to escape his blocking with 5 seconds to go and got a 5.5. I thought I had done enough to get the score but you never know what's going on up there in the Tower. So I have to take another 9th on the chin.
There is so much rivalry between the up and coming youth and now that Stony has won his first IBA event it's kind of sparked a fire so I am super keen to see what the last event in Confital has to offer. I am amped to head back to Canaries and need a result to finish up on the top 16.
There is so much to go for in this last grand slam event! If this new proposal for the 2011 world tour goes though then they will only take the top 24 of 2010. The rest will have to do the qualifying tour where the top 8 of the qualifying will move up to the world tour and the bottom 8 of the world tour will move to the qualifying in 2011. The new proposal is still on the wire, and if it does not happen the tour will still look epic for next year with 3 new events on board (THE BOX, MEXICO & FRONTON).
So I wanted to tell you guys about the longest drive Mike and I had up to Ferrol (Spain) from Portugal. Just so you know it takes about 7 hours to drive from Lisbon to Ferrol and not 9 and a half. All was going well and we were well on track. We decided to stay over in Porto (which is halfway up) for the night as the Portuguese Surfing Federation were cool enough to hook us up with a hotel room. We had to get up really early the next morning as Mike had a meeting with the Mayor of Ferrol at 11.30am and it was going to take up 3 and a half hours to get up to Ferrol after that. We ended up getting away at 7am and were already 30 minutes behind schedule, so they say when it rains it pours.
After getting lost for an hour we finally found the right highway we needed to be on and it was not 10 minutes later that the petrol light decided to go on. So there we were stranded without gas in the boiling sun blaming each other about not stopping for gas!! Just what we needed!! We ended up calling from an SOS box and they came to the expensive rescue and charged us R400 for 5 liters! When we finally got back on track we were now 2 hours behind schedule! To cut a long story short we arrived in Ferrol after 6 hours and missed Mike's meeting by 2 and a half hours. Maybe next time I will drive hey Mike? haha.
There is not too much to see in Ferrol as it's kind of an industrial town (yes yes I know what you're thinking, it's like the BAY?? No it's not like the BAY, the BAY actually has good waves).
The town of Ferrol is the capital of the Spanish Navy and one thing that I did notice is the coastline is very similar to the coastline of the Transkei in South Africa. With the mountainous cliffs that run and drop off into the ocean - the best parts of the Ferrol are in the valleys. The one afternoon after a surf we went and picked some fresh apples, pears, figs and peaches which was really cool.
I took a few cool pictures of the coastline for you to compare.
Back to the Dirtbin for me. I am flying back to Durban later this week. Only a few more weeks till SA Champs in Durban!! This could be one of the better SA's yet with all the top riders taking part. Let's see if NKZBA can hold their own at home!
Thanks for all the support guys while I've been in Europe! It's so good getting messages over the web casts and FB.
Till next time,
Yourboetie
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