The Turkish windsurfer Lena Erdil and the French windsurfer Alice Arutkin have chosen South Africa as their winter destination and the Estonian photographer Jaanus Ree captured some nice images. Additionally we have hooked up with Lena to get more infos about her trip this year. 

 

Continentseven: Lena, how was your winter trip to South Africa this year? 
Lena Erdil: The trip has been really good this year, I was lucky enough to be able to stay here since the end of the speed challenge in Namibia so almost 3 month!! We had really good wind the first month, but the last 2 month its not been as consistent unfortunately and there was a lot of time off. However at least like that it gave me the chance to get back into a good fitness routine which I usually delay when I’m able to go windsurfing all day and also finally get a bit better at surfing!! I love Cape Town as there’s so much to do around here and also a lot of the European PWA riders are here in the winter so we have a nice group of friends and always some good action on the water!

 

Continentseven: Have you learned anything new?
Lena Erdil: I feel like I learned a lot this year, specially about waveriding, I was mainly focusing on coming out of my bottom turn in a way that would allow me to go up the wave as vertical as possible, on the top turn I would try and get as much spray as possible and just generally try and go for the critical sections. Jumping wise I’m still practicing front and backloops, frontloops I have claimed a few, but backloops are the most annoying things in the world at this point in time, I’m so almost there I dont think it’s physically possible to get any closer without sailing away from them. 

 

Continentseven: What was your best windsurfing day during this trip?
Lena Erdil: I actually had some really nice days sailing in BigBay this year, it was nice for riding and I definitaly did my best jumps there as well! But I think my favourite day in the end was the day we went to Paternoster and I managed to take off into my first aerials. 

 

Continentseven: What’s coming up next for Lena?
Lena Erdil: Next week I’m back in Turkey for a few days of meetings and a really cool Redbull event in the Turkish ski resort Uludag, and then I will be focusing 100% on slalom training again! At the same time I’m working for my Windsurfing Center in Bodrum so I’m looking forward to going back there and getting it ready for summer 2014, check out our new webpage at www.ortakentwindsurf.com

 

Continentseven: Thanks Lena!

 

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