Postcard from Vass - season is sizzling

29 July 2008

Andy Barnes

Well it’s been a sizzling season for Fish in Vassiliki so far this year. Just past the half way point and we have had our busiest and most action packed season to date.

We started with a record early season number of Fish students for the first couple of weeks of the season before being joined for a week by Portsmouth University on a multi skills training week as part of a degree course - not a bad option getting a week windsurfing, sailing, diving and powerboating as study!

This took our numbers up to about 40 for a week equating to about 50% of the guests at Club Vass - Fish going for world domination!! The usual mix of great kit, wind, tuition and amazing social added up to a fantastic, if hectic, time for all.

The start of June saw the EFPT (European Freestyle Pro Tour) come to Club Vass with some of the best freestyle windsurfers in the world competing for top place. Despite an uncharacteristic lack of wind the competition still went through with Andy “Bubble” Chambers coming a very creditable (and slightly unlucky) 9th place- the 1st place for the extreme level of freestyle partying is still under debate!

Typically with these things, I missed it all being at Hayling Island on a dinghy coaches course - must have messed up somewhere .....

The following week the EFPT moved to North Lefkas whilst the Fish crew buckled down to their Instructor course with 14 through windsurfing and 6 through dinghy instructor- congratulations to all. World domination is truly in our grasp with the most diverse group of nationalities we have ever had with students from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France.

Special congratulations to Assia who has achieved what was previously thought near impossible and got her RYA certificate validated in France!

The week of 23rd June saw the arrival of the SWA (Student Windsurfing Association) on their inaugural group trip to Vass. This led to a very high standard of sailing on the water and an unprecedented party factor with the Wildwind BBQ at its busiest and this year's host band “Love Puppet” playing a rocking gig to several hundred revellers.

This was only a warm up however for the next week with the second year of Watersweets Ocean Festival, a Czech run event with Slalom, Freestyle, dinghy racing, BMX, Flaring demos (barman juggling bottles) and the “Friendship Pageant” (Miss Bikini) all taking place over five days. Dinghy sailing Fish were well in the mix, competing in the boat regatta and ultimately Team Fish in a Hobie Tiger claimed second place overall against a highly competitive field from all over Greece and the rest of the world.

Congratulations to Vass instructor Colin “Whippy” Dixon for winning the freestyle.

With the dust settling after Watersweets, we then had another busy dinghy course and now are just finishing our second set of windsurfing courses. The wind has generally been providing the goods with a good few days at my favourite wind strength - “nuclear”!! Huge respect to our sub 50 kilo ladies hanging on to 3.3m sails.

The weather, just to keep us on our toes, managed to produce an unheard of 30 minute rain storm just to up the anti on the last day of an instructor course. Not so great in the UK but very welcome here just to knock the temperature down a few notches, clear the air, dampen the undergrowth and set us up for more of the good stuff to come.

The forecast looks normal from tomorrow for as far as the eye can see - light wind mornings, windy afternoons, great kit, social and 10 weeks left to get a piece of the Vass action.

If Carlsberg ran watersports, it would be in Vassiliki .....