Global depression?  Not in Vassiliki

2 July 2009

Andy Barnes

As we head towards the middle of the season for Flying Fish in Vassiliki, it has bucked all the trends and proved our busiest season yet.

With a full house for the next month its all go for the Fish. On the team this year we are re joined by freestyle legend Steve”O” Hackey keeping the windsurfing at the cutting edge. The usual suspects of Bex and Barnez are back after a winter of Yachting then wave sailing in Maui and peak season welcomes the return of Toby and Ben.

Steve-O windsurfing at cutting edge

The season started unseasonably hot but with good wind and a multi national Fish crew with the USA, Bahamas, Australia, Sweden, Ireland and Scotland all represented. This culminated in two windsurf instructor courses and a full dinghy instructor course. Congratulations to all the Fish students who took part and achieved excellent results despite 35 knots plus of wind from morning to night on assessment day!

The change over after six weeks had the normal Vassiliki “black hole effect” with several of  our students failing to leave Vassiliki and ending up working with either Club Vass, Wildwind or in the infamous Zeus Bar!

Week 7 saw the return of the Vassiliki watersports festival, with a dinghy and cat regatta, windsurf slalom and freestyle, mountain bike competition and BMX big air.

Congratulations to Fish students Anthony and Stuart placing second in the open dinghy fleet, and to Fish Instructor Becky Ellis winning the ladies' biking. Unfortunately the wind god, Eric, decided to have a couple of days off so not allowing high wind slalom or freestyle. Well done to ex Fish Max Rowe who won the light wind freestyle.

The 3rd week of June saw a slight glitch in the matrix, with stormy weather providing a welcome break from the heat. What it did supply was one of the rare yet classic days of Vassiliki surf. With eight Stand Up Paddle boards in the center this year everyone had a fantastic surf day, with the dinghy crew even Pico surfing later in the day!

Vass dinghy crew lovin' it

With the end of June and the start of July, the weather has returned to its normal pattern with this week providing 20knots+ of wind every day, starting as early as half past ten! With the forecast looking good as far as the eye can see, it’s another classic Vass year.

If you want to come and join the mix, we've still got a few places left later in the season for both dinghy sailing and windsurfing courses >>