Robby Swift just competed at the first leg of the RedBull Storm Chase. He sent us a quick report:

„This was by far the hardest windsurfing I have ever done. We only did 3 heats each of 12 minutes but now, 2 days later, I still don’t think I would be able to hold onto a boom with the pain in my arms.

Luckily it wasn’t too cold in the water or in the air but the wind reached 74 knots. On Wikipedia, hurricane force winds are classified as over 64 knots so we were sailing in a veritable hurricane.

It was hard just to walk to the water with the gear, I needed somebody to help me to get to the water. Sailing was exciting to say the least!

I was happy to pull off what everyone is calling the best pushloop forward ever. It certainly felt pretty good! I still haven’t seen it on video but I am told it was about 40 feet high and I know that I landed it perfectly as I didn’t even get my feet wet!

Unfortunately, that super hard landing snapped my board in half so I wasn’t able to fill up my score sheet on waverides. We were supposed to do 5 jumps and 5 waverides each and I did 5 jumps but only 2 waverides. Nonetheless, my jumping was enough to get me through to the next round so I hope we will get another storm soon!“