After the great Essaouira Wave Classic earlier this year we will be heading to the Indian Ocean next week to shoot the next stop in Wave Classic series. The riders list has a solid group of experienced wave riders so, weather permitting, we will be bringing you some videos during the event and a full video after the event. Keep a eye on the event website for further updates.

The guys over at Wapala TV have used our footage from the EWC 2010 in their latest edition along with some ’sexy’ girls. Check it out!

The latest issue of Windsurfer International has been out for a few weeks now and features loads of umi in it! Check out Jamie Hancock getting washed in South Africa or Alex Mussolini and Dany Bruch who explore the north coast of Tenerife to find some massive waves. Ofcourse there’s also plenty of other worthwhile stories in this sixth issue of Windsurfer International, click the image for a direct link to the mag. It’s free!

In Feb 2007 Volcom bought a house overlooking Pipeline, as a headquarters for Volcom team rider Bruce Irons and other top Volcom surfing professionals during the winter months while they train for the Triple Crown of Surfing. Nice one. Now that buying a house was not original anymore, we decided to do better: umi now has its own street in Maui. Eat that Volcom!

Open Ocean Media and umi are happy to announce their partnership for the Wave Classic Invitational in Essaouira/Morocco. Initiated by Boujmaa Guilloul, Thomas Traversa and JB Caste, the event will take place from 10 to 20 May 2010 and will gather some of the world’s best wave riders. During the ten days waiting period, they will look for the best wave riding conditions around Essaouira’s coastline, to offer the most radical and explosive windsurfing show. umi will be there to capture the action and supply the windsurfing community with footage during and after the event.

Event organiser Steve Palier – Open Ocean Media: ‘I have always appreciated the special eye that umi has on our sport, and the quality of the editing and images. I feel really excited about working with this motivated team, we share the same point of view and I am pretty sure that our partnership will be a great support for the sport.’

umi: ‘This cooperation with umi, Open Ocean Media and the Wave Classic Invitational events is a perfect match. umi wants to show the incredible beauty of the sport and the amazing windsurfing locations around the globe. With the WCI series focussing on top performance windsurfing in a relaxed format, it perfectly suits the umi philosophy. Let’s just hope the conditions play ball as the rider list looks great!’

Polish paparazzi never sleep. Good for us, as they took a few pics of our editor Jamie Hancock sailing in Maui. Beats ironing, that’s for sure!

Has the world of windsurfing gone completely corrupt? After previous covers of umi riders Alex Musso (#3) and Kauli Seadi (#2), the March issue of online magazine Windsurfer International again features Kauli on the cover. Inside you can find him exploring a secret spot in Micronesia with his friends, sharing some clean and powerful waves. Check out some of the big airs he’s getting by clicking on the photo above. Thanks Brian, the money will be transferred to your account shortly.

A couple of weeks ago the TV channel ‘VKS – Antena 3 Canarias’ did an interview with Alex Mussolini and used action footage by umi from Pozo and Tenerife for the feature. The slot was shown at 7.30pm on a Saturday evening – windsurfing on prime time TV!

If you can understand Spanish you will notice Alex says he won in Gran Canaria when he actually won in Sylt! I guess fame and doing TV interviews takes a bit of practice…

The February issue of Windsurfer International has an 8 page article on Jamie Hancock in it. Check out our favourite freshman here!

Musso keeps scoring covers! This time it’s German magazine Windsurfing Journal and international online mag Windsurfer International that feature our Spanish hero on their cover. A total of 4 mags so far, anyone else?

Windsurfer International not only used Musso on the cover, but also on the content page. Please stop doing this, the guy is getting way too arrogant THANKS!

Musso’s win at the world cup in Sylt and the sick action shots taken by John Carter made it easy for magazines to chose their next cover shot. Both Surf Germany and Windsurf UK picked this stylish backside wave ride as their cover. Nice one Alex!
Next time can you please use your umi sail stickers? Ah yes, sorry, you didn’t have any… [Note to self: print more umi sail stickers!]

Surf also opened their story about the world cup with a double page spread of Alex flying high over the Sylt shorebreak.

Here’s the cover of Windsurf UK, also featuring Alex. We haven’t seen the contents yet, but he’s bound to be in there somewhere as well! Who’s next?

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Back in August our new team member Graham Ezzy went for a quick trip home to Maui. Turned out to be a really good decision as the two weeks he spent there were blessed with wind ánd waves, quite rare for Maui that time of year. Right before going back to Princeton NY, Graham had a nice little evening session at Hookipa. Check the clip on vimeo here.

The guys at Tabou were obviously quite pleased with Alex winning the world cup in Sylt, his big smile has been heading the Tabou site for over a week now! Besides congratulating Musso, they also interviewed him: about the event, the gear he was riding, his friends on tour and his plans for this winter. So in case you haven’t read enough about Alex yet, check the interview by team captain Matt Pritchard.

Guess who’s the new poster boy for the Vandal Sails Riot ad campaign?

After eight days of hardcore, intense & epic waveriding action on the shores of the island of La Reunion, the twelve riders of the wave contest by teams La Reunion Wave Classic 2010 will return home with less gear in their boardbags… 10 ripped sails, 9 broken masts and 3 destroyed boards. Not bad!

Click here to vote for best crash (deadline Sunday 5 September).

Thanks to The Exploders for the use of their song Straight Ahead.

© umi/Open Ocean Media

On the 25th of August the island of La Reunion saw the start of the second edition of the wave contest by teams La Reunion Wave Classic. So far the spots of Etang Salé and Ravine Blanche have shown their best this year again, and the show has been explosive and hardcore. From pure down the line barrels to nasty ramps and strong winds, here’s a little appetizer of this year’s La Reunion Wave Classic.

This year’s Pozo was a tough competition but not for the normal Pozo reasons! The wind wasn’t very strong, for the first day there was no wind at all, so the waves weren’t decent and this meant it was really hard for the sailors to show their best. The PWA had no choice but to run the heats in the less than ideal conditions as the event was so short. All this meant that it was a nightmare to shoot and to make matters worse the light was dreadful as it was overcast for most of the time…

Even so there was some great action from the usual suspects; Ricardo, Philip and Victor. Our video this year focuses on them and the amazing show they put on. It was pretty incredible the amount and variation of moves they were able to pull in those conditions. Philip was probably the most radical and progressive with his double takas and double shakas but in the end it was Victor who was more consistent and deserved the win.

Thanks to Pretty Lights for the song.

Photos by John Carter/PWA.© umi 2010

Due to popular demand the whole series of Kauli’s film ‘Novela das 8′ is now on Vimeo. The individual episodes are also available to download if you are a member of Vimeo and if you aren’t then signup as it’s free and quick to do.

In the beginning of April, we booked a last minute trip to Tenerife to catch a good forecast and film Alex Mussolini. After winning the last PWA wave event in Sylt back in October 2009, the Barcelona local has been training hard to go for the world title, and his new homespot El Cabezo seems the right place for it. Cross onshore port tack makes it an ideal place to train for the PWA tour this year and the clip shows what can be achieved in pretty average ‘Euro’ conditions (that is if you are called Alex Mussolini and can taka, wave 360 and goiter on the same wave).

The idea behind this clip was to simply show Alex’s insane sailing at his home beach. Like Pozo, El Cabezo is basically a skate park, where you can throw pretty much all the wave tricks, front and backside 360s, takas, goiters, jumps and some nice turns. It was interesting to see what can be done with production gear by someone who is at the top of their game.

Now all we have to do is pray for conditions at Pozo… It should be quite a show!

© Photos by Jochen Stolz @ windsurfingtenerife.com & Diego Boari. umi 2010

Last week you could see the last episode of Novela das 8, a look Kauli’s PWA career. It wouldn’t be a real Novela without an unexpected ending though, and as a little extra to the series we have prepared a bonus episode of Kauli on Cabo Verde, filmed before and during the 2009 PWA world cup held on the island. As so often, none of it was planned, but acting on an amazing forecast proved very rewarding…

Kauli: ‘Cabo Verde has some great spots. I got two weeks of sick sailing there before the 2009 PWA event with nobody around but some locals and Josh Angulo. The best decision I ever made, as it gave me the opportunity to really test my quad boards to use in the event and sail some amazing waves at spots like Ponta Preta and Ali Baba. The funny thing of this trip was that it was not planned at all. I was going to come just one week before the event, and I was in Caribbean with my friends on the Mormaii boat when I looked at the forecast for Cabo Verde: there was a sick swell showing with strong winds. So on the same day I arrived home from the Caribbean I called to exchange my plane ticket and the next morning I left for Sal. A crazy night, packing all my board bags, sleeping maybe two hours. But anyway, I made it to the airport and when I was in Sao Paulo I decided to send an email to Brendan and invite him to come film for the video. I was not going to know if he was coming or not until I arrived in Cabo Verde. When I arrived late at night I went straight to bed, and the next morning when I woke up and I saw a note under my hotel door: “I’m here man, let’s go film.” I could not believe that Brendan made it there and actually found where I was!’

To view the bonus episode of Novela das 8: Cabo Verde, click here.

With Novela das 8, we have a premiere of a new player, by Recast Digital. This player intelligently selects from six video qualities from 450kbps to 3000kbps, spanning a range of video resolutions up to 720p HD. In real-time the player detects the available bandwidth and selects the optimal stream for the bandwidth of the user and will dynamically switch versions as needed without interrupting playback. What this means in English is that you should get the best (full screen) quality possible, so you get the best viewing experience. We are very happy to be able to offer this new player here. If you have any feedback on the player, or are experiencing any kind of problems with the playback, please drop us a line on our Facebook page.

© Photos by John Carter/PWA. umi 2010