STAYING UPWIND
Brian Talma – “My first tip is to always bend the knees and absorb the chop. When you are on the edge of planing, I reckon it is best to slide downwind a little bit and once your feet are in the straps, then slowly creep back upwind. Once you are planing my biggest tip of all is to look over your shoulder at where you wish to go. So if he looks downwind, ‘Downwind Dave’ will go downwind! What I normally do is look upwind, I put my chin on my shoulder and look to where I want to go, not where I don’t want to go. Look upwind! At Silver Sands there is a lot of chop and current, it’s a tough place to stay upwind when the wind is marginal. You have to be aggressive when you are passing through the shorebreak and the reef. It’s ‘pedal to the metal’ all the way out, even when it’s light wind. You can’t afford to hesitate, sheet in and push through the waves, because if Downwind Dave hits some waves, then he is going to drift! If you start floundering in the waves, then you can drift fast and end up right down the bay”
EARLY BREEZE
Just as the ’de-doctor’ ordered, the wind was up the next morning, nothing too strong but plenty for a 7m and 130 litre freeride board. Brian was first on the water, demonstrating to Dave the local tactics to manoeuvre upwind and how to use the swells to help whip the board up onto the plane. Brian is a master in these conditions and was soon working the board up on to the plane and flying in and out over the azure waters of Silver Rock. With me in position in the water, Brain knew all the tricks of the trade when it comes to scoring interesting photographs and racked up plenty of shots in a matter of minutes. After half an hour or so of efficiently blasting in and out, the rig was handed to Dave for his opening gambit. Brian had been making it look pretty easy out there, but once Dave was on board it was a slightly less action packed session. Yep, those balmy Barbados trades were perfect to keep the wives cool while sunning themselves on the beach, but as for all 95 kgs of Downwind Dave on Brian’s rig, it looked like he was going to live up to his name as he drifted out towards the reef. I waited patiently out on the water for Dave to reappear from the reef and a good twenty minutes later was shocked to see him flying towards me, looking over his shoulder back upwind, just like Brian had advised. It took another hour for Dave to manoeuvre two more passes in front of the camera and by this time I was just about ready for my lunchtime bottle of ice cold beer from the bar.
With the first session under our belts we spent the rest of the day back with our families enjoying the beautiful Caribbean beach and playing around in the waves. Come the evening it was time to address the next issue; if Downwind Dave wanted to start competing with Brian for the all-important magazine coverage, then there was certainly plenty of work to do to. So it was back to the bar and more bottles of cold Banks beer for Dave’s second lesson, this time in the art of exposure!