BASE CAMP
Finland is my home now and my history there is a story onto itself as this is where I learned how to windsurf at our family summer home when I was 12 years old. It’s where I met my wife and got married. Our summer home sits on an archipelago an hour outside Helsinki, we get wind from all points on the compass, and I’ve even discovered surf spots that break over two metres on wind swell when it blows strong out of the southwest. It’s where I spend my whole summer and over half my winter as well; like most Finns we live on the mainland the rest of the year. I still live on Maui and California part time throughout the year, but Finland is now my base and it’s an exciting time to be raising my two boys, Kian and Owen, and having the ability to make a dash for Cabo Verde and elsewhere on a good forecast. It’s like flying to California from Maui; it’s very quick and easy to get to Cabo Verde from Finland.
WAITING
I’d been waiting patiently in Finland for the right weather patterns to come together. It’s always a lot of anticipation, as my Cabo Verde sessions seem to consistently be the best sessions of the year when they do manage to happen. This past winter, an especially strong high pressure set up in the Atlantic for over two months, which deflected the optimum fetch for the Cabo Verde swell window. Although it set up some very consistent wind, the NW swell production was relatively minimal.
Josh and I were in touch from time to time, and having an on site report from someone I can trust was very helpful to distinguish fact from fiction regarding the forecasts. Josh is in the middle of a major construction project and bouncing between Cabo Verde and Portugal. I had some important board testing to do with Ola Helenius for Simmer Style. It was starting to get a bit bleak, only a few swells here and there until a very solid low broke that stubborn high pressure down and set up the first of five swells in a two week span. It was time to send out the alerts!! The first two swells had no wind, the following three did. It was a tough forecast to see through because the first days had no wind, which threw off almost everyone who lived far away, but I knew the pattern and watched as the winds returned to the picture, knowing that Ponta Preta was waiting.