VICTOR FERNANDEZ
It was great to meet the Fanatic team in Cape Town this winter and score amazing conditions with them. This year was my 4th time in Cape Town, I love that it has so many different spots so almost everyday you can choose where to sail and there is always waves. I brought some of my Fanatic prototypes to Cape Town, most of them were boards I competed with on the PWA Wave Tour in 2016 in Pozo Izquierdo, El Medano, Sylt & Maui. The objective was to compare them to some of the other team riders’ boards. The good thing about Cape Town is that we can try small to big size boards in all kinds of conditions – choppy, windy, side-on or side-off and there are similar spots to the ones we have on the PWA World Tour; we even scored some starboard tack down the line! Scarborough is my favourite spot in Cape Town as the waves are very powerful, most of the time it’s windy and the place itself is beautiful and relaxed compared to other spots in the north. For food I like to hang out at ‘Willoughby & Co’ in the city, it’s one of the best sushi restaurants I´ve been to or ‘Melissa’s’ for coffee. A typical Cape Town day for me is running in the morning followed by a nice bowl of fruits & oats for breakfast with a coffee, then driving south to Witsands, Scarborough or Cape Point for a windsurf session, then lunch, another session and finally dinner at home. Gear wise I bring 3.4 to 5.0 sails, 3 x 400 masts, 2 x 370 & 1 x 340 and 75, 82 & 90 litre wave boards. We did a lot of filming on this trip. Manu Grafenauer filmed for the Fanatic team on the best days at Scarborough and Witsands and my wife filmed me almost everyday and this footage helped me a lot to see all my moves so I could analyse better what I was doing wrong and where I could improve to make moves higher, faster or better in general. Video also helps to see how my gear works in various conditions. Analysing the video I learnt that I could be more aggressive on my jumps. I need to train stalled doubles and tweak my body more on back loop combinations. Also I need to better my combo tricks on the wave – 360´s, takas and goiters. Getting my boards tuned up with faster fins I think can help me to achieve that. Our new 2018 wave boards are also really fast as we made a board combining the Quad/Thruster, a great wave board for all kind of conditions so I think I can improve those aspects of my sailing that I want to with help from the new designs as well. I think that we have amazing boards in our current range but the 2018 designs will be even better.