WIND-UP
After Esperance we headed north for the infamous Lancelin Ocean Classic, a must do on any W.A. road trip. With a few windless days to kill during the event, comic creativity was called for. Ben Severne had decided to let myself, Amado and Moritz Mauch be in charge of the house he rented for his team. On the last day Ben left early in the morning towards Ledge point to help the slalom team prepare for the race, leaving us to clean the house. All done, nice and clean but with another two hours to kill it was time to give Ben a call telling him we had a huge problem. The dog from the neighbours had come into the house and pissed on the carpet in one of the rooms, we asked him for any tips on how to wash it out, as it was pretty smelly. Straight away we were sent a whole list of solutions (what to buy, where to buy it etc.) with already a bit of fear in Ben’s voice as he was the one who would pay the bill if something was wrong with the house.
Of course there was no dog and no pee, this was all a massive wind-up. We photoshopped a pic of the carpet with a big white mark on it and sent the pictures to Ben with the following message: ‘We found some cleaning stuff for the carpet but I think there is bleach in it and the carpet has turned white. The good news is the smell has gone! Shouldn’t be a big deal right?’ The response was pretty short: ‘F**k!’
Not sure if it was the smartest idea to fool your boss, but as Ben does it all the time with other people it was good to score one back on him for a change!
COROS
With the weather systems being pretty messed up, it was a bit hard to show Amado the real Western Australia. There was more rain than sun and the overcast sky was holding back the normal sea breeze making us even sail starboard tack on one day, which is really unusual in the Australian summer. After almost a week of no conditions, Coronation beach (aka Coros!), my favourite spot in W.A. was finally looking on again. Although conditions were light, at last I could show Amado Australia’s most fun freestyle spot with its perfect small kickers to train all the new air moves. Within fifteen minutes he was already sold and talking of plans to come back next season! All too soon, the forecast changed and it was time to head south again and meet up with the Starboard team in Margaret River.