Last October I spent a few days in Lege Cap Ferret, France. The first ever Wave-Ski World Tour was organized there, and it was a great opportunity to watch and learn from the world's best riders.

The Tour website: http://www.awwp.org/

I must say I've really enjoyed the time spent on a wave-ski. It's a very technical discipline. It took me a couple days before I could make decent moves, lines and bottom-turns, without losing too much speed. It's also very demanding physically. I've already planned to go back to the ocean next spring to finetune my skills and hopefully try some different and faster shapes. Thanks to Mathieu Babarit, Caroline Angibaud and all the riders for their warm welcome and all their useful tips!

Of course, watching the wave-skiers ride big waves was cool. But the most impressive for me was the amazing speed and air the best riders could catch, even on smaller waves. I guess there's a lot to be learnt from that.

For some cool action, you can watch daily video reports here: http://www.subgraviti.com/htdocs/moviehighlight.php

Paul Villecourt was there too, shooting pics during the week. Unsurprinsingly, for the action shots he focused on the the pros wave-skiers only ;-)

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I also met with Xaver Walser, who is THE wave-skiing filmmaker. He vas there to shoot and edit the daily reports. Check out his website and DVDS: www.subgraviti.com. Xaver is a very cool and dedicated person. We talked a bit about kayaking and wave-skiing, and how we could mix these disciplines. We both feel that kayaking and wave-skiing have a lot in common, now we have to figure out how to merge these two disciplines in future projects!

Xaver also produced a small clip out of an interview made while I was getting out of the water, combined with some creeking footage I provided. I suddenly realize how terrible my accent is when I speak English. My apologies...

Video taken from playak.tv