There always used to be an overall title in the PWA year ranking for Wave and Slalom, which was the most important ranking everyone focused on. For the second time around Windsurf Journal came with a new fun award adding Freestyle and Speed Sailing to the two master disciplines - with a one discipline discard- giving recognition for overall World Cup performance.

Josh Angulo was leading in the start of the year after the awesome spectacle on Cape Verde and winning the event with style and power. Ross Williams took over the lead with his well deserved World Cup Slalom win in Austria and solid performances in the waves at Cape Verde. Brahwzino was up there too, getting 5th in Cape Verde and an even better finish at the Freestyle world cup on Lanzarote in the start of summer.


And so it was Kevin Pritchard who won the prestigious PWA overall title in the year 2000. Taty, Tonky, Gollito, Ricardo and Klaas are all very versatile sailors and I've seen some of them go damn fast this year at the Margarita Wild winds. The question is, will they get tempted to compete in Slalom on the PWA and go for windsurfer of the year? Finian can throw some big spray all around and loves to wave sail. But you have to compete in at least three disciplines to become Windsurfer of the Year.


Getting 10th at the Speed World Cup in Karpathos was enough to put me into a first place heading for the PWA Slalom in Turkey. I held the lead for a little while up to the PWA final in Sylt, where it turned out to be a battle with Antoine, who didn't lead right until the very end.


He moved up through the Wave elimination heat after heat to finish in a great fourth place. After all the years of competing in Waves surely he hasn't forgotten how to put together a really good heat, and his Sylt performance was the big jump he needed. So he passed me in the overall ranking becoming the windsurfer of the year 2009.

Aloha
Peter Volwater H-24

Read more about the Windsurfer of the Year 2009 on windsurfjournal.com.