I’m so stoked to have made it to the cover of the May 2011 issue of the American magazine kiteboarding mag. The picture was taken by Linn Svendsen during our trip on Zanzibar island in Tanzania.
You can find this mag a little bit everywhere in the world, in most European airports  or in the states. Their website is also very nice with some of the latest kiteboarding news: www.kiteboardingmag.com !

Linn also got a nice full page featuring the ocean rodeo Razor for the 2011 gear review section of the mag !

This years St Lucia kite fiesta is just over and I am now back on Union island after a short 30min flight with Nico’s plane.

The event was great, I had so much fun hanging around some really nice people. St Lucia is a small island between the island of Martinique and the island of St Vincent down here in the Caribbean. It has several really nice kite spots along the coast but it’s at Vieux Fort, precisely at the reef kiteschool we attended the contest.

It was organized by Daniel, Cecile and Jolien and I wanted to thanks them so much for everything they did for the event and for the island of St Lucia.

After our arrival Friday afternoon I met up with Dimitri Maramenides  other pro kiter and founder of Epic kiteboarding ( kite brand). It was really nice meeting him and his wife Helen, they are really cool people and I hope to see them in the near future around their coast lines !

After a very nice opening ceremony the Friday night , the Saturday started under the rain … The spot hadn’t see any rain for a long time so it was pretty unlucky to start the event like that. But the riders, Dimitri and I tried to make the best of it. We didn’t run any hits but tried to have some fun on the beach between the gusts powered by the rainy clouds passing by.

The Sunday was a complete other story. From early in the morning the wind was already blowing with not a sign of  cloud in the sky. The day was on for some great action on the south tip of St Lucia.

We started with a 30 min hit where all the riders got the chance to show of their tricks to the crowed which was gathering on the beach. The sun was up and the colors amazing.

I then took care of the microphone laying their on a table and started to comment on the day and speaking about anything I could think of which got along well with the people listening on the beach.

The day went along smoothly between the various hits and games we organized on the beach with Dimitri. We decided to run a very funny race between kids and kiters which was a lot of fun for everyone who got to participate.

You can check out the various pictures of this amazing event that just happened this past week end on the island of St Lucia.

I ended first in the freestyle competition followed by many talented riders locals and from other countries as well. Linn took the second place just behind Beth living on the island and who’s riding skills have improved a lot !

I wanted to thanks everyone at the Reef kiteschool, local riders and other riders who participated

Thanks to Nicolas and his plane who brought us back safely to Union island.

Enjoy the various pictures and share this post if you like it.

\\**update** Find also some of Dimitri’s photo of the event in the gallery ( the ones not marked as jeremietronet.com)\\
<![CDATA[ #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } ]]>

Still on Union Island I am now heading with Nicolas and Linn to the kite fiesta happening on the island of St Lucia. The island isn’t to far away and we have Nicolas plane at our disposition to fly there so we couldn’t be luckier.

No over charge luggages or we don’t have to be in the airport 3 hours before take off, we can see the plane from our room so we won’t have to walk to far !

The Kite fiesta in St Lucia is a really cool event organized by the reef kiteschool in vieux fort. The people there are really nice and I’m looking forward to it even though the wind forecast looks bad ….  Anyway we for sure are going to have fun there and if you are around you should come visit.

Yeah mon !

Union island is  by far my favourite place to be in the world right now. We are a bunch a friends down here enjoying the island life, always finding new things to do.

We have been exploring all the reefs around for the last few days with or without the kites, the wind and waves were amazing.

Right now the wind came down and we are using the boats to go spear fishing on some of the most beautiful spot. I’m just back from a super nice underwater session where I saw a beautiful eagle ray, a few huge turtles and a nice small shark. We caught a few Barracudas which went straight in our dinners plates.

Yesterday, coming down from the house where we were staying, Linn asked me why is a plane landing the wrong way (we are actually living just in front of the small runway).  I answered that she was certainly hallucinating because the 15 knots wind coming from the east would make it almost impossible for a plane to land the opposite direction (especially here).

But she was right, a medium size plane (16 sits) with twins reactors was actually trying to land wind in the back on the small Union Island runway.

As soon as I saw this I realized that something was wrong. The plane was already at two third of the runway with a lot of speed when he started to put it’s reverse full on and braking. Unfortunately he was way to short and ended his course on the side straight in the fence. The noise it made was incredible and seeing it happening in front of our eyes was very impressive.

We then headed around it to see if everyone was safe before to be sure there was no fire. Noone got harmed but the plane !

To make the story short and from the latest updates I got, the small plane coming from Venezuela with two confirmed pilots on board was in communication with Canouan airport ( the next island) which has a longer runway for jets. The plane was turning around Union island thinking it was canouan and decided to land the other way because of the small hill being on his way. Canouan control tower didn’t know why they were affraid of the “hill” because Canouan had a complete different configuration without hills on the way….

Anyway they decided to take the runway the wrong way with the wind in the back wich made it impossible for them.

This is the latest updates I got … not confirmed… but if it is what happened …. I whish to never fly with two pilots like that …and I hope someone have told them that they crashed on Union island and not on Canouan

<![CDATA[ #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } ]]>