About Me

I first tried windsurfing around '95-´96 on some longboard that I guess was an original Windsurfer, the next door neighbor had it sitting around and we were bored out of our minds one afternoon so we took the contraption out for a sail.  Just putting it together was a challenge but alas! I was hooked!!!  About a week later I learned that Pedro Pablo Silveira started teaching (check put his school´s website http://www.marinasilcer.com/escuela-de-vela) so I signed up for some lessons.  Pedro let me use a Bic Melody with a 4.5 RAF A.R.T. wavesail, I remember I was so tired after the first lesson that I had to drag the rig back to the beach club throwing up along the way!!!

After that I moved up to an IMCO One Design, that was really challenging and rewarding!  It gave me the opportunity to sail against some great sailors like David Mier y Teran, the Villalpando brothers and Pedro Pablo himself among others, even made it to the trial for the Pan-American Games but the other guys were too good!

In the mean time I started sailing and competing in the regional level on the Hobie 16 catamaran, great one design fleet and really nice race circuit close to home, with at least two major regattas in the summer we had sailors from Puerto Rico, USA, France, Guatemala,Mexico, Australia, etc so it made for some great racing; and even made it to the 2004 Hobie 16 Worlds held at the Riviera Maya, Mexico; didn´t place but it was a great experience.  I remember it fondly as there were about 200 crews in my class and had to share 100 boats, so we had to de-rig our boat after every race so the other crew would have any advantages, of course they did the same.  This is a cut-throat class and nobody takes any prisoners, more than once the leeward boat would disengage our rudder during the starting sequence and I had to dive to the leeward side to engage it again!!! My skipper and I were good friends with the organizers and were able to get onboard the committee boats when we were not racing, so we got the chance to see the action up close from a different perspective.

While I was sailing the Hobie, my IMCO was sold and committed to shortboarding, my first board was a F2 Axxis 272. It was an amazing board, really fast, fantastic in the gybes, tackable, and a great jumper unfortunately all the jumping and attempts at looping and freestyling took its toll on the mast track, sold it and got a Fanatic Bee, which I still have.

About four years ago I moved to Cozumel Island and took a break from windsurfing as there is not enough wind for the 90 lt. Fanatic Bee.  Looking for a way to get back on the water I got a Starboard Blend SUP, it´s great exercise and a lot of fun!  Definitely got to take it to the waves soon!!!
But of course the windsurfing bug never left me and after a lot of researching I decided that going back to basic was the right call, so I just got a Starboard Phantom 377 raceboard.  Hopefully I´ll be able to race in the open class against RS:X, IMCOs and Technos, but mainly I´ll be using it to blast around and cruise around the island.

See you in the water!