The Youth Worlds where realy exiting:

Inscription day: The inscription day was a nice opertiunaty to go testing. I was very difficult to make the richt choice of fins, becouse we could only register 2. After some testing I made my choice. I allso used my 9.8 for just the second time, so I had to do the fine tuning in the evening.

Day one: This was a hard day of racing. The windforecast was up to 35 knots! We raced 3 races, I crached in the downwind in the first two, so I didn’t finished them. Just before the second race the wind droped a bit, so I could handle my 9.8 better, I became 2nd in the third and last race of that day.

Day two: Agian much wind but now 25-27 knots, so I took my 9.8 agian. In race 4(the first race of day two) I was leading the race, but in the last downwind I crashed agian. I pulled my sail up a fast as I could and finnished 3rd. In race 5 I made a huge mistake by sailing into a big wind gap. So a 4th place was born. Race 6 was good, I took the leading but I tacked to early so I became 2nd. At the moment when the “z-flag” went up, I saw the wind dropping. So I ran to my fan and rigged my 10.7 like a M*ther F*cker! And I won that race easely. When I came back to shore my material had to be checked, so I had to sail to the race site where one of the jury members was waiting. But on my way I hit a rock underwater with my fin, so my finbox was cracked. I repaired it that night and it was good enough to race with.


Day three:

I was so happy that the wind was calmed down. It was a nice 12-15 knots, perfect for 10.7. Now a was able to show my tactics. I won race 8, my material was working perfect I just had it all under controll. Race 9 was going well but I gybed to early and became 2nd. The wind was droppnig fast but Bruno decided to do one more race. Race 10 canceled becouse there was no wind annymore. When I came on shore I hered that I had a BFD for race 10. It would have been no problem at all but rule nr: 80 was removed in the notice of race. So I couldn’t start in race 10 the next morning.

Day four: I slept quite long and took it slowly on that morning becouse I couldn’t start in race 10. I won race 11 and 12. but then the wind dropped realy much and I finished 3rd in race 13. Now I was just 0.7 points behind Florent Renard(Fra 539), the leader for the past 4 days.

Final day

Day five: With two races to go. I was quite tensed before race 14. By the time I sailed to the starting aria, the tensed feeling was gon. I had a nice start leaded the whole race and finished in 1st with more than one minute ahead of number two. With race 14 I took the lead in the classification with 2.6 points ahead of Florent Renard on the 2nd place. In the last race, race 15, the wind dropped allmost below the limit I had a terrible start but came back to the 6th place right behind Florent on the 5th place. We both had to discart that race.

I became Formula Youth Worldchampion 2004!

I would like to thank all the people who supported and helped me to get the World Title!

I would allso like to thank my sponsors: Starboard / Neilpryde / www.surfcenter.nl / Zembla / Bodde Bouman Sportcenter