Last week IFCA President, Bruno de Wannemaeker, took up the offer of Elvis Martinus and the team of Bonaire Windsurf Place to visit them to prepare for future events.  (see pic)

For almost 20 years they have run the Starboard/Hot Sails windsurf centre with focus on American and Dutch tourists and education of local youth. For the last three years they have managed the kids' freestyle and slalom events.

Famous Bonaire windsurfers like Taty and Tonky Frans, Kiri, Ruben Petrisi all started in that club and the people from Bonaire performed really well in all classes in Turkey last year. Not surprising when we learn that some 50 local youths from as young as 7 train almost every day.  

The Bonaire venue is beautiful: a big bay with enough space to put in 2 downwind slaloms or several freestyle areas, sheltered from waves by a reef with on-shore/side-shore wind conditions daily between 10 and 20 knots (Bruno saw peaks to 32 during his visit).  The air temperature is around 28 and water is around 27 degrees.  

Bruno had several meetings with the 3 managers of the centre Elvis Martinus, Constantino Saragoza and Roger and also made contact with the governor of sports, the Tourist office and several press.  On the agenda:

-          the Freestyle Pro Kids Worlds in July/August 2008, including titles Junior and Youth Freestyle World Champion

-          the Slalom Pro Kids in July/August 2009, including titles Junior and Youth and Masters Slalom World Champion

-          the freestyle Pro Kids in 2009, 2010 and beyond

-          a Slalom World Championship in 2010 for Men and Women

Plenty of reasons for IFCA to keep returning to paradise!