So Summer 2024, lets be honest it wasn’t plain sailing it was quite frankly a bit of a juggle, spinning all the plates whilst always being under thumb of Mother Nature and whatever weather she was going to throw at us next, but as the sun begins to set on another Abersoch Summer season, we’re reflecting on the last few months of non-stop Watersports action, and how grateful we are to get so many of you in and on the water with us here in our little welsh village on the Llŷn Peninsula.
Surf Lessons were more popular than ever, with Coach Eilir down at Porth Neigwl, wind, rain and shine, along with the occasional lesson held in Abersoch Harbour sheltering from those stormy conditions. Along with Lucia and Will assisting on the big groups, Eilir got you all in the water having fun learning to ride the waves, giving you all the skills to take your surfing to the next level.
“ Cannot thank you guys enough for your patience and guidance. Made our son’s holiday going on your surf lesson. Thank You.”
Coach James had a huge amount of SUP lessons and tours he powered through this year, including a few Hen and Stag Do’s that always bring the fun to the water. We were blessed with some incredible super calm flat mornings for our Sunrise SUP Tours, who saw a completely different side to Abersoch before the rest of you woke up. We had some amazing families paddling with us, some awesome kids that really showed the grow-ups up. The inner harbour often provided sheltered water for our paddle boarding beginners and usually got a wave from our shop staff.
“The best morning on the sunrise SUP! We paddled across the bay to a small private beach & had croissants, fruit, biscuits & coffee for breakfast. The conditions were perfect and the weather turned out to be lovely. A perfect morning from start to finish, will definitely be booking again!!
The dream team consisting of Nic, assisted by Mike and occasionally Will smashed back to back sessions, and safely got many of you round the popular coasteering course over in Porthdinllaen and they even managed a few tours on the Abersoch course, when that wind was just a little too spicy on the other coast to run. Thanks to everyone who happily switched times and days when the weather wasn’t favourable, it's always tricky to rebook everyone last minute and we were really grateful for everyones understanding. Summer 2024 also saw the smartest footwear to complete the course, not our recommendation for standard coasteering attire but we were impressed all the same!
“Absolutely fantastic team… brilliant to deal with from start to finish (safety conscious as well) and great with kids, highly, highly recommend!”
Our new Watersports activity for 2024, Wing Foiling and Wing surfing, ran by Woods saw many of you out on the water taking up lessons enthastically learning new skills with the wing and foil, we really enjoyed seeing everyone progress so quickly and really listening to the tuition. We loved that the lessons were 50/50 male and female, who were taking up lessons, it's great to see and not always true for every Watersport. There’s a real buzz with wing foiling at the moment, it great that this relatively new sport is really getting more and more popular in the area. We’re currently looking into offering a course of lessons over a period of time to progress further, not just a lesson, all feedback welcome? Come and learn to fly with us.
“ I can highly recommend the wing surf/wing foil lessons from Captain Woods…. 2 lessons in and I’m loving it!”
The shop crew were busy, serving everyone in store with Watersports equipment and successfully cleaning out hundreds of hire wetsuits, not the funnest job, but someone has to do it. Change Robes from DryRobe and Red equipment still proving incredibly popular and the 2nd hand wetsuit rail and our wetsuit exchange program being clear winners this year, a brilliant pre-loved wetsuit option to offer. Sun Bum still being everyone’s favourite sunscreen brand when that sun had its hat on, along with Salty Crew tees and caps getting sold out all summer. Big Thanks to all our amazing shop staff who pushed through this year, but special thanks to Maddy and Tilly who juggled and managed that booking diary like absolute pros.
We only managed one of our free Abersoch SUP socials this summer, it was a lovely evening and we were especially pleased so many of you came and paddled with our team. We were hoping to run more and had pinpointed lots of regular dates but the wind was just not on our side, but who fancies paddling this Autumn with us, watch this space!
Some of our Abersoch Watersports secrets and amusements from this summer won't be revealed to everyone, but Work hard, play hard, and off duty our staff also had lots of fun. Super SUP Coach James managed to win big 3 times! Ok technically only twice, but we’ll fight his corner, he won the Abersoch Regatta Raft race by a fair distance but was proved disqualified after a slight rule breach of needing more than one person on his raft, he then went on to redeem himself and win the Pwllheli RNLI raft Race. James also claimed the title in the Abersoch Regatta Paddleboard Race, we kind of think he needs some kind of handicap next year with his super speedy pro paddling, we’re open to recommendations! Quite often James heads out and trains on his race SUP for whatever challenge he’s attempting next and there was such a time this summer that James was tackling and throughly enjoying some windier paddling conditions and a member of the public called the RNLI to go and pick-up a paddle boarder in distress, So Woods ran out on a family meal as his lifeboat pager went off and headed to the station and if James did have his pager on him at the time, he too would have rushed to the station to head out on a call out for ‘himself.’ James, a highly experienced SUP’er was very safe and still headed to the station still in his wetsuit for a cup of tea, so his fellow RNLI crew could successfully take the mickey out of him. Lots of laughs and thankfully no harm done. Well done to the member of Public for making the coastguard call, it could have been a different situation. Off the water James spent a lot of time with his ever growing brood of chickens, we've definitely been grateful for all the eggs, keep them coming ladies!
Captain Woods did a solid summer in the shop, minus any whole days off like an utter hero, but he still managed to get plenty of water time on the foil with the windy conditions post-work, perfecting his skills, who thinks we should challenge or even join him to nailing down-wind foiling this autumn out in The Sound on a big swell, looks fun doesn’t it? Woods also enjoyed some fun family time out on the water fishing, BBQ’d Bass anyone? Delicious!
In between Coasteering sessions, instructor Nic learnt some sailing skills on his sailing boat Tiddler, we’ve enjoyed watching Nic getting out there with the rest of his cool little family, he’ll be out racing in SCYC Keel Boat week before we know it. Off the water Nic loved to watch his favourite Corrie on catch-up, he'll be happy to fill you in on all the latest storylines.
While Eilir wasn’t teaching the masses to surf down at Porth Neigyl, in his spare time he was having his kind of fun scaling cliff faces and finding new climbing routes right here on the Llŷn Peninsula and having a fun summer with his girlfriend Lucia, we’ve got a feeling he’s excited to head back into the Eryri mountains with his camera.
And as for me, Mrs. AW, i've made the odd guest appearance as instructor reserve, but really I’ve been upholding my part of the Abersoch Watersports dynasty from the carnage of Abersoch beach everyday, entertaining our two little beach rats, whilst glued to my phone, assigning customer tour photos, managing our social channels and answering all your emails and Webchat questions about if Crocs are appropriate for coasteering and if we do oat milk for the SunRise SUP Tour breakfast, so no I’m not a bot with generated messages, just a real person trying to juggle the work/family life balance. I did have lots of fun though, Who saw our attempts at SUP skipping?
Massive ginormous shout out to all our customers that made Summer 2024 a good one and a big YAY to all the local Abersoch Businesses that survived the manic yet magic of summer, same again next year!
All our activities will continue throughout September, if conditions allow, get in touch to book. The shop will be open, receiving lots of exciting winter wetsuits and new stock to take us through the colder autumn months.
We’re off to recover and have some well deserved September time with our families and hopefully pressing play on surf mode, now the waiting game can begin for some epic autumn waves……..fingers crossed !
Wowzers, that was a long one, thanks for reading if you've got this far!
Mrs AW signing out on Summer 2024.
So pleased you had such a great Summer and introduced so many people to Watersports. This is a great report – rally enjoyed reading it. WELL DONE EMMA!