All you need to do is answer the question below, check out the full article about the making of the movie here, look closely for some information that will help you with your entry…

Want to win a copy of Don't Let Go?

Who thought up the name for the movie and where were they?

Ts and Cs: Competition only open for UK residents. Entry will close on the 3rd May 2013. One entry per person. Winners chosen at random, once winners have been chosen Boards will contact you via email asking for postal address to send the DVD to. If a response is not received within one week a new winner will be chosen.

DON’T LET GO -Trailer from DONT LET GO on Vimeo.

In general, it is good to have high expectations, but sometimes  even if you try your best, things just don’t work the way you want to. In theses situations it is a real challenge to make the best out of it.

When we decide to produce a film, we didn’t want to produce just another windsurf movie, but in order to make something special, we had to find a way to be different from the others. Our idea was to show various aspects from our life as pro windsurfer and make a documentary about it.

However, if somebody would have told me before, that this takes two years of time,  dedication  and fighting with injuries, I wouldn’t have done it . More over  windsurf movies like ” Minds wide open” or “the windsurfing movie” have set new standards in the last years. This makes it really hard to keep up  with this kind of quality, if you are working with tiny film budget. Anyway, we just gave it a try.

Robby Swift in Chile. Photo by Pablo Berrios.

While waiting for the wind during the Capo Verde worldcup in 2010, I was staying with Robby Swift, Camille Juban and Boujmaa in a hotel. There was nothing to do, than to wait for wind and waves. We were watching surf movies and talked about  various ideas to do a movie ourself.  Because the conditions didn’t show up for the rest of the contest we had a lot of time to start working on a new film project. None of us has been involved in a bigger film productions, and we wanted to create something that shows our own vision of windsurfing.  We scheduled to do a long term project in order to gather enough action footage during our trips around the globe.

With no real references  it was complicated find people that believed in our project. After a lot of emails, concepts and convincing phone calls, we recieved a tiny budget from our sponsors and finally managed to start filming during a big swell in Morocco.

We had great conditions  and got some decent footage at Boujmaa’s home spot.

Everything seemed to go our way. During the annual photo shooting season in Maui, we were lucky and shared some monster waves together, filmed by a helicopter at Jaws.

At one night, during a BBQ, Robby Swift came up with the idea to call the movie

“Don’t let go” – having ambiguous meanings in mind – like hold on to your gear, don’t give up trying new moves, or simply never give up.  We had no idea that this title would have such a strong effect on us. From now on “DON’T LET GO” seemed to be our daily attitude. A few days later Boujmaa almost died trying a triple forward. He crashed really hard on his gear, broke some bones, passed out and almost drowned.

Four months went by for his recovery and in the meantime we were trying to sort out more financial support from sponsors to organise the next trips.

When Boujmaa got back on track we had some productive months of filming during the PWA events on the Canaries, followed by an another amazing trip to Morocco with our main filmer Manuel Grafenauer. Again,we were happy and  stoked with our sailing and spent some long days with good action  in and off the water.

The next breakdown wasn’t far.  After returing from Morocco, I recieved bad news from Robby saying that he broken his ankle in Chile. Once more, all the organisation for the coming months changed immediately, as he was going to be out of order for six months. Things got even worse a few days later at the PWA worldcup in Klitmoller. After a hard landing I broke the crucial ligament in my knee and found myself as well on the long way to recovery. We finally started filming in spring 2012 on Maui.

Some people even made fun of us for being injured all the time. As it would have been enough, after the first few days of our trip, Boujmaa got stuck in the footstrap and broke his foot. We were getting worried if there was something wrong with our title and we should rather find a hospital as a main sponsor. The situations didn’t really improve when I also broke my leg, after a heavy wipe out a few weeks later.

Our mood hit rock bottom and I was just about to give up. Instead of being on the water I spend most of my time at the gym for rehabilitation. Everything we worked for seemed to go in the wrong direction.  Nevertheless it is a part of the game to be injured when you are a proffessional athlete. In this sense our dilemma was a way to integrate this aspect in the film.  We are playing with certain risks and sooner or later everybody has to go through tough times. If it takes more than a few months your salary from  Sponsor contract is getting reduced and there is always this uncertainty, if you will ever make it up there again.  On the other side you also realise, that this job is a real privilege to make a living by spending most of your time in the ocean.

After our recovery, we were more than motivated for our final film stop in Peru. In a little fishing village called Lobitos, we could find some endless waves with no-one around. Every turn felt like a huge relief. Riding these long waves till your legs were burning like fire was probably the best moments of the production. A few days after our arrival, we had more footage than we ever dreamed of. It was like somebody wrote a film script with happy end to a long journey with a lot of ups and downs.

We locked ourself in a film studio in Germany and basically stayed there for the next six weeks. Our hard drives were filled with  3 TB of footage  from the last two years. It took weeks just to do the selection of the best clips. Another important  fact that takes some time was to find the right music tracks in order to created a certain atmosphere.

Michael A. Goldberg, a german music producer, composed various tracks for us, to raise  emotion within the dramatic movie scenes. In the meantime  Manuel Grafenauer, Leon Jamaer and myself took care of the movie cut.

After the first movie premiers with sold out cinemas in Germany, Chile and Japan, we were more than happy to see all the efforts on screen. The feedback was amazing and it was a great reward for the whole team. Afterwards I realised that this was just another lesson of life. If you stick to your own goals, everything comes together in a ways- even though it invisible at first sight.

So, keep following your goals and “DONT LET GO”!

www.facebook.com/DLGWindsurf

Don’t Let Go- peru clips from DONT LET GO on Vimeo.

Don't Let Go, hitting screens soon!

The next two videos that caught our eyes came out at the end of the week, firstly it’s amazing to see Zara Davis on the BBC here and if you fancy something totally different check out Brawzi and Levi shredding in Maui here. 

Coming up the Christmas there has of course been a lot of penny saving present ideas and competitions around too: Lagoon Watersports in Hove have some great voucher offers, Tech Trial are selling the Drift Camera at an insanely low price, the Baker Academy are running a competition to win 8 hours of coaching, Juice Boardsports have vouchers with 10% extra free, Tushingham are running a competition to win a Starboard fin bag,  Ocean Elements are running some early bookers deals for 2013, as are Club Vass (with holidays to both Vassilki and Dahab centres)! Now that’s a whole lot of offers!

Finally in this weeks news, our sister site Boardseeker are proud to announce that the shiny new site is now up and running, so if you haven’t checked it out already head on over there now for more of an international windsurfing fix.

Don’t Let Go a Windsurfing video by boards

You might also like to read:

Starboard 2012 Dealer Conference from Tushingham on Vimeo.

And then caught up with the jumping machine that is Boujmaa Guilloul to talk Tahiti, reef tattoos and future plans.

Boujmaa Interview from Tushingham on Vimeo.

Famous for hosting the PWA Slalom in Costa Brava, the Bellena Allegre camping and bungalow park has become a venue for 2013 Starboard and Severne International Dealer Conference. Retailers and dealers from all over Europe had a chance to see, try and understand the complete collections from Starboard Windsurfing and SUP, Severne and Airush for the upcoming season. This was also a great opportunity to understand the ideology behind the brands along with in-depth information on individual products coming directly from their designers and shapers.

Starboard’s Brand Manager, Tiesda You explained in great detail why Starboard’s ideology of INNOVATION has resulted lead to the success of the brand. Their cutting edge designs became a bench mark in windsurfing and set the brand as a leader in PWA Constructors Championship second year running. The meeting was also a chance to see the first ever inflatable windsurfing board. The design featuring fully compatible and easy to fit windsurfing fin, dagger and mast base will revolutionise the windsurfing teaching and accessibility to the sport!

Highlight of the Severne presentation was the new Reflex 4, the fourth edition of the sail which you could read more about in BOARDS Summer Annual! Their approach in producing the highest quality product with no compromise and dedication is clearly visible when looking at the 2013 products.

Great amount of SUPs and kites allowed the participants of the conference to get on the water in the light wind conditions. Even hardcore wavesailors, like Chris “Muzza” Murray, were dipping their toes in some kite action.

Along with presentations from each brand there was a chance to catch up with the likes of Scott McKercher and talk about his experience and history of designing the wave line for Starboard. Boujmaa Guilloul came over straight from Tahiti where he “surfed the most radical wave in the world” Teahopu’o. For those whose potion is SUPing, current leader of the Tour Sean Poynter was on spot to answer all questions and tell the stories from the tour.

The highlight of the meeting was a visit from the London Olympic windsurfing Champion Marina Alabau. Everyone had a chance to have a word with her and have a closer look at the GOLD Medal – some even had a go trying it… Marina had shared here experience and feedback on getting to the games and winning the Olympic Gold.

Till the next year!

Check out more about the movie at http://www.facebook.com/Land.film and check out Boujmaa below talking you through his plans.

 Boujmaa is also involved in another windsurfing movie, Don’t Let Go. Check out the shots from the Morocco part of the movie on their Facebook page…

The Starboard rider known for his incredible jumping and radical wave riding style delivers again with the unbelievable video, full of tweaked aerials, smooth riding and sky high jumps.

Boujmaa from Arnauld Theobald on Vimeo.

With a cast reading like a who’s who of the windsurfing world, ‘Epic Spring Sesh’ shows the world’s best sailors performing at an incredibly high level. Sit back and enjoy the action…

“Epicsesh has been traveling the island of Maui, Hawaii to capture some of the best action this spring. The winds have been howling and the waves have been pumping with this all out action cast of athletes including Marcilio Browne, Levi Siver, Boujmaa Guilloul, Keith Teboul, Graham Ezzy, Zane Schweitzer and many more. For more updates check out www.epicsesh.com”

More at mysticboarding.com

Full results at americanwindsurfingtour.com

Boujmaa Guilloul, by PWA / JC

At the beginning of this week, Moroccan aerial maestro Boujmaa Guilloul crashed a triple-forward loop attempt at Ho’okipa. The impact knocked him unconscious, and he was dragged out of the water by lifeguards and rushed to hospital where he spent the next two nights. Bouj suffered concussion, a cut lip, broken bones in his hand and some water on his lungs – he recovered quickly, but pretty soon there were concerns from the windsurfing world at large that he might not have been covered for rumoured $10,000+ hospital bills. But yesterday Boujmaa sent round this message, to be published as an answer to the people around the forums and blogs talking about his situation…

Hi everyone, this is just an update of my situation, after my accident, I’ve been looked after very well, from my friends in the water, through the hospital and now back home, I was very lucky to be surrounded by such good people, I thank them all so much…

I don’t think I would be here trying my crazy stunts if my sponsors weren’t around, I owe them lot. Our agreement always said that I had to have my own insurance coming to such places, in fact, Mr Svein the boss of Starboard was ready to cover my bill in the MM Hospital, and I knew I could rely on him about such matters, but I also knew I had to have a travel insurance when coming to the States. Right now I am out of the hospital and everything feels good so happy I am alive thanks to Klass and Ferdinando, I owe them my life…

I think my bill has been taken care of by the insurance company, have not heard much about it so far, but thanks to the windsurf scene so worried about me and concerned about how it was gonna be paid. I just think there is no need to blame my sponsors and the industry, they’re here to support us traveling and windsurfing, doing what we love the most, and each one of us has to have an insurance program, it’s the easiest way to be able to go crazy in places where we travel the most such as Maui… It was my worried friends’ idea to create a support account to prevent me from falling into any problems where I can’t pay hospital expenses, but I was so shocked by then I decided to let them do it for me, and realised later I had two different insurance subscriptions, either one had to work.

Now I am back on my feet waiting for my hand to heal and be back in the water… I won’t stop my chase to the triple-loop here, knowing we are many trying to get there, but next time i will wear at least a wetsuit and helmet for it

Regards, Boujmaa