Vassiliki is a good spot with the local wind called "eric". As well as Club Vass you have about 3/4 other windsurf centres in the bay and in the season it gets pretty busy. You'll have a good time as nightlife is great and loads of young - mainly english windsurfers come out for the season and holidays. Just be aware that the greek islands only work from June til September and aren'T year round resorts so you'd have to wait now til next season... Club Vass also has Club Dahab in Egypt as well as about 10 or so other windsurf centres there this is a year round windsurf resort and is popular as is only 5 hrs or so from the UK and other north European countries...
The 2 sites below show you a lot of the world windsurfing resorts and when they're at their best.
http://www.planetwindsurf.com/
www.sportif-uk.com
If it was me and money was no object I'd do Jerricocara in Brazil now then Club Margharita (island off Venezuela near the Carribean) in the new year and then move to Club Vass in May. Awesome! With all 3 working at thet're best times for wind... Now that would be living the dream!!

Start off in the bubble and squeak islands, you cant go wrong unless you hit the uzo..think the trades are called something like meltimi/?once ya got ya ticket who knows!the worlds ya oyster.

i worked as a w/surf instructor in Turkey (neilson) and Sardinia (mark warner) also have been to Dahab, but as a guest. You need to figure out what you want i.e do you want to be partying lots, do you want to be w/surfing lots etc. In Turkey which had very little wind so for me it was **. But others weren't that bothered and were quite happy to p*ss it up and it wasn't a problem that there was no wind. Dahab you will have guaranteed wind, most of the time, you've got flat water for freestyle etc and then swell out the back which is fine for jumping (no wave riding). There is another spot up from Dahab which has wave riding. El Tur. Club Vass is great for partying, but no waves and it's not as windy as people say. The way I did it, was I went over to the UK and did the RFU courses over there, level 1 -5. I was a level 4. The higher u are the better for getting jobs. Not sure what the course is over here, but I'd phone/email the resort companies first and make sure your qualification you do here is OK. Don't rely on someone saying it's equivalent etc Have a look at the various company websites:

mark Warner
Nelison
Club Dahab/vass/Margarita
Sunsail
Planet Windsurf

Just google them and get the url. Let me know if you have any qs.

Oh and a lot of these companies have ski resorts so staff often do summer then winter instructing. I've got a mate who's 48 and his been doing this for 20 years! He's never got any cash though!

Flying Fish - beware... usually they're just packaged up courses that bundle a whole pile of stuff in that you don't need, and charge you a massive premium for the pleasure of not having any hassle to organise it yourself. I've worked alongside flying fish windsurf instructor graduates who couldn't waterstart(!!!!!!), and vitually none of a whole centre of instructors (Mark Warner, Greece) who were almost exclusively flying fish grads could carve gybe.

A mate also did her Scuba Instructor course with them and got RIPPED off in a massive way (no way this can be contested - I'm a Scuba Instructor as well, and I was horrified by the amound she paid and how little she got). You should be able to do the course much cheaper elsewhere - Flying Fish is for rich kids on a gap year when daddy is footing the bill...

Rant over.... (I await the backlash)

(Phew!)

There is this guy on seabreeze called "Barn", he works at Club Vass as a windsurfing instructor. I spoke to him about it before, you can ask him what it's like.

Sflack, which course are you looking at doing? I'll warn you now, virtually everything that Flyingfish sells is designed for people WHO CANNOT WINDSURF AT ALL...

Almost all of their courses will involve you paying for at least a couple of weeks of tuition to go from complete novice to being able to sail along, tack and gybe a 160 litre board - my betting is that you really don't need this, and hence you'll be paying a small fortune for the priviledge of having a couple of instructor-trainers / coaches pay you absolutely no attention whilst you arse around on big kit in no wind because they're concentration on teaching all the people that can't do the absolute basics.

I kid you not - to be a level 1 windsurf instructor you don't even have to be able to waterstart.

If you opt to do the COURSE ALONE (without all the extra crap that flying fish will try and sell you) it'll take a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost...

For example, if you're happy in the footstraps and harness, you can do the RYA Level 1 Instructor Course - this is a FIVE DAY course! The prerequisits are RYA Powerboat Level 2 (2 day course) and a First Aid Certificate (1 day course) and having spent 8 - 12 hours watching someone else instruct - something that any windsurf centre in the world will let you do for free - SHQ will probably let you do it!

Here's a link to a centre in the UK (there's loads of 'em - put it into google) that does the five day level one course for GBP295, the RYA Level 2 Powerboat for GBP175, and your First Aid Course for GBP95!!!

That's approx AUD$1250... and that's in the UK where everything is expensive!

This amounts to exactly the same thing that Flying Fish are trying to sell as a six week course costing loads!

I know it's in the UK, but hopefully this'll open you eyes to the fact that FF will charge you loads for loads of padding you simply don't need.

http://www.aquasports.co.uk/instructors/index.htm
http://www.aquasports.co.uk/instructors/index.htm#9

I suspect if you rang up Balmoral and asked 'em for a 5 day instructor course, they'd charge you a fraction and put you in with the FF rich kids for the final week...

Anyway, I'll shut up now...

Good luck! Have fun!

fionzc said...

There is this guy on seabreeze called "Barn", he works at Club Vass as a windsurfing instructor. I spoke to him about it before, you can ask him what it's like.

Are you planning to become an instructor, Fiona?

Wet Willy said...

BTW, sflack, one golden piece of advice: Learn another language! Bilingual instructors stand a much better chance of getting jobs, I believe.

Good luck to you!!

He can already speak

Australian
English
American(US)
Canadian
New Zealand

just to name a few...

righto, if u wanna work for vass, which is buy far the best place to work, then u can only get a job if u know them.. basically i did my fish course in vass, (the price difference is not much cause the sydney course has to cover the cost of gettiung their instructors out tto syd from uk..) , i could already windsurf, and i wanted to work for vass so i rang fish and they said i could do a 6 week course or a 4 week course... basically they take u from total begginer to a level u can now teach begginers at... so i talked them into only doin the final test week and the powerboat and 1st aid course.. still very expensive but the fact the course in there at vass meant that i got to know everyone after my first night at zeus bar.. so after 2 weeks there they offered me a job, so i just helped them out while they sorted out my visa situation... club vass is a uk company and they have to pay into a uk bank account, flying fish never said anything about this which is the only problem i had with the company itself... so long story short they paid me cash, only cause i said i was gunna go work for sunsail in turkey!! .... so this year i got a uk working visa and its all sweet...
the sailing and teaching standard i sthe best in the world, the worst guy on the beach this year could flaka, forward, grubby and a whole load of spock variations, and the worst girl was still hittin dw360s... and no guys were less than level 3 instructors... cause the girls do most of the lower levels.. so if u wanna work there, look into a uk visa, try do a 2 week course early next greece season(so u can get a job that season after course) get your sailing level up and be prepared to work for another company to get experience up.. nothin wrong with mark warner of neilson but they dont get as much sailing time, they wear uniforms, they work more and get paid the same, they dont get cheap kit..

centers itself,
vass is awesome, mostly 4.7 weather, then 4.2 and 5.3 got the same usage.. get to sail with all the uk freestyle boys and all the flying fish students (lots and lots of gap year chicks) and one of the best pubs in the world in zeus, its the closest thing windsurfing has to a ski resort in that the pubs are full of windsurfers and a few supprised tourists.. as staff we were out peak season 6 nights a week..

dahab is more windy, ive been here for 2 weeks now and missed 2 days not planning on my 5, cheap, theres loads of russians, and egyptians.. pretty cool so far

margs has more wind than pretty much anywhere in the world, choppy but its windy all day and the world best freestyle sailor train there.. good nightlife but nothing on vass