Windsurfing on the Black Sea

Last weekend I made a trip out to the Black Sea for a bit sea and sun. The whole trip was brought on by one of Shelly’s acquaintances – Venelin Petkov. Venelin is a well known newscaster and reporter on bTV (one of the major stations in Bulgaria). He is also an avid windsurfer and invited Shelly (and friends) out for a weekend of windsurfing. It also happened to be his birthday so double fun.

I think I was invited because no one wanted to drive and I didn’t mind driving the 5 hours to the coast. We left Sofia on Friday around 5:30pm. Our destination was Ravda, one town south of the ancient village of Nesebar. Interestingly, this is the same small town I had been for our Sagitta off-site meeting in June. We wanted to get to Ravda before it got too late because today was Venelin’s birthday and we didn’t want to miss the festivities.

Venelin arranged to have us stay in the same apartment complex his family was staying in. It was very nice of him to arrange all our accommodation for the weekend. The apartment was reasonably priced as well – 50 BGN (~$35) per person for the whole weekend.

We made it to Ravda and joined Venelin and his friends and family at a bar/restaurant on the beach. We were just in time for the champagne and cake (whew!). We were outside on the patio, but inside there was a wedding reception going on which was fun to watch through the windows. 90% of the time only the bride and groom were dancing. Only when the traditional circle dance songs came on would everyone join in. We hung out with Venelin and his peeps for a bit then headed to bed – ready for some windsurfing the next day.

We headed down to the beach late morning to check out the scene. Shelly and I were pretty gung-ho about trying windsurfing (the first time for both of us), but the others were a little skeptical. A guy Venelin knew ran an windsurfing equipment rental shop on the beach so we were able to get some boards to practice on. In most sports, when the pros do it, it looks easy, but when you try it’s really hard – windsurfing is no exception. Despite some excellent instructions from Venelin, the first day involved a lot of falling in the water – usually before I was even able to get the sail up. Eventually I started to find my balance and was able to get the sail up without falling 50% of the time. I still had trouble angling it to catch the wind however. All our lessons were done late morning/early afternoon before the wind picked up. It was hard enough with just a slight breeze, let alone a gusty wind blowing while I was trying to balance and raise the sail up.

After some initial work on a wide beginner board I switched to an intermediate board – mainly because there was only one beginner board, not because I considered myself an intermediate. After a couple hours I was quite proud of myself at getting up a couple times and actually doing a little sailing. We quit after a couple hours since the wind was picking up and my hands were starting to get sore from hauling the sail up over and over.

That night the four of us headed to Sunny Beach to check it out and get some dinner. Sunny Beach is one of the main tourist resorts on the Black Sea coast. Basically this meant that the resort was mostly people from the UK. I heard very few people speaking Bulgarian. The main area of the town is a long pedestrian strip with restaurants, shops, bars, clubs, bunji swings, and all the other stuff you would expect to find at a tourist resort. We spotted a Tex-Mex place and all got excited to get some pseudo Mexican food for dinner. We kept the Margarita’s flowing (well, except for me since I was the designated driver) and ate our below-average quality Tex-Mex food. Still, living in a country completely void of Mexican food, it tasted good enough. We then checked out the beach area and stopped at an outdoor bar before heading back to the apartment.

The next day I was ready to go for some more windsurfing. Again Venelin (and his impressive patience) walked Shelly and I through the steps. Before the wind picked up I was getting pretty good at picking up the sail and actually sailing from one side of the beach to the other. However, once the wind started to blow I was having problems staying on the board because of the chop.

After a couple hours relaxing on the beach we headed back to the apartment, packed up our stuff and headed home. Traffic was pretty bad coming back from the beach, but at least it was moving. We still made decent time back to Sofia ready for a good night’s sleep.

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