Gran Canaria Wind & Waves Festival

Jaeger Stone talks doubles and the start of the season

Jaeger Stone (Starboard / Severne) returned to the PWA Wave World Tour in 2014 after taking a couple of years away from the tour to finish his studies and recover from injury. The Australian made a strong return in 2014 achieving two top 5 finishes before coming back even stronger last year, which saw the 25 year old win the single elimination in Tenerffe as he recorded three top 6 places to earn his place on the overall podium for the first time — 3rd. Just ahead of the start of the Gran Canaria Wind & Wave Festival — which begins on Sunday — we caught up with Jaeger for an interview:

PWA: Hey Jaeger, if you look back at last season how was it for you? You finished on the overall podium for the first time… you must’ve been pretty happy?

JS: “Yeah, last season I managed to string a couple of decent results together and was definitely happy to finish 3rd overall. The main thing for me though is that I'm moving forwards as a sailor in general and learning in every competition that I'm in irrespective of the result. I have my strengths and weaknesses and am aware of those so I just want to keep improving in all areas. Good results are obviously nice to achieve and I want to win a World Title so everything I'm doing is just working towards that.” 

PWA: Ahead of the start of the season how are you feeling? And what is your goal for 2016?

JS: “I feel good and this week I'll start getting a bit nervous and excited as well. My goal this year is to work hard and to keep trying to improve in all aspects of my sailing to become more consistent and dangerous.” 

PWA: You’re consistently one of the top scorers in terms of wave rides and have had some narrow defeats where you’ve just been missing a double forward or other something in the latter stages of the event… from the looks of your video over the winter you’ve been getting doubles dialled? Are you feeling confident with them heading into Pozo? 

PWA: "Yeah, there's a huge emphasis on doubles in competition and I know that that is an area of my sailing that I need to focus on. I guess after my injuries I started getting my confidence back with attempting them last year and I realise it's going to be a bit of process in learning them consistently in all conditions to match it with those best guys. I'm enjoying learning them now though which is a positive but I've still got a while to go. Just chipping away.”

PWA :How long have you been in Pozo and have you adjusted back to the conditions there?

JS: “I’ve been here for over 2 weeks now but have only really started sailing the last 2-3 days. I cut my foot on my fin in Morocco before I came here and ended up having to sit on the sidelines for a while with stitches. The cut is right where my strap is so I'm still trying to manage it now to make sure it keeps healing nicely. Annoying but could be worse. I'm starting to get in tune with my smaller Severne Sails and Starboards as well as the conditions a bit more now. Pozo is such a unique place to sail and feeling comfortable in 50kn is definitely a challenge. I feel like every year I forget how windy this place gets.”

PWA: Finally if you had to try and pick a top 5 for the event — including yourself — who would you choose?

JS: “I don't really like picking favourites. Victor, Philip and Braw are sailing really well as always and are standouts here but the level of the rest of the fleet is insane as well. The exciting thing on Tour now is that anything can happen so I think it will come down to who puts the better 12min heat together.”

PWA: Cheers Jaeger and good luck for the week ahead.

Make sure you tune into www.pwaworldtour.com between the 3rd-9th July to watch all of the amazing action live via the PWA live steam.