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Carro-Better freestyling than Hawaii!
There is a special place just off the coast at Carro. A unique wind combination and a 60 m (200 ft) drop in the sea floor generates waves of up to three metres (10 ft) high. The spot is a Mecca for funboard lovers, and even hosts the French Funboard Championships every April. Yachts beware, though!
The area is riddled with shallows and is swept by treacherous reef winds. These conditions make Carro, close to Martigues, around 30 km (18 miles) west of Marseilles, a real windsurfer’s paradise. Out at sea, there are two cardinal marker buoys to show where the sea floor suddenly jumps from 80 m (260 ft) to 20 m (65 ft). This ‘step’ in the sea floor, combined with the winds in the area, whips up the sea into 3-metre (10 ft) waves. The ideal toy for enjoying these natural conditions is a funboard, a combination of the shortboard and longboard designs. Funboarding is all about catching big waves, and pulling big tricks and jumps. "A funboard gives you a chance to enjoy a more radical version of windsurfing, which makes use of the waves. The board is flatter, shorter and has no fin, for a more extreme ride," explains Frédéric Montanelli, President of the funboard section of the Carro sailing club.
The Carro branch was born out of Martigues sailing club in the 1980s, just as windsurfing was starting to take off. "No one knew about the spot we went to catch our waves, and there was a dry dock boat storage area where our car park is now. We gradually discovered that there were some meaty waves out there," recalls Frédéric Montanelli.
It's become a hallowed area for freestylers in France. "The Arnettes area is quite unique, because you can navigate in three directions. There is the south-easterly Autant wind, the Tramontane blowing from the north-west, the Mistral from the north and the Ponant, a westerly wind," continues Frédéric Montanelli. "It's one of the only places where you can catch winds from two sides. You have to be pretty experienced to handle your board in those conditions."
Some ports are deserted when the weather turns nasty, but Carro gets floods of people. When the wind is howling and you wouldn't dream of taking a yacht out, it's time to reach for the windsurfing gear. Even when it's a bit calmer, as long as there a bit of wind up, you will be sure to catch some boarders out there having fun.
Carro used to be a place for family outings, and people didn't tend to stay much longer than a day. The funboard craze has brought in a whole new wave of tourists, in summer and in winter, at the weekend or during the week. You can see camper vans congregating in a specially-designed area, only five metres from the water's edge. It's just like the surfers' beaches on the Atlantic coast. The admiring spectators are in front-row seats, wrapped up nice and warm.
The French championships are held in April every year. There is a regularly updated website at www.carrotestcenter.com, which gives competition dates and weather conditions.
Yachters will not find Carro easy to approach, particularly when southerly or south-easterly winds are blowing. Waves pour into the narrow cove around the port. On the other hand, it provides good shelter from the northerly Mistral. Carro is a charming little port that feels like it is at the "world's end". Sailing from Provence, Carro represents the threshold into the Gulf of Fos, with its container ships, the mouth of the Rhone, with its treacherous currents and sandbanks and the Camargue and its flat, sandy coasts. Coming the other way, you enter a world of rocks, cliffs and calanques and ferry-boats. The port only has a few guest moorings, and lives chiefly from fishing. Check out the cute fish market. Funboarding has brought a new lease of life.
- Marilyn Beaufour and Christophe Naigeon
