Water Sports Articles

If you love the water, you’re going to love Italy. With a long coastline lapped by the Mediterranean, Ionian and Adriatic seas, Italy is a brilliant destination for epic watersports.

It’s no secret that Italians love messing about on the water – especially on speedboats, sailing yachts and kayaks. The year-round sunshine and a gorgeous climate lend itself to water-based activities. Think sweeping coastlines that hide beautiful gulfs, secret bays, and quaint fishing villages. Plus, Italy has over 100 blue flags for the cleanest and most equipped beaches.

Our Airone Beachclub is brand new this year, so you can see why we’re totally besotted! Here are just a few of our findings from our first few months of Italian watersports.

Once you get the hang of it, performing a wakeboarding trick is an exhilarating achievement. Clue up before you go and let your Neilson instructor know what your target is so they can best assist you with learning how to wakeboard. As soon as you’ve established what stance you are - ‘goofy’ or ‘regular’ - you can focus on perfecting your skills on the water.

Whether you want to master riding the wake, get some air, do grabs, or complete rotational tricks, we have a range of beginner tricks for you to try out. This is your guide on how to learn to wakeboard and pick up some easy wakeboarding tips and tricks.

We wanted to find out exactly how as a nation we best like to embrace the sea. We know that the promise of summer holidays with waves lapping onto sandy shores and long days of lazing around in the sunshine is enough to make most people fall in love with the ocean. Increasingly however, it’s the vast amounts of exciting and energising water sports, enabling us to spend time both on and in the ocean, which is making us fall for the blue waters of the and the significant physical and mental wellbeing benefits that these activities bring.

Over 8.5 million people each year are turning to the great outdoors for their exercise fix and the same principles of ‘green exercise’ i.e. working out in an outdoor environment can be applied to physical activity such as swimming and water sports which take place in the ocean. We like to call it the ‘blue gym’!

Recent evidence has demonstrated that, compared with exercising indoors, outdoor activity results in a significantly greater improvement in mental wellbeing. Feeling more connected to nature, cleaner air, and providing a significant vitamin-D boost, means ocean-based activities can lead to improved mood, self-esteem, and higher energy levels.

We wanted to look further into this, to discover why we’re so drawn to the plethora of water sports available to us both at home and abroad and which ones are our favourites. We analysed 3 years’ worth of Instagram data, looking at the most photographed, shared and talked about ocean activities to discover the top 5 most popular water sports, according to Instagram.

Once you’ve made it past the initial stages of windsurfing and got to grips with some key skills, windsurfing opens up to you with lots of fun and some good challenges along the way.

At intermediate level you make the leap from sailing along to fully blasting with some big ticket skills and manoeuvres to conquer like harness, footstraps, and waterstarts. It’s often been said that the main difference between an intermediate and an advanced windsurfer is that advanced windsurfers do a lot more standing around on the beach, either tweaking equipment or resting hands on harnessbars and chatting about wind.At least half of this activity is some of the most productive time you can spend in your session. You’ll have heard the adage that failing to prepare is preparing to fail, and at intermediate level and beyond setting up your kit well will make all the difference to your progression.

To help you on your next windsurfing holiday here are a few tops tips on how spending just five minutes before you launch might make a huge difference to your nexts session on the water.

Whether it’s The America’s Cup, Kites, Windsurfers or Catamarans and Dinghies; its seems that the Hydrofoil has literally taken off in the sport of sailing, as craft of all shapes and sizes take to the skies.

We’ve teamed up with former Neilson Instructor and now UK based coach Sam Rossto find out more.

There’s a broad range of water sports out there to dive into and each one offers an exhilarating opportunity to enjoy the most natural resource in the world! Learning to sail or windsurf (or kayak or water ski or paddle board) with your family on holiday will help you all gain a renewed sense of self-confidence, potentially introduce a new hobby for you to continue enjoying together on your return home and of course create holiday memories that’ll last a lifetime. Plus, the water sports and tuition are included on a Neilson Beachclub holiday so you can all have a go at as many new activities as you like!

Wakeboarding is possibly one of the coolest watersports around, once you’ve had a go, you’ll be coming back for more. For the wakeboarding beginner, you’re basically towed behind a ski boat on a board that’s bigger than a skateboard, smaller than a surfboard and a bit wider than a snowboard. Once comfortable being towed behind the boat, you edge the board out to the side of the boat and cut back across the ‘wake’ to the other side.

We talked to Ellie, who first learnt to wakeboard (age 12) on her annual Neilson summer holiday. She explains that how after learning to water ski she was up for a new challenge. She liked the idea of wakeboarding and decided to give it a go for the first time in the warm, flat water of the Ionian Sea in Greece at the Retreat Beachclub in Sivota. Here, she shares some of her top tips on how to wakeboard.

Being on the coast gives you the opportunity to try lots of different heart racing water activities. Our activity manager Gary Sinclair explains the benefits of the most popular watersports you can try on holiday, explaining how they’ll give both your mind and body a workout.

These are introductions to a few of the top windsurfing moves from beginner right through to freestyle. From the basic stance, tack and gybe, through to planing, and even more advanced aerial moves like the Vulcan and Forward Loop, there are some exciting techniques outlined below to help you learn how to windsurf. But remember, there is a whole lot more to it than this so if you’re completely new to windsurfing don’t expect to understand it all right away!

Windsurfing is an exciting sport which can be enjoyed all over the world in diverse locations from the Caribbean to Africa and Asia. There’s also some awesome windsurfing to be had right on our door step here in the UK and at just a few hours flying time, there is also great windsurfing in Greece.



Europe is home to some world-class windsurfing locations, with destinations to suit absolute beginners to those that will excite and challenge the most experienced windsurfers. Greece, in particular offers some amazing locations and conditions for your next fix of windsurfing, there’s plenty for non-windsurfers to do to, so it’s a destination to put a smile on everyone’s face. Here we take a closer look at some hotspots for the best windsurfing in Greece.

If you’re new to watersports, you’re probably wondering what to wear and how to choose the right clothing for a day or even a few hours on the water. What you wear in the UK will differ to what you wear in the Med and even the time of year will be worth considering when you’re throwing things into your suitcase!

Thinking of taking up windsurfing? Well you’ve come to the right place. Windsurfing is an exhilarating sport, that you can pick up and start learning whatever your age or ability. With expert tuition, the basics will quickly become second nature and you’ll be wondering why you didn’t start years ago.