Wellington Freewave Series Event 4.

OK, another update. Today was the Wellington Windsurfer Association's Fourth and final Freewave event for the season. Calling for 25-35 knots NW, Plimmerton was the call. Plimmerton is a small coastal suburb of Wellington, about 1/2hr from Wellington City on the west coast.

Well, we show up - and NOTHING! They get skunked here too! A couple of us mill around for a bit, wondering what is up, since it was cranking back in the Wellington harbour. But, sure enough, local knowledge prevails and around noon, the wind picked up - albeit SUPER gusty. It was pretty windy on the outside where the waves were (about 25knots), but it was crazy gusty on the inside with small waves only. Lots of people showed up, and I think there were finally 24 competitors total. I was in heat 1: 12 of us, going all out for 15minutes with "overall impression" as the most important criteria - not necessarily tricks-landed... Phew!!!

So, about 5 minutes before the start of my heat, I terribly botch a helitack and somehow snag my bag on the nose of the board! OUCH!! I nearly drown, doubled over in pain in the shallows. ARGH!! I head ashore for a bit, take some nice deep breaths, but nothing... just pain! What a great way to start the competition - me with a testicle the size of a tennis ball... and wetsuits can't hide tennis balls.

Heat 1 starts, most people head for the outside. Tom Taylor and I stick to the inside with our freestyle kits and big sails (4.7/5.0) while most everyone else heads out to the outside for the bigger waves. Well - tt worked! We cruised around and flung ourselves and kit around in as many ways as possible to show the judges we were hot shit. Thankfully, the outside is WAY outside and it was damned hard to see what was going on out there, never mind who was throwing down. I saw Tom nail lots of trickery, while I was pretty content sticking two grubbies - I think I botched everything else, including two forwards, 3 backs, vulcans etc... but somehow - I made it! Five of us advanced to the next round/final including me. YEAH!

Heat 2. I got to judge - what a crazy farce that was! Basically we had one guy writing stuff down beside names and the rest of us were calling out names and what tricks they were doing. Unfortunately, between the three of us, we did not know everybody, so the poor guys working super hard but "nameless", had their work cut out for them. To top it off, the wind turned shite and not all the best guys made it through. Of particular note were Leland LeBreton (fellow Quatro rider), who destroyed his sail, and James Court (Freewave series leader), who just couldn't milk it enough with his kit - came ashore, switched boards, and barely made it out again.
Finals: I didn't even know the heat had started! I was out sailing around and next thing you know, a horn sounds and the green flag is up. Bugger!!! I wanted to rig down!! I was still full out on the 5ho and fat board. Oh well, time to start throwing myself around again. So, it began. 10 of us out there... Got the grubby out of the way first try... now I could focus on trying some other tricks that I never land... another back attempt, another very wet forward loop, a lame shuvit (if only I could shuvit on starboard) and relatively close to sticking a switch vulcan and an airjibe into a clew-first vulcan. Never even came close to a spock. Oh well. It was super fun to be out there and you know you have to step it up a bit and try stuff you aren't normally too keen on.

The results: Third! I was pretty happy with that!!!

The aftermath: While the results are being read, a funky 40knot wind gust comes out of no-where... a poor little girl gets the scoreboard/whiteboard to the face, a rig gets lifted up and dumped onto another one and sticks the fin right into the underbelly of a virgin board.... A few sausages later, competition done...

Pretty sweet fun! Easy going - more like just a fun day out on the water with a bit of an extra incentive to go for it.

Hope to get some pics too! Long stories with no photos are kind of lame... Sorry!