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Old 03-03-2010, 08:07 AM
kent kent is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 430
Default Course Racing World Cup in Puerta Vallarta

Well the first day is thankfully over. After a nice day and a half of good training with the top riders in the world, we put up 11 meter kites for the first 3 races of the series.

There are less than 20 riders competing for 20K in prize money so the it's pretty fierce on the water. The day could have been better for the Florida crew, but today is a new day.

Race 1: Pin end of the line is favored. most of the top riders opt to port tack start with only 1/4 of the fleet on starboard. I lined up the farthest back with about 6 port tack blockers in front of me including Damo, Farley, Wasson, etc. About 20 seconds to the start you could see that the port tackers would have to duck the first starboard tacker that wanted to win the pin. Damo was smartly the first to duck away and made it free of the starboard guys. Too bad for me, Farley and Steph Bridge bumped (both on port), and forced the starboard guy to slow and go lower. I had a French rider back loop his kite causing me to fall and raise my kite. This impeded the starboard rider and 3 of us were protested in the first race. I have been using the go pro and in looking at the footage, actually i may have won my protest due to be being "capsized", but i instead opted to take the 20% penalty as did Farley and Bridge.

Damo took an easy victory in race 1 followed by Koch. it was pretty mixed behind them, but Bruno, Heiniken, and Gebi were in there somwhere. I think I ended 8-9 before taking my 20%.

Race#2: Suffice it to say that there weren't too many port take starters in this one. I nailed my start about mid way down the line. My angle was very good and I quickly out pointed Bruno, the other French rider, Wasson, and others. Damo was to windward of me and riding with good angle and fast. I'm finding that my boat speed and angle is great, but my upwind board handling is killing me. At any rate, I round in5-6 place and probably lost another on the down wind. This was to be a very long course with a 3 roundings around the weather mark and a down wind finish. I was running in around 7-8 with Damo fighting for first with Koch. I was counting windward mark roundings and thought that I had one more lap to go... big mistake. I ended up with an extra leeward rounding and ended 11. Damo and Koch did the same thing which resulted in 9's and 10's for them as well.

So... after 2 races i should pretty much be packing up to head home! Well, I decided to stay and after a quick beach break we were off to race #3.

Race #3. Just before the start, a few riders, including Bruno tried to get back to the beach for 13's. Most of us stayed near the course thinking that there was not enough time. At any rate, the guy goes off and it's a clean start. Damo, Farley, and I are pretty high up the line on starboard and the rest of the fleet was footing ahead and to leeward. Damo and Farley were ahead of me and to windward and tacked. I saw that they were likely just over the lay line so i quickly tacked and was in a perfect position. The rest of the fleet had grossly overstood. Damo and Farly 1 and 2 around the mark with me in a good 3rd (finaly). Down wind was pretty fast, but Heiniken made good ground on me and managed a pass by the bottom. Just behind were Gebi, Bruno, Wasson. Up wind I held my own. As the wind got lighter, i managed to do even better upwind. round the top again in 4th and was fighting Gebi down wind. we were pretty even down wind. I was going lower and slower, he was higher and faster. he has had problems with board handling down wind and stumbled putting his kite in the water. Over for him. I round the last leeward mark behind Heinkien, but the wind now took huge swings and held large holes. At the finish it was Koch (got pretty lucky with a 25 degree windshift that hurt Damo and Farley on the left side of the course bad), then it was either Heiniken or me as our finish was very close. As there was a mess up with numbered shirts, the race boat missed my finish putting me in 10, but I'll sort it out this morning.

We are expecting to run 4 races today, a long distance Thurs., and 2 races each Friday and Sunday. They are really looking for 12 races to get 2 through out's so we may do 3 on one of the last 2 days.

I'm really happy with our speed and angle, it's pretty clear that upwind, Damo and i have a bit more. Damo is running perfect, while i need to get more consistent on the tacks. Gebi is currently in 5th and super consistent. After the fix if the scoring the positions will be as follows. remember that things will change after 7 races due to the through out.

The top 10

1 Adam Koch USA
2 Damien LeRoy USA
3 Johnny Heineken USA
4 Bruno Sroka FRA
5 Michael Gebhart USA
6 Julien Kerneur FRA
7 Sean Farley Gomez MEX
8 Kent Marinkovic USA
9 Chip Wasson USA
10 Cameron Biehl USA


I'm posting video and images of the event on the ASM facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/adventuresportsmiami?ref=ts
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