The 2012 Asian Windsurfing Championships (and Singapore Open) are about to kick off on Thursday here in warm and sunny Singapore. Get the live reports from me with all the inside action by clicking the picture above!
Literally JUST getting off the plane from Europe I arrived back home to Brisbane and jumped in the car to drive 11 hours to Sydney for my first formula contest of the summer; the 2011 NSW Formula State Championships. All the guns were there, and this weekend I was doing a “full-Rick” (ie, using a completely brand new board, sail, mast, harness, fin, that I had never, ever used before) as I’d picked up a new 11.5 and 10.5 AC-1 ‘Handcrafted’ Series sail on the way home from Europe and had a new F167wide formula board sitting in the garage in the plastic for 2 weeks already before I got home. The wind was pretty light, and I managed to take 3 bullets from 3 starts winning one race by over 2 minutes on completely new gear and an old fin I found in the garage (happened to be a sweet one though!). Certainly great to come home to a win, and certainly great that my gear is going fast with absolutely no tuning.
Here are some shots we took the following weekend back in Brisbane as I had no cameras in Sydney. The photos were shot by the awesome David Kramer at Kawana in the surf in about 25 knots with no uphaul or chicken-straps on the new board; argghhh.
We’ve just finished the 2011 PWA World Tour Grand-Slam on Fuerteventura, Canarias. This is one of the windiest locations on the tour and this year was no disappointment with super high-winds each day and even 2 full days of winds close to 50 knots !! I had a fairly shocking event not handling the nuking days too well but I did have one super round where I managed to get 6th in my FIRST World Cup slalom winner’s final !! Nice one. So at least I took something away from the event. Also spent most of the week commentating with my buddy Kurosh Kiani as you can see in the first pic; good times.
Photos by PWA/Carter and Dennis Boisen
This year the PWA World Tour traveled to a little Caribbean island called Aruba. Think blistering 35 degree heat, warm tropical waters and 25 knots everyday; perfect for windsurfing right? The water was super flat making the racing quite spectacular and challenging as not many guys were crashing in the turns like usual so you had to have good top speed to get through to the finals. I had a good start to the event but fell back a bit during the week and ended up in 30th. Not too bad I guess in only my 6th slalom event on the World Tour. To cap off a fun week some bandits robbed a bunch of us sailors at the beach and took off with my Canon 7D camera and a few other things – soooooooooooo devastated.
I’ve won my 5th Australian Formula Windsurfing Title!!! After a 4-day battle with some of the best windsurfers on the planet, competing at an event I helped organise, I have managed to put myself on the podium coming in 3rd at the 2011 Downunder Pro as well as being the first placed Australian and winning another National Title. Check out a few photos above from awesome photographers Rob Plim from New Zealand and Adam Craven.
I’ve just arrived in Fortaleza, in the northern part of Brasil in time for the Formula Windsurfing Grand-Prix World Tour event starting next Tuesday. I’ve re-started the live-event page so everyone can get the full coverage while I compete at the GP and also the Brasilian FW Nationals which are taking place on Fri-Sun at the same venue. Check out the live-feed below:
Over the weekend I drove up to the west coast of Denmark for the WaterZ International Multisport event. A massive 30km downwind slalom race for over 220 competitors against 80 kiters was on the cards for us windsurfers. On top of this there were SUP competitions, a best-trick contest at the Cable-Wakeboard park and a massive party on the Saturday night in a fish market. Plenty of sitting on the beach twiddling our thumbs took place on Friday and Sunday with no wind on both days however Saturday for the downwind’er brought in 20 knots and plenty of mist. Impossible to see the gybe marks we had to follow a massive boat leading the way. Some of the guns including Albeau, Cucchi, Volwater, Kiani, Williams and Swift were in attendance and it was a good opportunity to make it back to DK and catch up with some of my old Danish friends. Check out more action on www.waterz.dk.
Sean has won his 4th Australian & Oceanic Formula Windsurfing Title at the FW Oceanic Championships at Hawks Nest, NSW. World #5 ranked Brazilian sailor Wilhelm Schurmann (BRA-999) won the event outright despite Sean nipping at his heels in every race and finally taking a bullet from the Brazilian in the final race of the event. On top of the stress of competing Sean had taken it upon himself to organise and run the media coverage for the event which meant super late nights and early mornings to get everything running smooth for the competitors (not the best preparation for an important regatta!). The location for the event was a town in beautiful Port Stephens where dolphins, sharks, turtles and even a friendly whale were spotted on on different parts of the course. This place had amazing flat water slalom areas, big swells on the course area and a fantastic point-break for surfing, SUP and swimming. For Sean’s efforts he took home the big Australian Title trophy made by VMG Blades and some new phones from the event sponsor Blackberry.
For more information on the event check out www.FW-Australia.com.
Racing has begun at the 2009 Formula Windsurfing World Championships in Santa Pola, Spain. The 6-day event features the World’s best Formula sailors battling it out for the title. Sean arrived early in Santa Pola on Tuesday for a week of tuning and sailing, preparing for the event. Read the daily reports below, see the photos and stay tuned for the video as well as following Sean’s race-updates via Twitter.
Sean took 1st place overall at the Norwegian FW Championships in Larvik, Norway this weekend. A strong fleet of 30 of the top Norwegian formula sailors completed the 10 blistering races in winds exceeding 30-35 knots. Read a short report from Sean about the event below as well as results on Norwegian boardsailing website.
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