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.

• Race Updates from Sean on Twitter
• Official Event Website
• FormulaWindsurfing.org

Day 1:

In three races today (2 counting and one abandoned) I managed to rig all three of my sails and use all three fins; amazing!

The day started as did everyday this week with the wind a very light westerly of 5 knots in the morning then dropping out around lunchtime before swinging to the south and picking up to 10 knots very quickly. The first race we were out on 12m’s with the big fins however after a general recall in which 20 guys sailed the entire first lap we had a delay of 20 mins or so until we could restart the first race. By this time the wind had picked up and for me it was a bit of a handful with the 12m and 76 fin combo. I had an average start and was deep in the pack going round the first mark however I elected to go to the left on the second lap which the majority of the front runners didn’t do and managed to pick up 10 or so places on the second lap.

Ross Williams (GBR-83) passed me on the final downwind; I haven’t seen the results but either I was doing quite well or he was doing quite sh*te.

The wind continued to pick up and I changed down to the 11m and 73 fin and this race I got squished on the start underneath Gonzalo leaving me deep in the pack off the line. The startline is rediculously too small for the one fleet of 80 guys so the starting tactics for the majority is to just sit on the line stopped (as there is not enough room to run down the line) then start pumping with 5 seconds to go; just like an RSX race … haha.

I tacked away early in this race and got a good lift on port across to the layline to be in a decent position around the first mark. I was following Adri Keet (NED-34) downwind before he crashed in to a French sailor at the gybe in to the bottom mark and I was able to make a few places going round the mark. We had a gate for the bottom and with everyone arriving on different tacks you had to keep your eyes open to avoid hitting someone. Suffice to say, I doubt anyone (my included) noticed the boat 10m downwind of the marks holding the ‘C’ flag (course change) and luckily most of the fleet had realised the top mark had been moved 400m to the right and changed to a red mark.

I arrived at the top mark in a group with Hubert Mokrzycki (POL-25) and Lukasz (POL-320) and although they were a little faster on the downwind, Lukasz had a big crash on the run to the finish so I was able to finish just behind Hubert. I was later to discover that Hubert was OCS in this race and BFD the race before; unlucky.

A big storm arrived around this point (see the photos!) and after a big delay of 45 mins or so and myself given time to rig the 9.9m we were sent back out. Unfortunately for me the wind started to die as the storm and lightning arrived and with only 1 boom I wasn’t able to have my 11m rigged at the same time ready to go. So the countdown started and the wind dropped to around 12 knots which was a punishment on the 9.9m. I ended up getting a great start just to windward of Steve Allen (AUS-0) however as only about 15 people got off the line planing. I didn’t have particularly good angle because I was struggling to keep on the plane with the small sail but I held in under Steve for most of the run before the boats chased us down with the abandonment flag (just as I dropped off the plane!) and we started to head back to the beach to get in before the rain.

The forecast for tomorrow is the same again, so it looks like there’ll be a LOT of rigging going on this week!

Ps. Check out some photos below of the new 2010 Starboard LWR and HWR formula boards as well as the new 2010 Exocet Warp formula board developed by Gonzalo.

UPDATE. We haven’t been able to get on the internet connection here at the race site the past 2 days, so I’m stopping doing the daily reports. Sorry guys! Keep watching FormulaWindsurfing.org for more info…

• Overall Results
• Event Video (by Sean)
• Another Photo Gallery

This weekend we had the Norwegian FW Championships in Larvik, Norway; my first trip to this country. After some tough conditions racing at the Nordic Championships in Denmark (where many Norwegians competed) last weekend, we took a few days to relax and do some sightseeing, catching up with some friends in Moss, Drøbak and Oslo as well as visiting Gotheberg, Sweden on the drive up to Norway.

On Friday afternoon we arrived in Larvik to meet up with our Norwegian friends and get out on the water after a day wandering around and getting lost in Oslo (ps, can now “officially” confirm this is THE most expensive city in the World!). We were greeted with rain, mist and 25 knots of breeze with temperatures around 15 degrees, which to me is pretty much the 3rd IceAge so we decided we’d take a break from sailing and wait till the sun came out the next day! (we are pussies, granted).

On Saturday morning, 30 Norwegians, myself and James Briggs (GBR-848) signed up to race with the impending forecast for winds to be 25-35 knots all weekend!
The race committee decided to err on the side of safety this weekend as on the open ocean there were 3m swells breaking in to sheer cliff-faces which would’ve meant if you fell off close to the wall you would certainly die a horrific death, so they set the course on the inside of the fjord. A short course of about 600m upwind with the fjord only being around 250m wide which meant lots of tacks and gybes to get upwind and downwind between the steep cliffs of the fjord – exciting racing!

The plan was to do 6 races today (the races were short, around 10-12 mins for the leaders) in winds of 28-35 knots! I won the first two races closely followed by the strong Norwegian fleet. In Race 3 I opted to try out a more ‘medium wind’ fin which turned out to be a disaster as the winds cranked to a solid 30-35 knots this race and I put it in the drink so many times despite somehow coming back to 2nd. In Race 4 I stuck with that fin and managed to break not one, but two footstraps off after a horrendous crash and decided to retire from the race … haha.

New footstraps and back to my trusty ‘super high wind’ 70cm VMG and we were back on the course after a delay of 30 mins while the wind was well over 18 m/s (36 knots!). I managed to win these one of these races but had 3 crashes in the final race to get a 3rd behind the top Norwegians who only managed to crash twice!
After 6 races I was in the lead by 2 points with plenty of wind forecasted for Sunday also. We had a fantastic BBQ grill with all the meats in the well furnished Larvik clubhouse and had an opportunity to meet most of the Norwegian sailors.

Included in the 30 or so in the fleet were many younger sailors, boys and girls, most of which sailing the Formula Experience class (which we don’t have back in AUS). What I was super impressed with is the fact that all of these kids got out there and started every single race, even with winds well over 30 knots and a difficult course to sail; some of the girls were as young as 16 – full commitment! I’ve seen many older guys sit out races in much less winds … hehe.

Sunday morning the winds dropped down to a more manageable 25 knots. We raced again with most of the Top 5 on 10m sails and the rest on anything from 7.2 – 8.5m! After a race was abandoned when the
wind dropped at the bottom mark we nailed 2 races which I won which included 3 laps of the course; giving everyone more opportunity to make up some places (when the people in front were crashing, usually!). A short lunchbreak and we were back out for 2 more races to end the event.

I put it in the drink once again in this race and allowed NOR-0 to shoot past me but got my sh*t together in the final race to win and take the overall event.
All in all, the event was run very smoothly with the race committee listening to the suggestions of the sailors and making quick adjustments to the course where necessary. With insanely strong winds, racing on an narrow fjord with sheer rock cliffs on either side and difficult shifty winds between the islands, I think it would’ve been VERY difficult to organise any races, let alone nailing 10 races in 2 day! Congratulations Norway.

Always being a fan of coming to smaller events and seeing new countries, meeting new people, rather than just doing the Pro Tour events, I really enjoyed my short stay in Norway and the racing we did with such an enthusiastic, positive National fleet. Thanks once again to the guys involved with organising the event and to Svein Rudihaugen for looking after us and the beers ;)
I hope I can make it back to Norway again sometime and see more of this beautiful country.