Aussie Kiss!

It's that time of year when UKWA competitions make way for SWA madness!
Aussie Kiss is the Student Windsurfing Association's big festival which happens every October at Roadford Lake in Devon. This year I was instructing on the Saturday, and competing on Sunday. Unfortunately a run of bad luck in the Team racing final resulted in a poor result for Bristol, who are last years SWA Champions. The wind was onshore, making the beach start difficult with 8 people in a line, the positioning of the mark relative to the pontoon meant that I (who started downwind of everyone) had to complete two tacks to make it rather than one, and my fin got stuck on the beach, then the boom slipped... oh well!

The lightwind freestyle was awesome fun, and I got 3rd place! I sailed well thought out heats, stayed focused, and had awesome fun to make it to the final.

Photo by Supersaturated

A big thanks to Roadford lake for putting up with 500 odd students turning the place into more of a mud-bath than usual, the SWA committee for organising an amazing event, and all the SWA sponsors for making it possible, and providing nice shiny demo kit!

Three Raceboard wins in a row, and some Slalom fun.

Haven't updated for a while, but since then I've competed in two events.

The first was BSA Slalom 6 at Christchurch. Saturday saw ok wind, but it was very offshore and consequently too uneven to run any races, with lulls below planing. Never mind, plenty of wind on Sunday! I don't have any slalom (or freeride, or anything between 5.0 and 8.4 sails or boards between 85 and 295 liters!) so Nik Baker kindly lent me some 2013 demo kit from Fanatic and North, I was pretty powered up on the new RamF13 7.0, paired up with a 120 Gekko (wider than you'd think with that volume) which was very interesting in the bumpy water! Anyway, my starts seemed OK, and my gybing consistent, so dispite getting more and more out of control as the day went on and the wind picked up (untill the last race when I managed to trade the Gekko in for a 111 hawk), I managed to string together a fair few 3rd places. Not quite enough for the podium though! I got 4th, but it was super fun. Would love to see what I could do if I had some slalom gear of my own! The Results still aren't on the Website! Thanks to Nik Baker for the kit (and for not even expressing any annoyance at the broken boom!).

Picture by Dave White

6-7 October was the RYA Youth and Masters, and Stena Line Cup 6 at my favourite racing venue of all time - Portland Harbour! The wind was easterly (or there about  all weekend, with some nice light wind planing conditions on Saturday and Sunday morning dropping to marginal/non planing later in the day. 6 races were completed for Raceboards, and I had my most successful event ever, recording results: 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1! I am getting more and more in tune with my Starboard Phantom 380, and seemed to find some fantastic speed and a high angle upwind, which coupled with some solid starting and some good board on fleet positioning, usually saw me arrive to the windward mark first. Even when I had a bad start (which happened once), I managed to pull back some places and and arrive to windward in the top three. Downwind, my light weight and my fat board was the perfect combo to get planing, point deep, and stay planing (with a lot of pumping), I still think I could be faster downwind off the plane though - a bit of fitness work called for I think! Anyway, congratulations to Mark Kay for his second place - he has been pushing me every step of the way the last two events, and to Tom Naylor for his 3rd place - always up in the top 5, regardless of the winds strength. Thanks to all the event organisers and sponsors Stena Line. Hopefully I can make it to some more events next year!

1. Louis Morris, (Tushingham XR Race, Starboard Phantom 380)
2. Mark Kay, (Demon VG7, Starboard Phantom 377)
3. Tom Naylor, (Tushingham XR Race, Starboard Phantom 380)

Full Results here: http://results.ukwindsurfing.com/2012/StenaLineCup6_Youth-Masters.html