WIND WHIPS UP FOR WEYMOUTH WIN

With the forecast looking amazing for Sunday and 12-14 knots for Saturday we all tucked ourselves in early Friday night. 

Saturday the wind was light to start, with it filling in at lunchtime so we all went on the water. Being over 95 kg’s I’m not a massive fan of 8-12 knots, especially when we have so many really good youths that weigh as much as my right leg! 
But I soldiered on with the mindset that all I needed to do was to get top 3 in each race to achieve the win. As we had 16 entrants we ran 2 heats to decide who made the 8 man final. 

I was in the first heat on the Fanatic 148L with a 52cm fin and a North Warp 9.3, but it wasn’t enough. I qualified but man it was light, I was just about planing when we ran through the finish and the race crew decided to scrap it and sent us back to the beach to wait to see if the wind back. Unfortunately it didn’t so we had to wait for the big winds on Sunday.

After our camper rocked all night with the wind I was very keen to get things going on the Sunday, so I rigged everything from my 9.3 to 7.0 and waited. At briefing the race crew told us of the ‘3 buoy down wind slalom’ in 15-22 knots and the first start was at 10am. In the first heat I went out early and due to the offshore gusty winds I enlisted the help of my brother Nik to bring out my spare kit. 
I was on a 7.8 warp on the new 113 falcon and man it felt good, I asked Nik to bring my 8.6 and 122 falcon just in case, which I ended up not needing. The wind gusted up to around 35 knots during our time in the morning and we had 2 full rounds, which I managed to win quite comfortably. After lunch we ran 4 more rounds so I still needed to push hard and as the conditions were getting pretty full on I got Nik to bring my 7.0 and 101 falcon. 

It was really good to see Nik mixing it up on the water with the boys on my race kit, Nik was an amazing racer back in the day…. Maybe we can get him back out here again one day. So on with the racing, I was well powered on my 7.8; everyone else was on either a 7.0 or 6.3's. By the 3rd race it was really windy and on my way to the first mark I could just see Kevin Greenslade out of the corner of my eye and he was fast; but 20m from the first gybe I heard a huge splash and he goes down. This allowed me to make the first gybe easily and cruise to my third 1st of the day, man, I was pumped and with Nik watching on the water I was feeling really good.

Now onto Race 4 and again I was hanging on the 7.8 with the boys following me to the first mark. Then I heard another slam, this time it was James Dinsmore going down hard, leaving me to gybe easy again. During this race we had some serious gusts so I just cruised. Where I was taking it easy Alan Jackson caught me up and tried to overtake. So I had to sheet in and head for the finish.

Another win and I'm pumping the air as the event must be mine by now. As the wind dropped quickly that was all the racing we could do, it was at this point I became the Weymouth champion and had done enough to get the UK Slalom title too, which was a first for me, so as you can imagine I was stoked.