It starts today.
There is wind forecast, although not too sure about the NNW direction being ideal.
www.windguru.cz/559365

www.pwaworldtour.com/index.php?id=38&tx_pwaevent_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=375&cHash=7536db71dbd81a11b18b43b0ac90505d

?si=dFXMIoNy5mm1vtvy

Biggest pre-event news is Phantom haven't being paying their PWA fees and so any new kit isn't allowed. So thats Pierre Mortefon current slalom-x and foil champ scratching his head. On a FB post Maciek said "It's the biggest promotional platform for the sport and trust me those membership fees are equivalent to +/- price of a board. "
Makes you wonder why they haven't paid any fees, the amount of exposure the PWA has given them is immense. I've bought a foil setup including 2 front wings, partly based PWA results and partly based on word of mouth.

www.surf-magazin.de/en/windsurfing/scene-and-events/world-cup-pwa-suspends-phantom/

Live ticker says they are going to start racing at 1pm (GMT+1) and the wind is nuking.

Scotty Smallman posted on FB on the 15th July that his sails were stuck in UK customs and he was flying out early on the 17th.
He posted a video yesterday from Sotovento on the GA sails so guess he has had a few hours to make sure all is ok with the kit. Thats cutting it a bit close.

live stream still down, but racing is on --> check live ticker on pwa website

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PhilUK said..
Scotty Smallman posted on FB on the 15th July that his sails were stuck in UK customs and he was flying out early on the 17th.
He posted a video yesterday from Sotovento on the GA sails so guess he has had a few hours to make sure all is ok with the kit. Thats cutting it a bit close.

yesterday's clip on his insta showed him on an old sail training (?!) with soukos, so looks like new ones didn't get cleared in time

Sails arrived after all for Scotty: www.facebook.com/share/p/1HzWfrGUUB/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Highlights of a the finals on the PWA YouTube page. Mental conditions, probably the highest percentage of dropped gybes in recent years.
40kts on 6m sails for some of the men.

Mortefon has an extra gear in those high winds. Still on the phantom sails

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windsurftom said..
Mental conditions, probably the highest percentage of dropped gybes in recent years.

Thats what I thought as well. Some of the shots from the drone at a lower height showed how bad the chop was and it seems windier than previous Sotovento events that I can remember.

Drone doesn't fully capture the mayhem on the water. Insane action. Older generation generally coping better in these conditions than the young guns. Mortefon very impressive in these tough conditions, clearly the fastest out there. Posted a 39.6 kn vmax (10sec) on his Insta from yesterday; that's pretty darn fast in such messy conditions!

It was still windy for todays action, although not as mental as yesterday. Pierre discards a 3rd and Maciek a 4th, showing their consistency.
Sarah-Quita has the lead, 4.3 points, but if we have 4 more races thats another discard, so Femke, Justine and Jenna could still be in with a shout as they have some hefty 3rd discards. If they dont muck the next 4 races, no room for errors. The wind looks ok for tomorrow, but a bit lighter for the last 2 days.

Be interesting to see one of the girls use a cam less sail and free race board to try and gain some control over the conditions

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Gestalt said..
Be interesting to see one of the girls use a cam less sail and free race board to try and gain some control over the conditions

It doesn't work. The courses are too deep and the camless sails don't have enough depth at the front when you go they deep they fall off the plane. Also it's a big issue in the gybes as you sometimes want to do a very wide gybe here to dodge traffic or to just settle yourself when its bumpy and the camless sails fall off the plane too easily if you spend too long at a tucked angle.

Source: tested everything from 0, to 2, to 3 to full cammed sails here plenty of times at Fuerte to see if we could go faster!

Freeride board could be good though! Something with heaps of V would be very nice here. But needs to be registerd for PWA which probably none are.

Really good coverage for day 2. I also like Nico's helmet cam.

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SeanAUS120 said..

Gestalt said..
Be interesting to see one of the girls use a cam less sail and free race board to try and gain some control over the conditions

It doesn't work. The courses are too deep and the camless sails don't have enough depth at the front when you go they deep they fall off the plane. Also it's a big issue in the gybes as you sometimes want to do a very wide gybe here to dodge traffic or to just settle yourself when its bumpy and the camless sails fall off the plane too easily if you spend too long at a tucked angle.

Source: tested everything from 0, to 2, to 3 to full cammed sails here plenty of times at Fuerte to see if we could go faster!

Freeride board could be good though! Something with heaps of V would be very nice here. But needs to be registerd for PWA which probably none are.

Good point re the course angles.

can imagine there is a part of you that wishes you were there.

A few years ago Andrea Cucchi was promoting how fast his camless sails were and posted GPS times. Its only fastest times for each criteria and not average of best 5. The biggest different was the alpha 500m. Seeing as slalom is typically 4 alpha 500m joined together cammed sails are faster.
And you can see from the battery life indicator how much longer he spent on the camless.

That's not what Sean is getting at. The camless sails can't go as deep and keep pressure in the sail. When you go to deep they lose drive

Have experienced this many times myself with freewave/camless sails. At tighter angles sure they can be as fast

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Gestalt said..
That's not what Sean is getting at. The camless sails can't go as deep and keep pressure in the sail. When you go to deep they lose drive

Have experienced this many times myself with freewave/camless sails. At tighter angles sure they can be as fast

I wasnt reply to Sean.
Andrea Cucchi did a video comparing the camless, 2 or 3 cam, and full on race sails. He mentioned acceleration out of the gybe was far better on cammed sails. You dont have to wait for them to fill out with wind to produce power.

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SeanAUS120 said..

But needs to be registered for PWA which probably none are.

The smallest NP sail registered is 4.9m I dont think NP expected 13-15 year olds to be racing in the PWA in up to 40 knots wind
If they stick with the sport, and the sport lasts, they are going to be hard to beat.
Its mind blowing what they are doing.

It's a true battle out there. I love how Prien gets his favorite 5.6 shredded by Jules (see clip posted above), patches it up the next day with some sail stickers (despite having a spare in the same size) and then goes on to get some of his best results of the competition only to be taken out by Daldorf on the start line of the final. Tough!

So a single event crowns a Slalom World Championship? Pretty lame.
Watched highlights with my wife last night... she said that the sausage was stupid an wanted to know why foils were not allowed.

The men's rankings has had a shakeup today. Maciek was in tears at the end. Pierre on his way to the event win, but could still lose it. Its been exciting.
SQ champ again. Close for 2nd, 0.7 after 15 eliminations. Jenna had bad luck and was inconsistent. Bobbi-Lynn 5th with some very consistent results.

I wonder if slalom board will change to suit this type of format?

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Gestalt said..
Good point re the course angles.

can imagine there is a part of you that wishes you were there.

Yeah, I would have loved to do some racing with the jumps! Need to go back one day.

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SeanAUS120 said..

Gestalt said..
Be interesting to see one of the girls use a cam less sail and free race board to try and gain some control over the conditions

....

Freeride board could be good though! Something with heaps of V would be very nice here. But needs to be registerd for PWA which probably none are.

I am actually wondering why recreational sailors (myself included) keep using current slalom boards. How much would we loose with respect to a fast freeride in normal, 12 to 20-25 knots, conditions? One knot of speed? Two? And how much would be gain at the low end, comfort and jibing?

But for the racing ... I am not sure do not understand the format ... jumping over inflatable thingies seems like a gimmick. And giving out the title of a worlds champion after one (1!) race is a bit bizarre. ICall it "Fuerteventura Cup" or something like that, but "World Cup"?

I personally don't see why adding an "x" element to the course disqualifies it from being a race. Besides, not every race included one; the conditions were often sufficiently hardcore without them... just look at the number of "unforced" crashes including by some of the top/most experienced riders on the tour!

The WC title was only in the women's, who sadly have only one slalom x event this year. The men will race again in Tenerife.

While current slalom shapes may be capable of improvement, I highly doubt that they'd be outperformed by freerides. If so, we would see them on tour already.

@Sean: go for it; we'd love to see the roo sail return!

There are plenty of world championships decided after 1 event. Football, rugby, cricket, athletics, IQ Foil. Its just a shame that the women only get 1 event this year. At least they had a maximum of 15 eliminations. No doubt about the winner deserving it.

The jump is ok by me so long as they dont use it all the time. And having the events in the CI it means that its port tack jumping on the way out. Having to jump on the way in would be harder. Not everyone likes port tack jumping if you dont get much of it.
The chicane is better when there is a swell and the bouys are fairly close together.

The men go again in Tenerife. Jordy mentioned that the area in front of the harbour wall should be used. If there is wind, and they do use it, then prepare yourselves for some proper action. He also said a long course starting in the North Bay at Cabezo, down past the harbour wall and finishing in the South Bay (where they usually train) would be epic. Please let it happen. It would make the logistics a bit harder, but worth it for 1 day. You would have to clear the whole area of recreational sailors which wouldnt be popular. Maybe that could be an 'XX' factor - dodge the wing-dingers

Surfmag tested Starboard/Tabou/RRD/Duotone/Tabou slalom v freerace boards and the slalom were 2-3 kph faster iirc.
So if you are a recreational sailor and buy full on slalom boards then are you a victim of marketing?

This fella is avoiding the actual breaking wave in front of the harbour wall, but you get the idea.

?si=PH3JuA8ilbRjg0mb

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PhilUK said..
There are plenty of world championships decided after 1 event. Football, rugby, cricket, athletics, IQ Foil. Its just a shame that the women only get 1 event this year. At least they had a maximum of 15 eliminations. No doubt about the winner deserving it.

Are you really comparing a two years long multi-continent qualifying tournament that concludes in a month long Football World Cup, with a no-tournament single slalom race over 4 days?

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duzzi said..

PhilUK said..
There are plenty of world championships decided after 1 event. Football, rugby, cricket, athletics, IQ Foil. Its just a shame that the women only get 1 event this year. At least they had a maximum of 15 eliminations. No doubt about the winner deserving it.

Are you really comparing a two years long multi-continent qualifying tournament that concludes in a month long Football World Cup, with a no-tournament single slalom race over 4 days?

Looks like it. Like I said there are several world championships decided by 1 event.
Football has to be a tournament as you can only have 2 teams playing against each other at the same time. There are a lot of countries which play football.
Athletics it depends upon the discipline.
There were 15 slalom races in this event.
I'd say a bigger reason to not call it a valid title was there were only 11 entrants from 6 countries (Bonaire is Dutch).
But if thats all that enter, thats all you can compete against.

There is only 1 women's freestyle event this year, here. 8 entrants from 6 countries.

BTW if you google "difference between a world championship and world cup"

A World Championship is typically a single, major tournament where the winner is crowned the world champion in their respective sport. A World Cup, on the other hand, can refer to a series of events throughout a season, where the overall winner is determined by accumulated points or performance across those events. Sometimes, a sport may have both a World Cup (series) and a World Championship (single event).

My old sport of canoe/kayak had a world championship every 2 years and a world cup every year.

So I still think its valid to crown someone a world champion after 1 event. It would be better if there were more events for all windsurfing disciplines, but there arent.

Would you like the PWA scrapped?

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PhilUK said..

duzzi said..

PhilUK said..
There are plenty of world championships decided after 1 event. Football, rugby, cricket, athletics, IQ Foil. Its just a shame that the women only get 1 event this year. At least they had a maximum of 15 eliminations. No doubt about the winner deserving it.

Are you really comparing a two years long multi-continent qualifying tournament that concludes in a month long Football World Cup, with a no-tournament single slalom race over 4 days?

Looks like it. Like I said there are several world championships decided by 1 event.
Football has to be a tournament as you can only have 2 teams playing against each other at the same time. There are a lot of countries which play football.
Athletics it depends upon the discipline.
There were 15 slalom races in this event.
I'd say a bigger reason to not call it a valid title was there were only 11 entrants from 6 countries (Bonaire is Dutch).
But if thats all that enter, thats all you can compete against.

There is only 1 women's freestyle event this year, here. 8 entrants from 6 countries.

BTW if you google "difference between a world championship and world cup"

A World Championship is typically a single, major tournament where the winner is crowned the world champion in their respective sport. A World Cup, on the other hand, can refer to a series of events throughout a season, where the overall winner is determined by accumulated points or performance across those events. Sometimes, a sport may have both a World Cup (series) and a World Championship (single event).

My old sport of canoe/kayak had a world championship every 2 years and a world cup every year.

So I still think its valid to crown someone a world champion after 1 event. It would be better if there were more events for all windsurfing disciplines, but there arent.

Would you like the PWA scrapped?

I love it when people cling on semantics and end up unable (or unwilling) to see the forest from the tree.

The point is that the PWA Slalom World Champion was a title that was awarded after a number of races held around the world. To call it the same, and award it, after all but one of those races have been scrapped, is at worst deceiving and at best a bit delusional.

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duzzi said..

I love it when people cling on semantics and end up unable (or unwilling) to see the forest from the tree.

The point is that the PWA Slalom World Champion was a title that was awarded after a number of races held around the world. To call it the same, and award it, after all but one of those races have been scrapped, is at worst deceiving and at best a bit delusional.

no, it's realism. yes, we'd all want to see a championship run across 5 continents, multiple spots, conditions, etc. -- but those days are long gone (and probably never existed). at the current juncture, this is what we have, and it was epic with a worthy winner. as I said, the men will race again in Tenerife, but I guess that's too close to Fuerte to count?

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bel29 said..

duzzi said..

I love it when people cling on semantics and end up unable (or unwilling) to see the forest from the tree.

The point is that the PWA Slalom World Champion was a title that was awarded after a number of races held around the world. To call it the same, and award it, after all but one of those races have been scrapped, is at worst deceiving and at best a bit delusional.

no, it's realism. yes, we'd all want to see a championship run across 5 continents, multiple spots, conditions, etc. -- but those days are long gone (and probably never existed). at the current juncture, this is what we have, and it was epic with a worthy winner. as I said, the men will race again in Tenerife, but I guess that's too close to Fuerte to count?

I completely agree. Be realistic: call it the "Fuerteventura Cup" or the "Canary Islands Cup". Fun to watch, if completely unrelated to what any windsurfer but maybe 100 on the planet do, but there is nothing "wordly" in this race.