Pritchard Windsurfing

Finally a good day for me in the racing this year. It has been a long year for me and to finally get in the game feels pretty good. I have worked hard in the off season and things haven't been going to plan. Today, I had a great day, and finally won one round. It has been a while but there is more to come. Today I was using my Deboichet 34 SL 4 in some of the heats, with a 6.7 Gaastra Vapor and that seemed to be going really good. Then went to my 6.0 and my 32 SL 4 with my 86 Starboard Isonic.

We did four rounds today. In the first round I  managed to get 2nd on the 6.7. The next round Ross had a killer start and put it together ahead of Antoine and myself, making me finsih in third. In the 3rd round of the day I got second after a bad start, and just worked my way through some traffic. On that last mark, Finian gybed on the back of the swell and I came swooping in to take second. Boy was I happy. Then we went for a break and one last one round in the afternoon. I made it to the final, and I can tell you it is really hard to make the finals, and then Ross and Finian went overearly. Ross had been hogging the pin end the entire day so with him out it was mine for the taking and bang i got a great start and threw it down with the Albeau right on my tail the entire race. Man that guy is fast and consistant. Stayed in front of him and won my first round of the year!! I was pretty happy!! Woohooo.. more racing to come tomorrow I suppose!

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A perfect day for the event organizers.. slalom in the morning, waves on the afternoon, on a Sunday to make things even better. Slalom started at 10:30 and it was very nice wind. I was on 6.0 with my 86 Isonic and it was going pretty well. Had a great start in the first one and won that heat. Then made it to the final whiich was pretty good. i had a a great start and then just got rolled down the first reach. I was pissed. Finian had a perfect boat end start and was flying to the first mark. He led the entire way around and that was a great race for him. I managed to get 4th after some ok gybing and some terrible gybing by others. I am on the gas as hard as i can go.

The next race started up very soon after. I made it to the final where I got a shocking start and had to make up from there. I was on my 5.5 Gaastra Vapor and got to the mark I think in last place and then started my moving up.. I didnt have as good of luck as the last one and I made a couple tackticle errors on passing people but I ended up in 6th. I was using my SL4 Deboichet 30 and it seemed to go pretty good. I really need to get some more speed somehow somewhere. Maybe it is my confidence I need to get back. I am working on it, fighting as hard as i can to get in that top position.

After that we switched to waves which wasn't so bad casue we got to rest.. Two rounds in 35 knots is a lot of work. Anyhow, the waves were not amazing but the sailors were really ripping. It was hard to judge a couple of heats, because from what I saw, there was a lot of tricks with no real waveriding being scored. For the most part it seemed ok, I thought that Kauii looked to win his heat because he was the only one that was turing out there. Something I saw was like these guys would do these cool tricks, SICK, Amazing, but that was it. It wasn't like they were turing on the waves with any power whatsoever. But as you know some people like fish, some people like steak. But in the end, the right two people were in the final, Phillipe Koster and Victor Fernandez. They were really ripping. And to top it off, Phillipe is only 15 and he won the Gran Canaria Single Elimination!! That is sick. Youngest ever to win a PWA Wave event. Well it is not over but the guy is sailing amazing. Great to see and his bag of tricks is unbelieveable. Double forwards, pushloop forward loops, you name it, he can do it. Amazing and congratulations to him! I still say if you are reading this... get to Maui and learn how ride there, or Cabo Verde... Get the other tack down and you will be the man to beat for many years to come...

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Well we went for waves again and I cant say that it was the wrong call because it sure looked like it was going to produce something good. But it never did and we ran the event in terrible wave conditions. I guess you got to go at some stage but it is hard to swallow when you train so hard and get such terrible conditions. Well i can't complain, i feel like I sailed as good as I could. I nailed a one handed one footed back loop, a one handed push loop and a pretty gay forward loop.  On the waveriding I felt ok, I mean there was nothing really to ride but I thought I did pretty good. Anyhow, I won on one sheet and lost on two others. Need to step it up in the double elimination.

The two standout's today was Phillipe Koster sailing on the Starboard Evil Twin, and Victor Fernandez who was sailing amazing. Phillipe is only 15 years old and OH MY... WOW... is all I can say. If I was him I would move to Maui NOW and learn to wave ride the other direction becasue he has whatever he needs to win this contest here. I hope to see him and Victor in the final with ballistic conditions cause that would be a sick heat!! He has it pretty together, a full support team, his mom and dad here, friends and family and is ripping. It would be cool to see him take this event at only 15 years old. Today I saw him do a goiter, sick backside 360's, takas, the guy has got the full repertoire.. 

I saw Kauli struggle a bit but I am sure he will turn it up once he gets going. He just beat Peter Volwater who sailed a good heat. Ross Williams took out wave guru Thomas Treversa which was impressive. Robby Swift had a disappointing day loosing out to Dario Ojeda a local favorite. 

 Tomorrow could be slalom, could be waves, who knows. I guess they would push for some waves, seeing as we have only 3 wave events and about 10 Slalom events. But you never never know..

 I was also cruising the net and found this really cool real estate site on Maui. Check it out here if you are interested in Maui Real Estate. Going back to the news, it stated that “halfway through 2009, Maui Real Estate market is nearly 57 percent of the size it was the same period last year.  Number of sales are way down and prices are down significantly. Although they also pointed out that these low prices are still not worse compared to other parts of the mainland. A single-family sales averaged $761,252, which was $125,000 or 14 % less than  a year ago. There were 285 closings on a singel-family homes for the first six months of the year, giving the turn over of $217 million, which is 49% off of last years mid year sales of $425 million.”

Interesting factoid of what the market..

 Ok time to focus on Tomorrow!!! Go fight WIN!!

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Whats it like to be a rock star?? Well here are some shots of being on the rocks. Windsuring is just one of those sports. The one that you cant quite get enough of.  The wind in your sails, the power of gliding accross the water!! Nothink like it. Today went for soem wave riding trying to get tuned up. Pretty hard out there to really tear it up! But trying real hard that is for sure.

Enjoy

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Well Pozo has been Pozo.. Windy, brutal launching, and good sailing. There are SO many people here this year. Going wave sailing here is incredible the amount of people on the water. It is great to see that people are enjoying windsurfing out there. This is a fun place to windsurf. The best thing about it is you can usually count on the wind happening It is really consistent and good to get pleanty of time on the water. If you want to check it out you can go to the Cutre Web Cam.  It is a great place to check out the action. 

Everything else is all go. My feet are just starting to get sore, I went out and bought some Crocks for the beach rocks and hopefully that will help them out. I think all the time in the water makes the skin soft and then you hit the rocks just a little bit and it just hurts. I am ready for a great week of sailing. Should be fun, with some wind and hopefully some good waves. I have been checking out what the wave riders are doing out there and it is really impressive. Jonas Ceballos, Victor Fernandez, and Phillip Koster are all looking good out there. It will be fun to watch these kids in action. I hope we get some nuclear winds with some big waves to see what they can do! 

The Slalom should be exciting to watch as well. I just brought Bjorn Dunkerbeck some 12 new fins from Maui.. he should be out there testing them out to see how they go. Ross Williams also got a new round of fins. These guys really go through the fins. It will be interesting to see who is using what. Antoine has also been testing out some Deboichet fins. Micah just got in last night and I am sure will be going fast. Peter Volwater is going to fast out here as he is always a factor in the high wind stuff. Finian, I was out sailing with him the other day and he was going really fast when he got going off the wind. It is going to be a fun week, and I hope to get back in the game of things. I got my Deboichet fins ready to go, my Dakine Harness, my Isonic boards, my Vapor Sails and my Camaro wetsuits all ready to go. Lets get this going!!

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Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!! Hee is a funny shot! :)

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 Having a bad day? We have all experienced this once or twice or 100 times? I know the feeling. Makes you want to pack up, go home and quit windsurfing- we’ll not really. It does make you think though. What is going on?

The first thing I do is blame my equipment. That always makes me feel better. It can’t be me can it? More often than not, there is something going on with my settings. Not enough downhaul, too much outhaul, when does it end. Now I am to the point where I know how to rig my sails so I usually can’t use that excuse.

 When I forget to put my fin in and wonder why I am spinning out, then I can hit myself with the rubber mallet and be ok with it. My favorite one is the fin in with fincover on!  Stupidity is ok in the sport of windsurfing- sometimes. It’s ok to go out sailing without your harness only to come back in and put it on- that is called strength training.

 But what if it is me? Then what? Well, chalk it up to a bad day. You can always go and check your settings on your rig to make sure you had them set the same on your last “good day” and see what is wrong. Many people make the mistake of not learning from their bad days. That is the key to a bad day. Learn from it and figure out how not to let it happen again. Write things down. Compare the good with the bad and eliminate the bad. Or try to. That is what I do.

I just past the 4 month mark on my little oopsy daisy on the dirt bike- I'm walking around and there is light at the end of the tunnel shining bright!

 Off to the races tomorrow at Kanaha….. I’ll be watching and available for any of you to ask questions- even stupid ones!

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The next Champ Camp is going to be in Alacati Turkey which is in Izmir. If anyone wants to go check it out and do this it is going to be a great event. I am going to keep pumping it up day by day, week by week. So when you get sick of hearing about it, you will probably hear about it some more. Seriously, if you want to do some good learning, Turkey is the place. Bring your wife, your kids, or leave them at home.. This is the best place on earth to learn windsurfing from start to finish. I would actually recommend bringing the wife because she would LOVE to windsurf here.  First of all it is 4 feet deep for a half a mile out. So if you are learning you fall in or get frustraited, you just put your feet down, take a break and then try again. There is no need to worry because if all goes wrong you can always walk back in. The water's warm, the air temp is great.. what more can I say. Jimmy Diaz will be there tuning you up as well so it is going to be an all out fun week. There might even be a showing from MS. Turkey who is also an amazing windsurfer as well. So tell your friends, tell your wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, the time is now to go check out Alacati! Fun for all.

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