no. 26. June 2007
Maui, Hawaiian Islands
June was not the best for Kevin! June was not the best month for me. It started off in Guincho, where I didn’t even advance in a heat. And conditions left us sitting and waiting for the double. This was the worst performance of my career for quite some time. But I’ll live and learn, and grow through it all. To top it off, the next week we started doing some racing in Costa Brava, and I was doing terrible there as well. Starting the event with a broken mast was ominous. I don’t know what was happening, but by the end I finally got it together and even won a race! After Costa Brava I’ve been in Gran Canaria training for the upcoming events. So next month we have an action packed schedule starting with Lanzarote for some slalom action, then Gran Canaria for some slalom and waves, and finally, Fuerteventura for some slalom. I see it all going well. As they say... Its off to the Races! See you next month! Aloha, Kevin. © PWA / Carter
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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 26. June 2007
Maui, Hawaiian Islands
Phil. Back on Maui with lots of Wind. Wow what a windy month it’s been for June. We’ve already had three Maui Race Series now and it’s been super windy for all of them. All the racers are now enjoying there TR-3 race sails and we are getting in good results all over the World. Here on Maui we have seen a record number of Maui Sails at Kanaha over the past few months and I continually get comments about how good our sails look and how people are happy after sailing on them the first time. It’s the second Summer in a row I’m spending on Maui instead of competing in the Canaries, and it’s been extremely enjoyable so far. Lots of people at the beach with our sails, so it’s a busy time for us, helping customers, tuning their gear and keeping up with the mainland orders. We have our 2008 sample wave sails finished now and we will be shipping them in the next few weeks around to our importers. Kev is now in Europe doing the Canary tour so it’s going to be interesting to see all the results come in over the new month. It’s that time of the year to start work on the freeride range and get it ready for production later in the year, so there plenty to do. Aloha, Phil.
© Madi
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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 26. June 2007
Maui, Hawaiian Islands
Unusually windy June for Martin. June has been unusually windy in Holland. We’ve had some great sessions and even had one spontaneous race with 73 windsurfers present when the wind called us. It’s this element that truly highlights the potential of GPS racing. No waiting for wind, no hanging around, just go with the flow. The only downside about the race in which nearly every single rider broke his or her personal record is that the wind decided to please us in the middle of a working week. The list of excuses probably matches the list of personal records. Its good there are only very limited numbers of windsurfers otherwise the economy would have come to a hold.
programs. If we want GPS to grow we need to make sure that we simplify the format. I’m sure this will happen in near future.
Personally I was aiming for the nautical mile, but the wind proved to be too gusty to really go for it. Some others did go for it though and reached some respectable speeds. One thing has gotten clear to me; my home spot Horst is capable of delivering the goods for an attack on the nautical mile once a true gale hits at the right direction. It will be one of my goals for this year. The bigger speed sizes prove to be very fast and the needed peak speeds to go for a record run on the nautical mile of close to or over 44 knots are most certainly possible with the 5,9 and 6,3. I have played around a lot with the downhaul and found out settings +4 cm help a lot to gain control and increase potential end speed. In gusty conditions it helps to rig bigger and have the added drive of a bigger size to cope with the lulls. A setting like this is only helpful on flat water, otherwise the tip is too floppy and the rig gets restless. On flat water though it helps the rig to breathe and to keep up the nose of the board in the fiercest gusts.
All in all it was a challenging month. It’s a shame a true attack on one of the standing records hasn’t been possible up till now but on the oter hand it gives me room to learn more about the TR3 sails and get ready for the fast season. Right now it’s summertime in Northern Europe so probably it won’t happen the coming months, but the global warming seems to have some effects on the wind patterns as well....
It’s also very important to work on accuracy issues and to create formats which specifically suit the needs of us windsurfers. The tech group is working very hard and guys like Manfred Fuchs, Tom Chalko, Chris Lockwood, Mal Wright, Andrew Daff and Mathew Robertson are constructively moving forward. A lot of progress has been made behind the scenes.
Aloha, Martin.
Regarding developments on GPS devices it has been a very interesting month as well. First on water tests have been made with a new device which can be monitored live through internet. With the use of the Google Earth Pro platform we could follow surfers and see their speeds as they were racing on the water. The resolution was incredible. We could see the leaves on the trees, the swans swimming on the water and the bird’s eye view of the sailors out on the water was spectacular. the guys developing the program are working towards a fully automated version that detects spikes and automatically creates a ranking. The Navman Challenge in Hawaii shows people like the simplicity of the format and not everyone is interested in or capable to install difficult analysis
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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 26. June 2007
Canaries preparation month for Taty. June was the time to get everything ready to leave to the PWA Canaries Islands. I spent the first eighteen days of June on Bonaire training freestyle together with Tonky and Kiri, We had some great sailing and the wind on Bonaire blew mostly early in the morning and in the afternoon around 4 o’clock. I also spent some days training with Patun on the Slalom gear, which was good for me because I will do slalom during the Canaries Pwa events so to do slalom training is good so I can also get used to my TR3’s and my iSonics slalom boards.. I started packing my slalom gear on the seventeenth, and on the eighteenth packed my Freestyle gear and also my clothing bag. As I always let everything at the last moment to do, this time I did everything earlier. This way i can be more relax. The flight was at 1:44pm so Tonky and I went check in at 10 o’clock. We had together nine pieces: 7 windsurfing bags and 2 clothing bag. We had to pay $0 for the windsurfing bags. Maybe we were lucky but I am happy to pay nothing for the gears.
Maui, Hawaiian Islands
Well the flight was 8 hours and 45 minutes from Bonaire to Amsterdam. I slept almost the whole flight so that was good because I hate to stay awake. It makes the flight last like a eternity. Then from Amsterdam to Barcelona, then Barcelona to Lanzarote, I slept in all of the flights so I felt that the time passed by quick. Arrving on Lanzarote we took two taxis. The good thing is, is that taxi took the windsurf bags. They have their own tied down straps and they also have roof racks, so the taxi tied the Boardbags on top of the roof, and off Tonky and I were to the hotel. We checked in at the Sand Villas Beach Resort. We had a a good room with the view to the sea and you can also take a look at the competion site. We stayed there till the 29th and moved out to get free accomodation from the PWA. On the 22nd I picked kiri up at the airport, at the same time I bought a ticket to Gran Canaria. I had to flown to Gran Canaria on the 25th for two days. There I met with Kevin and Tiesda to test some new Slalom and Freestyle boards for Starboard. The new design are working really good both slalom and freestyle. The 27th I flew back to Lanzarote and am here training some freestyle in Lanzarote during my days and it seems that everything is going okay. Registration of the event took place on the 30th. That’s it for now. The event will start July 1st, so stay tuned and check Pwa site for more daily news.. Aloha, Taty Frans NB-9
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Maui Monthly | Our Experience Your Reward no. 26. June 2007
Maui, Hawaiian Islands
Sweet Month for Barry. The month of June was sweet most of the time, and the wind was blowing hard here all month. The Maui Slalom Series started again, and MauiSails have been showing great speed by dominating a lot of the divisions. Speed sailing is also a daily thing now with GPS racing going on almost every day. And there is plenty to do every day in every other part of our work. This month was busy, we completed designs for a new cam system that should save some weight and make the rotation and rigging easier, a batten tensioner that will save a little weight and be more smooth and low profile, and we finished all the rest of the design work necessary to move on to the next stage. It seems like the days are getting shorter, instead of longer!
As the event season takes hold we will begin to see more and more results so we can get an idea how the changes we made for 2007 are working, and begin to evolve the TR-3 into the next level we can imagine. July will be a chance to do lots and keep testing every day. I’m feeling real good about getting things done with less pressure and being able to do more creative things. The renewal of interest in speed because of GPS monitoring is the most exciting thing of all, and I recommend getting an inexpensive unit to use just for fun, and to challenge yourselves to find out just exactly how fast you can go. Aloha, Barry.
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