NSW Windsurfing Series – Heat 5

As an important tune-up event for the Oceanics & Australian Championships this week, 43 competitors from all over Australia and the world arrived at Hawks Nest for the two day competition which served as Heat 5 of the NSW Windsurfing Series.

The talent included Wilhelm Schurmann from Brazil, 3x World Champion Allison Shreeve, Olympians Jessica Crisp and Krystal Weir, as well as a bunch of sailors from as far as France, Hungary, Greece and New Zealand on top of all the local Aussie contingent.

Greeted with a forecast of 20 knots the sailors were eager to get out on the water, however, the wind failed to come through and after 3-4 hours of teasing and four attempted starts which were abandoned we finally came back to the beach for an impromptu lunch break to see if we’d get a chance to race at all on Saturday.

Back on the beach it was interesting to see all the new gear. Lots of guys out with new fins from VMG Blades, a plethora of Starboard LWRs and HWRs, brand new TR-6’s from MauiSails and lots of black machines (new Exocet). Finally after another 30 mins of racing the wind picked up again (very light still) and we went back out on to the course.

Unfortunately for series leader Sean O’Brien, his race was over before it started as he broke an extension leaving the beach. Back on the course it was Wilhelm Schurmann who dominated the super light wind race ahead of Steve Floyd and Steve Walsh who was sporting the new TR-6’s. One race was all we could get in on the Saturday unfortunately.

After dinner the youngsters headed out to the local watering hole; the Tea Gardens Hotel Pub for the usual horrific local covers band and drinks served in plastic cups. For a change, the band this time was really quite good and played a set of AC/DC and Thin Lizzy hits which most of the youth division complaining that they’d never heard of.

Sunday morning about 3am a big front blew through with 40 knots measured on the beacons and plenty of rain. By 10am down at the beach we were rigged and ready to roll as the wind had subsided a fair bit but was still cranking 15-20 knots for the first race. Wilhelm continued his dominating form taking a victory by only 30m from Sean O’Brien (now with new extension) and Steve Walsh continuing his form from yesterday in a convincing third.

As the afternoon blew on, the water stayed increasingly flat which just makes this spot so memorable as the water is a really tropical green and the sand on the beach is super white (making it easy to spot the dolphins and turtles). Race 3 was a bit of a re-run with Wilhelm taking the bullet closely followed by Sean O’Brien again and this time with Brett Morris and Sam Parker back in their more usual positions up the front coming in 3rd and 4th respectively. Allison Shreeve gave a few of the boys a scare again banging in to the Top 10 in this race after nailing a 4th in the lightwind race yesterday! (that’s right boys, hands in the air if you got beaten by a girl?!)

Sean O’Brien led his star pupil astray in the next race with himself and Krystal Weir awarded an OCS which ruined his chances for the event win. Wilhelm had no trouble in this race taking another bullet with Murray Towndrow bumping up to 3rd and Byron McIIveen, the other black-power (Point-7) sailor taking a well deserved 4th.

Brett Morris added to the list of broken gear in the next race with Sean politely helping out with rescues in the little yellow submarine (umm, I mean… “boat”). The race crew were keen to get the guys back out on the water so Sean had to blast down to the start in the 20-25 knot cranking NE’er but missed the start by 4 minutes despite clawing his way back to 10th with some power fuelled by frustration!
It was easy to mark out who the PANSIES are in the fleet with Chris Ting, Sam Parker, Julien Ventalon, Brett Morris (slightly excused with broken gear), Luke Baillie, Jessica Crisp amongst others all sitting out the final race due to exhaustion. And yes, I did put these names in bold so you can be singled out and ridiculed. We might even publish this list on the notice board at the Oceanics so you can further be reminded of how soft you all are.

Back at the race-track Wilhelm took a cruisy bullet to finish the event with a perfect 5-from-5. Steve Floyd was able to return to his Saturday glory with another 2nd and Murray Towndrow another convincing 3rd.

Another fantastic event at beautiful Hawks Nest and a great chance for everyone to tune up before the 2010 FW Oceanics & Australian Championships start on Wednesday.

Enjoy the photos by Tam Hohnberg and Rob Plim.