ECWF Hatteras Day 1

Race start at ECWF Hatteras. Picture by Outer Banks Kiting

Yesterday was the first day of the East Coast Windsurfing Festival Hatteras, organized by Mike Burns. After a skippers meeting in the morning, we started with light wind freestyle. Seven guys and three women competed in two sets of heats. They put on a great show that included just about any light wind trick you'll find in the Tricktionary, including Jaw Breakers, Ankle Biters, head dips, splits, back-to-back, rail rides, and all variations of turns and 360s. Things got "heated" for a minute when Keith pulled my clew on a close encounter and made me fall off - but fortunately, I was carrying a few balls for juggling, and threw one of them at him that scored a lucky hit. Swift punishment!

The afternoon saw 4 races in 10-12 mph. The course was mostly reaching or slight downwind, with an upwind leg at the start to spread out the crowd. Nina killed it on her Ultra Cat with her "new" (15 year old!) 7.5 m AeroLite race sail from Gonzalo, coming in first in three of the 4 races and second in one race. Andy raced a Flyer 280 foil board with a foil on an 18 in mast with a 7.8 Loft Switchblade. Despite not enough wind and too much see grass to get up on the foil, he was unreachable for anyone except Nina, and scored second places in three races. Since I was on my "new" Equipe 2 XR and (almost) nobody else had race boards, I came in third in most races.

I had been a bit upset the day before when I discovered that my 2-year old carbon boom for the 8.5 m sail I wanted to use was broken, without any crashes that could have caused this (at least not any I remembered). Fortunately, it had not broken completely while I was a mile away on the water, and Ocean Air had a replacement. But all that was forgotten the next day once the competition started. Seeing Nina kill it in both freestyle and racing was fantastic. Coming out ahead of Andy Brandt in freestyle was a very unexpected treat, for which I probably have to thank the very slick rails on the Windsurfer LT that Andy was using.

Here are the prelininary results after day 1:

Open Racing:

1. Nina
2. Andy
3. Peter
4. Keith
5. Jason and David (tandem)
6. Brian
7. Ned
8. Ray

Limited Racing:

1. Tom
2. Gaetan
3. Simon
4. Phil
5. Randy
6. LarrySergey
7. Alan

Women's Racing:

1. Pam
2. Lisa
3. Paula
4. Mary
5. Carole

Women's Freestyle:

1. Nina
2. Pam
3. Lisa

Men's Freestyle:

1. Peter
2. Andy
3. Ned
4. Simon
5. Jason & Keith (tied)
6. David

Things will get mixed up today since we'll have freestyle and racing in 20-30 mph wind!