A small vid I put together last night of our race last weekend. Jonathan said to me after this years race at the presentations that is was my vid of last years race that he and Dave watched that made them want to come over this year to paddle.

I hope this vid will inspire more Aussie's to come over and experience this fantastic adventure. It really is a great "do-able" channel. One of the best for conditions required for enjoyable SUP downwind racing. Enjoy ...

DavidJohn said...
Is there some kind of weird currents or something going on there because it looks like you're trying to paddle upstream with the way the water seems to be moving?. Great looking F16 board.

I think that's just normal DJ...not weird. The tide was coming in for the entire race. Low was around 7am. We started at 8.30am. You can feel it slightly when you're paddling (you can see it more watching) but it doesn't feel like you're really punching into it. Sometimes you do feel like you're being sucked backwards down a swell..which usually means you just missed one or there is another one coming from behind.

You can see the good line that Jonathan and Dave took (when you see Dave in the background later in the vid). The wind was surposed to be East (direct behind) for the race but about 1/3 into it you could feel that it had changed and had alot of North in it (rear right). We were together for a long time but then they "cut in" to Molokai earlier which is what I had to do every time I paddled but my partner liked to "surf" back out towards Lanai.

In the end we ended up too far outside (as did 90% of all OC1 paddlers) and then had to cut in hard to the finish with all swell and wind coming from the right. By the end the wind was about 20-25 knots. The boys on the other hand got inside, out of the wind & swell coming from the "right rear" and then they surfed down the line to the finish ahead of us. Jonathan said afterwards that once they got in there they had a great time and life was alot easier. It was a good move by them.

It was the same last year too. With the tide pushing out the whole way through the race. Here is last years vid. Check the tide from the 4 min 30 sec mark !!

great video, i want to try down wind on my sup board, any tips?

Downwinder said...
G'day Aussiewahine
Are you ladies going back in July for this race.

No DW...we are currently here for a month so can't justify coming back so soon. I will have only finished unpacking and catching up on all the dirty laundry by July.

Great vid... looks like amazing fun. Can't wait for next year!!! Any tips on your training plan leading up to this race? From your experience can you give a run down of things that worked/didn't work pre race and also during the race? Looks like there was one section that you guys didn't do the swap over as planned....

REA07 said...
Looks like there was one section that you guys didn't do the swap over as planned....

Hey Rea..I'll write a program down and also all the other important stuff when I get a little time over the next few days. Packing for Kauai right now.

And yes there were plenty of mishaps when it came to our escort boat. One very important thing when doing any of these race is ... get a good experienced escort boat driver !!

More soon...