What an awsome day! We had solid side / off conditions with consistent 25 knots plus. The swell started ok and built during the day. It was great to see 21 competitors hit the water at about 10:00am - just as it really filled in (perfect timing - well done James).
There were some HUGE airs and 1/2 mast to occasional mast high sets waves coming through. The guys went 'bezerk' right from the raising of the flag. Congratulations goes to Scotty Mac for blitzing the field with a consistent array of strong waverides consolidated with some great arials. Hail punched above his weight for second and I am hoping someone can publish who was third (didn't hear - we needed the megaphone)! Dave Bond stole gold in the masters and won the bezerk award (no surprises there).
Dave Lane did a fantastic job of judging and we should get some great footage as well. The Dr Duck sausages hit the spot and special thanks to On-Board for the beers (which also hit the spot). Thanks to all that helped out though - it was a genuine community event with a great feel. The organising group intend to learn from the experience and make it better or next time.
Well done guys - this adds a 'special sauce' to a sailing day of gourmet sausages. I am looking forward to mixing the footage up and posting it. Love that megaphone...
Did not like the megaphone with my mild hangover and three hours sleep.
Karl Newbold was third in the open men's and Kurt was the winner of the juniors.
Some really good wave riding this event. The jumps and loops were spectacular, was great to watch the SA crew at its best.
It is so lucky Bondy wears a helmet, some of those forward rolling catapulting duck gybes in 6 inches of water were inches from being hospital jobs ;)
U can pull strings Richard!!
Pat sparks showed up at 230 just after last windsurfer left
He stalked a group of kiters from the day st car park
Before walking up the beach to where they were launching from the grassy carpark
The locals are onto him and tipped off the kiters
No one got pinched as sparks calls it
Great to see the legendary soc go from lurker to poster!!
RESULTS
We'll the good news is we got a comp run in probably the best conditions of the day (Cross shore, 20-25 knots, with some respectable set waves coming through). Thanks to everyone who pulled together to make this happen.
It was awesome to see some of the better sailors in the state going beserk and egging each other on.
The timing of the heats differed from those advertised - had to be done to get the people who turned up early and had registered on the water while it was good. Apologies to those who arrived late. I'll post later on ideas for fine tuning.
Many thanks to the judging team - head judge Dave Lane, Brett and Kym (and I think Phoebe was spotting too!). Not any easy task with a lot of activity on the water. If Dave has time, he may post later with some comments on what the judges were looking for on the day. Here are the aggregate scores - 3rd place Open was hotly contested!
Also, well done Kurt in the juniors for taking on the conditions which had a lot of senior sailors vacillating (word of the day Kurt - impress your teachers!)
Open Total
Scotty Mac 496
Chris Hale 368
Karl Newbold 326
Tim Chapman 321
Ty Andrews 305
Gareth Williams 251
James Thomson 247
Geoff Mitton 217
Craig Humphris 171
Kym Roberts 147
Masters Total
Dave Bond 143
Ian Gibbons 98
Richard Upton 49
Juniors Total
Kurt Jefferies 14
it's not right that one person-with a bloated attitude (petty sparks) can spoil beach loving peoples' hard-earnt leasure time.anyone got two corks i can put to good use?
so not right.
well done to Richard and all with comp on weekend- apoliges for hijacking thread
- With SOC and now Timmy getting on the case sparksy's in a bit of trouble
was thinking of calling KOTP aka gangsta but thats pretty extreme, leave that as plan B
Seriously tho- I think you are right Richard -a letter from windsurfing SA to Transport sa or probably straight to the minister, Pat Conlon is the go. Few thoughts below that may be of assistance:
-Nowhere in the world enforces the requirement to wear PFDs in the surf to the best of my knowledge. We consider this is because it is widely accepted that they hinder mobility and substantially increase the risk of getting trapped under a sail or getting hit by your board while in surf as you cannot dive free. This includes competition wavesailing where even with stringent modern insurance requirements PFDs are not worn.
- regs refer to "sailboards". this term describes 25kg 12 foot boards with triangle sails sailed on lakes of 25 years ago. I havent seen this term in any media to describe our current sport of wavesailing on 7 foot surfboards that weigh 5 kgs with full carbon rigs for many years.
-Wavesailors have surfed middleton since the late 70s without wearing PFDs for the above reasons and we are not aware of a single safety related issue arising from not wearing pfds. i personally have sailed at middleton without a PFD since 10 years old, for 30+ years without any issue or any objection raised by transport sa. There WAS an issue on the weekend where a novice wavesailor was wearing a PFD due sparks threats at Middleton and was trapped under his rig in a wave and got a major scare
- we believe the current vendetta by pat sparks is fuelled by concerns relating to wakeboard style kiteboards and some negative feedback he recieved in this forum when he raised this issue. I totally agree someone kiteboarding on a board with no flotation should wear a PFD. Our boards typically have 100L of flotation
-NO OTHER surf user wears PFDs as it is accepted the surf will push them to shore. Why is wavesailing different? Why can i detach my sail and paddle out on the same board without penalty? This situation is absurd, especially when the PFD REDUCES safety once the sail is attached in my opinion and those of the majority
- I frequently come in on my stand up paddle board and put a rig on it as the wind picks up; again why am i now required to put on a PFD, especially as the need to be able to dive clear of the larger SUP board and rig is greater to avoid getting hit with it when entangled in the surf?
- The negative impact on regional areas of the state when this message gets out will be substantial in terms of tourism and economic benefit. I would suggest that it would not be possible to run another national title, as being the only state that enforces PFDs to be worn in the surf, no one would come and the reality is it wouldnt be seriously considered by the national body. Note that national RACING titles DO require PFDs to be worn. It appears that everyone other than patsparks appreciates the difference of wavesailing in the surf
As well as considering content for letter, suggest you put some of these questions to patsparks and let him now he is putting lives at risk.
Apologies for the long post- but heres a final thought for the day
- when was the last time the governement REMOVED a law/rule/regulation imposed on the public at large? where will be in 20/50 years?
there is such an obsession with ass covering pathetic political correctness that you wonder where we are heading.
Whats the likely result of the recent spate of shark attacks? SOme political genius will probably decide to regulate times in the surf and require a levy to pay for research and insurance. Notwithstanding the spate of attacks is due protection of white sharks since 1998 and failure to curb the exploding seal populations (cant cull them, a seal might get hurt; remeber the cow that fell over while getting slaughtered and so they shut down the industry at the tax payers expense- $500m approx)
- in addition to above PFD nonsense, we are now told when we can fish, where we can fish (all the best spots will be off limits), how many fillets we can take etc
ALL the while the new national sport has become drive by shootings because govt agencies failed to detect large numbers of automatic weapons coming into the country and now cant stop their use. Something is badly wrong somewhere
There - got it all of my chest. Zak, Rossy, Hindley st?
It was a shame that so many of the top contenders (Timmy, Dean, Kane, yourself etc) were caught out by the same misapprehension (11:45 am start). I felt lucky to have scraped in even though I hadn't started to rig up when the start of the heat was called. It would be nice if we could work out a time when everyone could have a crack! After all it is the State titles.
Stoked I got Kurt on the Water be it 20mins late, he had a great time and worked hard in the conditions.
He's a very Happy Gromm.
As for the time change for the Men's Open...... disappointed
All those phones and not a txt ......
No doubt some things could have been done better and will be next time.
They way to get the event you want is to be involved at the planning stage - people are pretty thin on the ground then 
Communication is a two way street - if you were not a member of the association come bedtime the night before the comp, and have not indicated by posting here or some other means that you are going to turn up, we haven't got a lot of time on the day to second guess your intentions or phone around etc.
A plot of pressure with paid up people on the beach ready to go and conditions threatening to go dodgy!
Do people want the organisers who already put considerable hours/money into running the comp to spend more money and more time and effort sending 50+ group text messages. I personally think that is very unreasonable. Everyone that was there early was helping out geting flags/pitching the annex the list goes on siging people up / Rigging there own gear! Conditions were going off would you want to sit there watching it waiting for the lunch time sailorsto come down??? Bring on the RED thumbs however i know how stressful and hard it is to run these events as small and social as they are and complaining and wingeing about a half hour time change due to conditions is pretty low! Sure next time there does need to be more organisation and maybe a group briefing/de briefing and presso at set times but the sailing needs to be flexible as the conditions are so un predictable.
PEACE 
Let me just start by saying, it was not my intention to whinge or belittle the considerable efforts of those involved in actually organising and running the event. I apologise if that is how it reads. It's a fair call that I should have been more involved. You are right; the sailing does have to be flexible. I just didn't grasp that's how it was. The fault probably lies with my rudimental understanding of the situation. As I saw it, the start of the Open Men's heat was at 11.45am as did others (what's a 105 minutes between friends)
. Again I am sorry for any offence caused by my post.
Cheers
Karl
This is one of the points of improvement for next time. What we need is a list of mobiles submitted in advance so we can set up a text list and send updates through the weekend including the morning of the comp. If all parties know the number we can all obtain a better understanding of the conditions (including the comp organisers) from locals at the mid and down south.
We will always have difficulty with the consistency of the conditions in SA but if we have a known 'comp organiser' number and this list it will help. One of the challenges is that those who organise have to give up on some sailing as we are not big enough to have some dedicated organisers.
Will submit this to the suggestions list for the next comp. If we get this right it can be a lot easier.
just as an idea...
why not have a number , with updated event info, recorded message.
no cost to the association, and it leaves it in competitors court.
works great for venue or time changes and can be accessed from anywhere
with phone reception.
surfing sa use this method and it seems to work.
just a thought
Cheers Karl, no foul.
Corporate memory for running these events in our state has been lost and needs to be rebuilt.
The good news is there is some passion about this event, which 4 weeks ago looked like nothing would happen due to lack of interest.
The organisers aim was to have a bit of fun, but also provide a vehicle for our juniors and best young sailors (what is young in this sport?) to develop and hopefully be prepared one day for the Nationals. Put the state on show.
The event posting did no make it clear registration was at the start of the day, which was always our intention.
We did avoid the worst possible outcome on the day - everyone unhappy, everyone fined for not wearing pfd or even worse someone killed by wearing one in the surf.
I even got 10 min on the water myself
Final piece of good news - found the volume button on the megaphone.
