Ocean Rodeo Race Report 6.25 – The Worst Kite Tangle Ever? and 3 wins for the OR race board.
Last Thursday night’s racing in San Francisco was as exciting as it gets. The fog broke just in time for the start and winds were 12m for most racers. With a number of top riders, including Stefaans Viljoen(OR) and John Gomes, on race committee there was opportunity for the 35 racers in the field. (Thanks to Boriana Parvanova for the photos)
Jeff Kafka (Cabrinha) put a stop to Chip Wasson’s (Ozone) recent domination of the races with victories in all 3 races. With his new custom board under construction Kafka was riding Stefaans’s Ocean Rodeo Custom Race to win his 3 races. Wasson took second for the night and Adam Vance (Naish) rounded out the top 3.
Holes in the wind were a constant issue in all the races with fluky spots by the leeward mark and other inside locations. The big news of the night was the tangle at the start of the second race. A lull hit the start line right at the gun causing a domino effect of kites going down. In the end nine kites were tangled and down in the water. This could be the worst kite tangle ever seen in kiteboarding history. Three riders were able to get their kites out of the mess and back in the air, but the other six ended up needing rescue with several trashed kites and a six bar spaghetti mess that was the worst I’ve seen. This was not the only tangle of the night either, with several other 2 kite wraps. See the sequence of the tangle below.
Evan Stoltz, Andrew Galbraith (the author), Jed Meade and Erin Loscocco were the only OR riders to avoid trouble and finished 10th, 11th, 14th and 19th, respectivly, for the night.
An increasingly crowded field and tough starts has made staying out of trouble hugely important in these races. If you haven’t experienced it you can’t imagine how tightly packed the kites are at the start. When a lull hits and riders need to move their kites there is literally no where to go and tangles are bound to happen.
Close up photos copyright Nico Ostermann, courtesy F-One Kiteboarding
Thanks as always to the St. Francis Yacht Club, Cabrinha and Steve Gunn for hosting the Thursday night races.
