Excellent articles about San Fran Kiteboard World Races

shredbarbie · Since 17 Sep 2005 97 Posts Hood River, OR Â

I was going to write a recap of the excitement I witnessed last week at the Kiteboard World Racing Championships in San Francisco, but St. Francis Board of Directors member, Kimball Livingston, has written two articles that do just that. Enjoy.

-Kirsten

ARTICLE 1 pre-race:

http://kimballlivingston.com/?p=4
(for the great photos at the end, open link above)

Getting a Kite Complex, I Think
By kimball | Published: August 3, 2009

Now we know what it takes to get the number-one, bull goose kiteboard developer to about-face: A world championship for course racing. That, and San Francisco Bay.

Paolo Rista shapes boards for himself, also for the likes of Bruno Sroka, who has been ripping up everything in 2009.

And Paolo Rista has been developing fins and techniques that go a new direction. He and Sroka “ride flat” and rely upon fins only—they don’t dip the rail—to resist the pull of the kite.

With success has come the flattery of imitation.

Now these two have a plan for how to sail the first-ever Kiteboard Course Racing World Championship. Turn success on its tail, and dip the rail.

It’s about the venue.

The inaugural course racing worlds is happening on San Francisco Bay, Tuesday through Saturday, because that’s where the discipline was developed. There were a few key members of St. Francis Yacht Club—John Gomes more than others—who went from the traditional junior sailing experience to the traditional young-adult sailing experience to the kiting experience to the question: We’re sure as heck going to keep on kiting, but we miss sailboat racing, so can we combine the two? And would the club support the experiment? Yes and yes. All the way from the grassroots to US Sailing to ISAF.

First came proof of concept.

Yes, it is possible to race kites around the buoys. Then, two years ago, US Sailing sanctioned the first Nationals. Last year ISAF recognized kites as an international class and awarded the inaugural Worlds (other bodies made themselves available; sorry guys) to the outfit that had worked the problem from the bottom up. The rules remain a work in progress, but here is an example of the current state of play. Paraphrasing:

When a starboard-tack board is passing upwind of a port-tack board, starboard keeps the kite high, and port keeps the kite low. Starboard/port is determined by the forward hand of the rider “under standard position.”

With kites flying far from the rider, you can imagine the complications. Tangles? They happen. But before we get to that let’s give Paolo Rista a chance to explain himself. We conversed via skype—the wall behind him was stacked with boards—and it was a normal summer day. He was on Maui, wearing a t-shirt, and I was in San Francisco, wearing fleece. So we began.

The first thing to understand about kiting is that the board has to bite the water, to resist the kite, for control and even to maximize speed. One speed technique is to carve the kite through the air, cutting big figure-eights, to increase apparent wind; without resistance you can’t make the kite do that. (One of the early discoveries with foil-born boards was that they were so slick downwind they caught up with the kite, turning fast into slow.) Here’s a comment from Bryan McDonald: “Figure 8s are light air ‘looping.’ In heavy air, looping is a different animal (fairly erratic and pretty much impossible to control). Looping was found at the US Nationals in Texas this year (where it blew like stink) to be basically the only way to get downwind in one piece. Nationals was the pivotal event, in my book, that transformed looping from a rare move to a much more regular, almost normal move. It allows you to go deeper downwind (and usually faster). The caution is, when a hamburger does it and starts going higher than riders around him, the keep-clear portion of the rule pays off in spades.”

Back to resistance: Rista, who has owned Open Class boats and sailed with the likes of Michel Desjoyeaux, relates, “I came away from boat sailing convinced that the most efficient lateral resistance comes from the fin, the keel. Depending on load waterline for resistance is less efficient. Think of the overhangs in the old-style meter boats. Dipping the rail on a kiteboard is the equivalent of adding LWL. Bruno and I ride flat, using only the fins as lateral resistance, and that’s fast, so people have begun to copy us.”

But not for the Worlds in San Francisco?

“The bay is a unique body of water,” Rista says. “Surface conditions vary. Ideally, you sail with a board that is perfectly-suited to the water of the moment, but on San Francisco Bay you can go through a whole World Cup season’s worth of changes in one afternoon. With the seabreeze building or backing off and the current changing with the tide, you can go through every type of water surface except big waves.”

Read, compromise.

Sroka is French, and he has spent most of 2009 in Europe, where he has been top dog at every World Tour event—he also won the inaugural, ISAF-sanctioned European Course Racing Championship—and was scheduled to arrive in California only one day ahead of the Worlds. Rista says, “Our World Tour equipment is totally different from what we are going to sail in San Francisco. Bruno will have to jump on the board and hope it works. Mainly the issue is the chop on San Francisco Bay, especially because downwind in a chop your board gets buffeted. You need the rail for stability.”

Sroka smoked the San Francisco fleet in an earlier appearance at the Thursday evening Cabrinha series, so it’s already established that he can walk in and walk away. And, looking behind the scenes, Rista says, “Bruno is focused on winning the World Tour. People who see themselves not winning the World Tour have been putting all their energies into San Francisco.”

Sounds like a dogfight, and course racing is driving the development of boards and kites that point. “Two years ago, with twin-fin boards, you couldn’t get upwind,” Rista says. “You were using the rail as much as the fins.” Quad-fin boards are common now, and they often prove better upwind, but the challenges remain. Rista again: “Fifteen years ago, when I was working with Manu Bertin—Manu was the first to put an inflatable kite together with a surfboard—what kept this from becoming a sport was that you couldn’t go upwind. Now, here we are.”

On the Kiteboard Pro World Tour, disciplines include freestyle, jumping, and course racing, but the habit has been to stage races only when the breeze is too light for the extreme games. So, racing has been seen as tame, though in 2009 it also is seen as increasingly attractive, because it moves the sport beyond a time when events were lost for lack of big air.

As for the kites themselves, that’s a story all its own. “On the World Tour, most of the racing is done with 16 square meter kites,” Rista says. “In the Golden Gate wind slot, it’s generally 10 or 11 square meters.

“Very few people have a grasp of kite design except the people who are producing the brands,” Rista says. “It’s a more complex set of concepts than you need to shape a board. People do that in their garage. Bruno and I define our sponsors by who has the best kite. Our relations are based on long-term friendships but sometimes short-term sponsorships.”

Imperial Entanglements? Oh Yeah

The first thing spectators ask, watching kites race, is how they avoid getting tangled. The best answer is, fervent attentiveness. Oh, and let’s not forget about fear.

But sometimes it all goes wrong.

As soon as one error leads to a tangle, there is the risk of a domino effect. That’s exactly what happened at the start line of a certain Cabrinha Series race last June. A lull hit the fleet just moments before the start. Kite positions were adjusted rapidly, or in at least one case, not rapidly enough. Soon, nine kites were down. There was the thought that this may have been an all-time record, so consider this an invitation to top it, if you can.

Boriana Parvanova, who goes kiting almost every day off Crissy Field but doesn’t race, was up close and personal. She observes, “Once a kite tangles, it starts looping out of control and it takes out everything in range. It’s always surprising to me that this doesn’t happen more often.”

The fins, as many as four per board, can rip up a kite and we don’t like to think about what they might to do people, out of control. The incident sobered the San Francisco Bay contingent and convinced the St. Francis YC race committee to do even more preaching at its skipper meetings about the right of way rules, and the problems of barging. “I think the locals understand the concept,” Parvanova says, “but you have to wonder about the people coming in from elsewhere.”

To that point: The inaugural US Nationals marked the first (actually the only) time that I have seen a condensed version of The Racing Rules of Sailing included as part of the Sailing Instructions.

But.

These are some very, very smart and capable people, and in fact, it’s a wonderful convergence. You have, on one hand, people who grew up in a yachting environment getting out and sailing faster–big big tootles faster–and you have people who grew up jumping waves discovering that the blue blazer set likes their act.

So, here was that evening Cabrinha Series race in June, and the fleet was coming to the line. At this point it was just starting to go wrong in front of Boriana’s lens . . .

Boriana was shooting from the Race Deck of St. Francis Yacht Club, which has a 50 yard line view. And then . . .

And then and then and then and then . . .

Yep, it’s a domino deal.

Thanks to Boriana Parvanova for the pics above. The closeup of the carnage below, which tells how it felt (almost, but not quite–the water is cold) comes courtesy of Nico Ostermann/F-One Kiteboarding.

And if you have the notion that this first post is a little rough around the edges, you wouldn’t be wrong. Time waits for no man, so we plowed ahead and the coding be damned. But if you liked our good ole Sail West blog, check back. You will like what is becoming the Blue Planet Times–Kimball

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ARTICLE 2 post-race:

http://kimballlivingston.com/?p=109
(for photos, click on link to article)

“Son, I Think You Ought to Try This”
By kimball | Published: August 9, 2009

Mike Farley saw a lot of racing in the IOR generation of Maxis, then came his last big gig in competition as project manager for Alaska Eagle in a Whitbread race around the world. His gift to the next generation of sailing was way-doggies different. Sean Farley, the newly-crowned world champion of kite racing, recalls events this way: “My dad saw people kiting in the early days in Southern California, and he picked up a magazine—it was probably the second edition of a kitesailing magazine ever put out—and he brought it down to Mexico, to Colima. That’s where I was born. That’s where I live. And Dad said, “Son, I think you ought to try this.”

Oookay.

“We got on the internet and found some gear,” Sean Farley said, “then my best friend and I just, well, figured out how to do it. We didn’t have a clue.”

Oookay again, similar to most of the sailing world when it comes to kiting. Kites became an ISAF class only last year, and if you haven’t been up close it’s impossible to imagine how it paints sillygrins on spectators. If you think sailing is going to remain in the Olympics (it is) but you think kites aren’t part of that future, take two Reality Pills and call me when you wake up.

Yep, I’m a wildeyed radical. I’m also a traditionalist who believes that Stars belong in the Olympics because they represent the heritage, talent, and backbone that define who and what we are.

Kites demand a breeze, but surely by the time kites receive serious consideration for Olympic sailing we will have solved the issue of boneheaded venue choices. Tell me we will. Please.

Now back to the subject:

Not often does something come along that’s every bit as cool as you hoped. The inaugural Kite Course Racing World Championship, completed Saturday on San Francisco Bay, filled the bill and had the halls of the St. Francis Yacht Club looking like Woodstock West. Sean Farley was up front, not only on the course but also in declaring that he had been “getting my tail kicked by Bruno Sroka” in World Tour events in Europe before Farley set up camp in San Francisco and started to work the Crissy Field “problem” for all it’s worth.

And did it matter?

“Absolutely,” says Farley. “I changed my fins a little, but the focus was on getting my kites dialed in. I had eight kites, with dedicated lines for each one of them, and I wanted to get my body in gear by going out three hours every day. I worked myself that way for three weeks. I was getting my arms pulled out of their sockets in the wipeouts.”

That’s the Golden Gate wind slot for you, but as it happened, Farley trained in winds that were higher (much higher) and air that was colder (much colder) than race week served up. It was a hard July, just one of those strange, local phenomena. Mark Twain never said it, but somebody did, so it should have been Mark Twain, “I spent the coldest winter of my life one summer in San Francisco.”

From Sean Farley’s point of view, “I overtrained, but sometimes that’s not bad. In the racing I never lost my board.” Of the eight kites in the quiver: “I used four of them, or maybe it was three.”

What it Really Is

There was a steep learning curve for most of the riders at this event. For some, even if they had “raced” in World Tour competition, it was their first exposure to the Racing Rules of Sailing. That said, we can probably agree that in any yacht club there are people who claim to be masters of the game of racing under sail who have yet to gain a genuine mastery of said rules.

But this was also, truly, a fest. I’ve never been live to a World Tour event, where the tricks and stunts are astounding and the presentation is entirely commercial. This was about being accepted into the community of sailors, under the rules and under the roof of a “yacht club.” I can honestly state that I have never been to a sailing event where the cheering was as hearty or sustained for tenth place through first. Something happened here.

(Photo by Erik Simonson, h2oshots.com)

Laylines

Sean Farley dominated, but it seems clear to me that if Bruno Sroka had spent three weeks on the bay ahead of the regatta, instead of five minutes, he too would have had a shot.

In the final race, Sroka did what Farley did in a few of his races and gained a lead that was as-unassailable-as-it-gets-unless-the-wheels-fall-off. Then the wheels fell off. Sroka lost track of the laps on the short up-down course and sailed toward an extra lap, instead of going through the finish line. He opened the barn door, wide open, to Denmark’s Bjoern Rune Jensen. Then, realizing his mistake, Sroka turned around for a proper finish in ninth, with double points counting 18. Even if he had won the race, it would not have have been enough to move him to third, so let me continue to speak as a witness.

I said already that this was a fest. Sroka was more than roundly cheered. This small, special community was perfectly clear, and St. Francis Commodore John McNeill noted that, by honoring his mistake, Sroka “demonstrated that the game has staying power.”

And being a San Francisco Bay partisan, I found it very cool that two of our own finished second and third among 64 riders. Chip Wasson is a stalwart on the scene, one of the inspirational figures who set the tone for kite sailing on San Francisco Bay. Farley had finishes of 1-1-4-1-1-3-2 (double points in the final), and wrapped with 17 points to Wasson’s 30.

Wasson won only one heat but had a passle of seconds and never finished below fourth. Here’s Chip (#15) hitting the beach for a high five with another top-ten rider, Jesse Richman.

Sitting in third with 48 points, kite newcomer Johnny Heineken was the Star is Born newbie who looked as if he had been doing this for years. He won two heats and contended in the finale until he missed a layline. And tacked into a hole. And went from contending with Sroka to . . .

D – screaming F – L

And the hole was a hungry hole.

“And my kite fell out of the sky.”

Sixth was a comeback, good enough, with 15 points in the bank.

According to John Gomes, the godfather of this show, “We’ll do this again next year. We just don’t know yet what we’ll call it.”

It must be yachting. It happened at a yacht club—Kimball

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And, the fantastic Officers and Directors at St. Francis Yacht Club who welcomed the kiteboarders and the event with open arms and hosted a fantastic week of competition:

http://www.stfyc.com/Default.aspx?p=Dyn ... 9595&vnf=1

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And, of course, The Godfather, John Gomes -- hanging out with the new generation of kiters at the Closing Ceremony.

pdxmonkeyboy · Sat Aug 15, 09 10:36 pm

could you please post something a little longer..

shred_da_gorge · Sun Aug 16, 09 5:30 pm