US Nationals Day 1 - Raw Video Coverage
It was a beautiful day for kicking off the US Nationals here on Maui today. Sunny skies and mostly steady winds averaging around 25mph prevailed throughout the day. Eight different classes of slalom were run today, each class running eight heats. If you're looking to jump straight to the video coverage, click here (QuickTime, 6.5 MB). It's a bit raw, I only did a speed edit to crop out some stuff and wittle it down to about 4 minutes. Some of it's kind of jerky despite the tripod. Sorry.
The heats started off with the kids with boys <> 50-something (sorry, can't remember the exact age limits on the classes), followed by the mid-40s to mid-50 year olds, followed by the 35 - 44, class and finishing with the men's open 19 - 34 age group.
The youngest kids and girls classes seemed to have a good mix of winners throughout the heats and were actually some of the most exciting to watch, especially at the finish line. Standouts in the other classes were Mark Boersma smoking the rest of his boys 14 - 18 class, Micah Buzianis and Phil McCain dueling fast and furious in the men's 35 - 44 class and Matt Pritchard making it look easy as he smoked the rest of the men's 19 - 34 fleet.
Really pretty sweet conditions today. Early in the races while the race committee had to track down a bouy gone AWOL, I got a quick session on my 5.0 to go check out the start line. The 5.0 was mostly good, maybe a tad much. 4.7 would have been the sail of choice for those of us who prefer sails of the wave persuasion.
The start line was placed just inside the break at Uppers, meaning the racers had to jockey for position a bit in some small waist-high waves. The Maui race committee seems to like to do this as well as place all the outside marks in the break to make things interesting.
From my perspective, looked like a great set of races, run pretty smoothly once the errant bouys were properly set. More slalom racing tomorrow followed by long distance on Wednesday and course racing on Thursday.
Aloha!
The heats started off with the kids with boys <> 50-something (sorry, can't remember the exact age limits on the classes), followed by the mid-40s to mid-50 year olds, followed by the 35 - 44, class and finishing with the men's open 19 - 34 age group.
The youngest kids and girls classes seemed to have a good mix of winners throughout the heats and were actually some of the most exciting to watch, especially at the finish line. Standouts in the other classes were Mark Boersma smoking the rest of his boys 14 - 18 class, Micah Buzianis and Phil McCain dueling fast and furious in the men's 35 - 44 class and Matt Pritchard making it look easy as he smoked the rest of the men's 19 - 34 fleet.
Really pretty sweet conditions today. Early in the races while the race committee had to track down a bouy gone AWOL, I got a quick session on my 5.0 to go check out the start line. The 5.0 was mostly good, maybe a tad much. 4.7 would have been the sail of choice for those of us who prefer sails of the wave persuasion.
The start line was placed just inside the break at Uppers, meaning the racers had to jockey for position a bit in some small waist-high waves. The Maui race committee seems to like to do this as well as place all the outside marks in the break to make things interesting.
From my perspective, looked like a great set of races, run pretty smoothly once the errant bouys were properly set. More slalom racing tomorrow followed by long distance on Wednesday and course racing on Thursday.
Aloha!
posted by Jeff at
8:35 PM
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