2022 Formula Kite World Championships

I apologize it has taken a while to write this regatta report. The world championships was a difficult regatta and my performance did not really meet my own expectations.

Before I talk about the event, I want to say I am very thankful to all the supporters who helped me out financially this fall and made this trip possible.

Leading up to the event, I had some really nice training days with Mike and Kai. We primarily had solid on-shore conditions with medium swell and medium to light winds. We had the opportunity to do a few days of practice racing with a large group of international riders just before the regatta started.

There was some pressure on this event due to the possibility of Sport Canada funding on the line. One of my long-standinggoals of each event has been to finish every race. Another primary goal is always to improve my starts as I have really struggled with executing good starts in past events.

Of course, once racing started the conditions for racing were the opposite of what we had during training. Unfortunately, due to competition between the offshore gradient breeze and the on shore sea breeze conditions were sketchy. I ended up sailing into a completely dead spot and my kite fell out of the sky. I missed a race which others were able to complete. This is especiallycostly in the qualifying days before they place us into Gold, Silver and Bronze fleets.

During the qualification series, the weather did not cooperate on day 2, leaving us with no racing.

Day 3 was the final day of qualification and unfortunately, I was not able to perform well enough to stay out of bronze fleet. I was disappointed with this but still looking forward to the rest of the week. On day 4, we had a massive storm come through and decimate the fleet. There was tons of gear damage but thankfullyI was able to avoid the destruction because I had made it back to shore before the line squall hit. 

Day 5 was yet another Mistral day with offshore winds. I had a gear failure that left me on a kite that was actually too small for the breeze on the course. Being underpowered hurts a lot in kite racing and meant I had my work cut out for me. Results were “okay” that day but should have been a bit better. 

Day 6 was the final day and there was only one race scheduled for all the fleets not participating in the medal series. It was back to the conditions we trained in before the regatta and I sailed a half-decent first leg of the race but had a bad crash near the leeward mark and lost a few spots because of this.

Overall, I have some areas to work on:

1. Start line acceleration and timing to the line

2. Equipment prep and kite piloting on the beach during sketchy conditions

3. Stability and speed on the reach legs of the course

I will be heading home to get back to my day job and reflect on the next steps.

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