Opening ceremonies for Foil Kingston CORK 2024 were on Friday. Sadly no wind developed so there wasn’t any racing that day. But the forecast was promising for Saturday!
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It’s an official race program!
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Opening ceremonies
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Catching up with Toronto friends
(Who also go to Hatteras and Bonaire!) |
With most of my WeCanFoil teaching duties completed from Tuesday till Friday evenings, Saturday was the day to fully concentrate on getting ready to race. It was nice to reconnect with Philip from Bonaire and some of the other windfoil regulars.
I rigged up my brand new 2023 Duotone S_Pace 8.8m sail on the beach. It actually got a fair bit of attention and envy from the other sailors - I’m not really used to that. I was pretty happy not to be rigging a 9m Kona sail or my 20 year old NP 9m. But I struggled getting a few of the new numbers on my sail! It was handy to be able to look at my blog post from last year to remember how to set up my footstraps. I did also take an Allen key this year!
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Last year’s blog post - very handy reference!
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Rigged and ready
Outboard footstraps |
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| The Launch Site |
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| Paul trying out the iRig - he may be converted? |
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| Small and light iRig & big and strong S-Pace |
We watched as the kiters got going. After a fairly long delay, we decided to go out the first race.
It was a complete slogfest for all but the 4 younger IQ foilers to get out to the start line. The wind dropped again and the race started anyway. That was actually the one race where I came in fourth! All of the subsequent races where more people were foiling I didn’t do as well!
In the later races I was mostly getting up on the foil right after the start and slowly getting up wind. Somehow I kept blowing the last upwind angle and would have to slowly round the upwind mark. Having to do that almost every time, Dennis would pass me on the upwind leg on his NP sail. Luckily, most of the time I then caught him on the downwind legs as I could foil much deeper downwind than he did. We had some good close finishes - one was so close I could have passed him but that would have risked falling into him so I was content to finish safely and within a second or two of him for 6th place.
In between some of the first races while the wind was low we saw Max Robinson out tow foiling. He did a spectacular back loop right in front of us. As we waited for the wind to return I shouted “I don’t know about WE Can Foil, but HE Can Foil!
On the last two races with much more wind I was able to do the full two laps. I was getting more confident on essentially a brand new gear set up for me. Overall I did 25 km in almost 4 hours on the water.
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| Everyone back on shore |
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| The slog out to the course, and a nice run back! |
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| Speed and heart rate chart! Top speed 15.5 knots |
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| Ready to de-rig and fill up the trailer |
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Had to give a little lesson to the nice kids
interested in windsurfing gear |
A little video from my kids’ lesson
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| Thanks Ian for the video and sharing the stoke in our chat! |
Kingston did deliver with the wind late in the afternoon and actually kept building for a while, even after we came back. There were folks wing foiling in the Lake Ontario Park Harbour but I was too spent.
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| Wingers out after the races |
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| Happy with my 6th place |
After the racing we went out for a nice dinner with the group at Namaste.
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| Ready for dinner! |
Thanks Artem for organizing that and I am looking forward to some sleep before one more day of racing.
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