Baysup - Battle of the Paddle
A beautiful day up at Sandbanks despite a strong wind, loads
of demo events with kite boarding, windsurfing and SUPing, with Baysup laying
on a BoP event. I probably shouldn’t have gone to this event for various
reasons but I hate to miss out of racing and am determined to get to as much as
possible while I can. Racing the Baysup circuit always brings up a strong local
contingent of paddlers and is never an easy race but the course set up looked
as though it was going to be fun. A good swell was coming in and well as a good
diagonal wind about Force 5, the course was set out and involved a lot of head
wind and side swell, then round a mark with a side wind but trailing swell and
then a surf back into the shallows round a marker in the surf zone and back
out. The race boards doing 5 laps and surf shapes doing 3. For various reasons I
choose to do the surf shape using my 11’2” Blend that I like to use down in
Falmouth to be a good stable board hoping stability would actually factor for a
better speed.
I set off from the
beach in a good location but was soon overtaken by the usual suspects such as
Ryan James, Pete Holiday, Mark Slater etc. I was actually shocked that I wasn’t
placing too badly even after the third marker and got in line with Phil Plume,
he saw me and said, “no way are you passing me on that!” and seemed to find
another gear, my first attempt to surf in wasn’t bad and I managed to drop off
the wave just after the marker and get a fairly tight turn and away again, this
is where the surf shape paid off, the race boards were having a tough time of
going side on toe the waves and a fair few people were failing in, valuable
seconds for me to catch back up/overtake. The second time back in didn’t work
quite as well, the surf zone mark had dragged with the wind and swell and was
fairly shallow, as I approached the wind gusted and the marker slammed into my
legs and toppled me, I got back on and started my last lap. Even clawing my way
back into the wind for the final time I started counting the places ahead of
me, I was still 6th at this point in time and I made a conscious decision
that I would see if although it wouldn’t count as such I would carry on after
my 3 laps and run over the line. So I ran in and quickly back out and carried
on, by the 5th lap I was tiring and thought I might have overdone it
but I wasn’t going to stop now, I carried on and finished either 8th/9th
it was hard to tell as it wasn’t logged on the results but either way a great
result for the 11’2” against race boards. The day wasn’t over yet though, the
team sprints were still to come, I teamed up with Scott and Chris and we gave a
good account of ourselves, we made it through to the finals and came second,
great work guys. I came first in the surf shape and got £20, my second ever
cash prize taking my total cash earnings in SUP to £45, rock on!! A great day
and look forward to going back, Thanks too all the Baysup Crew and everyone who
turned up.
