For those who didn't know - I've been on a sabbatical / break before starting a new job on the 2nd of November and post Hawaii I was lucky enough to have an almost non-stop run of conditions leading to a pretty ridiculous foil bender. This culminated in a fun trip with Freddie and the dogs to the UK (for the Kernow Foil Classic) and France (for the Crozon foil festival). Unfortunately I couldn't squeeze St Tropez in the middle as that would have been a bit too much driving, but I was pretty stoked that they scored nice conditions to race in!
After Hawaii - I definitely put the SUP away for a good period of time. With an abundance of wind on the North Sea I pretty much non stop rode my 57L RADIX Mid Length (more on RADIX later) almost exclusively with the X series (740, 810 and 890, for prone, prone DW, parawinging on the spot and downwinding). It was nice to change things up and focus on surfing over going fast and straight and definitely motivated me to want to do more surfing and focus on progression on that side of things - especially going into Kernow and Crozon. Me being me, and being methodical when it comes to training and making progress, once I decided I wanted to improve my surfing I figured it would be good to register to do the prone contests at Kernow and Crozon in order to get a baseline and see what I scored. I didn't make it past the first rounds at either event thought I did post better scores at Crozon after Kernow. But being able to see what the better riders were getting scores wise definitely helped me to identify where my gaps are and the things I need to work on to improve.
To round it all off,I also did the parawing contest at Kernow which was a super fun format (inspired by the WA flow show) where each rider got to do two laps, filmed by a drone, which were then played back in the pub with a public vote contributing to 70% of our scores and as a final wildcard I also did the assist competition in some hectic conditions (despite having never ridden an assist). I definitely am not anti-assist (never was actually, just never got round to it), and I 100% see the place for them for certain conditions. After the conditions we had at Kernow and knowing we get some pretty "optimal for assist" days makes me pretty excited to try and see if I can incorporate the foil assist into my riding a bit more.
But next to all of the competing at Kernow - the best thing about Kernow was the social side of it. Chris has done an amazing job of growing this event from a grassroots community event to an international event with progressive riding by the best riders in the world, whilst still keeping the core community element. It was so cool to see so many foilers - competing and free riding and I loved how every evening there was some sort of social planned as well. KFC 2027 has definitely been put into my calendar for next year and if you're on the fence I'd highly recommend it.
After Kernow we went to Crozon for a free week before the event and scored a range of wind and waves - surfing, parawinging and even doing a SUP run to re-aquaint myself with paddling. I won't really talk much about the surf foil comp as I've touched on it earlier, but I will talk about the downwind races. I think this year was my favourite of the 4 years that I've been coming to this event. We did some two really cool runs (both just over 20km) with good enough wind and groundswell running either perpendicular to us or even coming at us. This combined with the finishes being surrounded by cliffs that resulted in some crazy backwash, meant the runs we're super technical and challenging which I really enjoyed. For both I went really safe with the foil choice taking the 741R2. Primarily to minimize the chance of falling with its generous low end, but also to then improve my chances of a quick restart if I fell. Lucklily I didn't get the chance to test the latter as I had clean runs for both races finishing 30th and 26th respectively. In hind sight I could have probably run the 660R2 for the first race, but for the second the 740R2 was definitely required with more of a bay run start until we exited the bay of Douarnenez.
The last part of the Crozon foil fest was the dock start competition. Always fun, but something I don't really train. It started with a time trial qualifier (eventually everyone went through due to the large number of no shows) and since I was having a shocker with my starts I played it safe with the 1250R knowing realistically for the head to heads it was too slow. So once I'd done my time trial, knowing I was into the head to heads I bolted the 980S on to try figure it out knowing that even if I didn't make it through round 1 I'd have the repechage. Well I had a shocker in round 1 (didn't start) and also a shocker in the repechage. My only saving grace in the repechage was that the others also had a shocker, and because I had a mid length I managed to slap and bounce off the water covering more distance than the others putting me in 2nd and getting me to round 3. In round 3 it clicked though and I eventually made it through another 2 rounds to the quarter finals. Getting through the the quarters meant that I got a joint 9th overall (with the others that came 3rd in the quarters) which helped boost me up the multidiscipline overall rankings where I ended up in 11th place which I'm pretty stoked on - lets see if I can get in the top 10 next year!
So last thing I want to touch on in this blog (but will get a blog of its own soon) is RADIX!
Since I got back from Hawaii I've been pretty much been exclusively been riding RADIX boards. Mostly the 57L green / yellow ML V2 proto (to parawing and prone DW) and my 8'0" downwind SUP and I've now received my full production 57L. I've really enjoyed the slicker feel of the RADIX mast without the "flare out" to the base plate, its made takeoffs and touchdowns so much slicker. It also feels a lot more direct - the mast / box connection itself is solid, and combine that with the twin carbon sandwich panels in which the box is set and its definitely the most direct set up I've ridden. It's really cool to see more and more people expressing interest in the system and testing the boxes and feedback so far has been positive. At the moment I am riding a custom / converted mast that was chopped down and recast but (out of pure selfishness) it would be cool to see if we can convince Code to make a production RADIX mast - so if you would be interested in buying one. Send me a message and I'll try create a business case with Code for a RADIX mast (mast length 75-80? or 78 as the happy medium?).