You've gotta love a kite event that has wind non-stop! That's what greeted the guys and girl (yes one) who attended Sail Townsville this week. 

9m kites were the weapon of choice this event. Big winds, flat water and close racing all came together to shine a whopper of a spotlight on kite racing as a sport in yet another of the 'sail' series of events that travels around Australia. 

As expected, local shop owner Marvin Baumiester won the event with a very convincing series score of only 20 points from 18 races, winning almost every race. 10 points behind was Dave Sorenson and Rick Black, both from Newcastle, and Jordan Girdis who kept up some very consistent results at the front of the pack for a good finish. 

In the girls fleet, like usual, it was a case of Lisa Hickman completely smashing the competition. She left them behind in Caloundra actually, choosing to ride with the boys in Townsville as the only girl yet again. 

Thanks to the intricate scoring system used in sailing racing, the results are actually really interesting to observe for those of you who are into the numbers. Here's how it works. The low point score system used at standard means that winning gets you one point, second gets you two and so on. If your gear breaks, you get disqualified or you break the start you get the max score plus one point (in this case 20 points). Now that's all well and good, but it means that one gear breakage can ruin your series if you're a top guy like Marvin Baumiester. So to stop that happening, depending on the amount of races run during the series, you get to 'drop' your worst scores. In this case, with 18 races run there were three drops allowed. 

Still with us? Here's where it gets interesting. With three drops, it's great for those racers who made three mistakes. Take Marvin for example. He had three races where he didn't finish due to either a gear problem or protest, which earned him the total of 20 points each. Without the drops, that would have put him back around 7th place instead of 1st, but with the drops, those three races don't count and Marvin emerges as the big-grinned, frizzy haired winner that he is! 

Want more? Take the drops out of the equation, so all mistakes, all breakages and all tangles get counted, and we see Rick Black emerge as the rider with the lowest score. He didn't have a single big mistake all series. Does that make him the best rider, or just lucky? It does make you think though... That's the beauty of using the point score system in sailing! 

Check out all the results here and do the numbers yourself, or check out the Australian Kite Racing Forum.

 

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