After last fortnights blow to kiteboard racing, this weekend it was hoped that racers would be out in force showing the windsurfers who's boss. 

Not so unfortunately. Both the Sunshine coast racing series and the Sydney races were smashed by variable winds and huge storms over the weekend, as the east coast sat through some of the weirdest few days of storms ever witnessed. 

On the sunshine coast, racers showed up to a promising 15 knots from the North east. All was going great until two huge storm cells formed out to sea and then obliterated the coastline while racers were still on the water during practice time. Racing was quickly called off, but with the wind swinging a complete 180 degrees, all kiters had to self rescue back to the beach when rain reduced visibility down to only a few meters. Afterwards, the wind returned, only to catch the racers out again! Dropping off to only 1 or 2 knots. One racer was seen kneeling on his raceboard, with his kite (leading edge down) in the water, calmly drifting downwind back to the beach. Lucky the IKA raceboards have enough volume to float the average person!

Sydney suffered similar fate, with the racing on Saturday being cancelled and postponed to Sunday due to similar weather. After another thunderstorm ripped down Botany bay, racing was cancelled by the organisers, only for the wind to drop back off to a manageable level after all! They still managed to get four races completed in the short time they had though, which is great to see! Event organiser Steve McCormack had the following to say about the event on Facebook: 

"Great day yesterday, except for the damn thunderstorm that cranked the wind up to well over 25knots average and then it dropped to well below 15 after we decided to cancel. Managed to get 2 TT races and 2 race boards. Yesterdays raceboard class was dominated by the Newcastle guys, so there will have to be an F3 incident to slow them down next time! Well done to Dave Sorensen for taking out both races in raceboard class. Will post the full results later this morning. Thanks to everyone once again for helping with the pack up."

So with such bad weather, will this be the last of the race series? Of course not! Sydney has another race series coming up in the very near future, and up in QLD planning is well underway for the summer series of kiteboard racing. Looks like the discipline is here to stay, so get out there and have a go on a raceboard! 

#News #Kitesurfing #North