Super-X FreeRace?

We are planning for a 3rd annual windsurfing event, the ECWF Cape Cod, which includes both racing and freestyle. I just read about FreeRacing on ka72.com, which sounds like lots of fun. But to make things more interesting for spectators (and freestylers), we thought about mixing some of the ideas of Super-X into FreeRace - basically, get "bonus distance" added for performing tricks close to the spectators, with rules for how many tricks, and "double bonus" whenever the crowd goes wild for a trick.

For more details, check my blog post at boardsurfr.blogspot.com/2015/06/super-x-freerace.html

I'd love to get some feedback - has anyone ever run something similar?

I had the pleasure of watching a Freerace event running at the same spot as a Freestyle event on Green Island a couple of weeks back.

Freeracers tend to find the flatter water to try and spend as much time planing as possible. Strangely, freestylers tend to like to build speed on the flat too before throwing a trick as close to shore as they can.

We had a couple of very near misses as two boards came close to shore, then the lead board suddenly did a 360.

It was interesting.

I would suggest if you plan on mixing styles, you make it very clear where the trick zone is and make sure the sailors know to check over their shoulder before trying something too radical.

Also, I noted that the freestlylers run with sails around 2m smaller than freeracers. That would make a big difference over an hour of sailing. You are almost better off running it as two separate, consecutive events.

You could run freerace in a smaller zone if you want to make it more of a spectator event. It was quite good viewing on Green Island, and they had a box about a mile on each side.

Dylan.