KTA Thailand and Vigan

We had a busy march this season wt the KTA. First we landed in Thailand for the Asian Championships in Course Racing and after that was the Philippine Nationals in Vigan on the schedule.

We chose Pranburi again in Thailand, since this is Willy’s homespot and better and less crowded than Hua Hin.

The competition here went very smooth after all the troubles we had again wt the sponsors. We managed to do around 20races for twin tip and raceboard class. With our IRO’s Andy Curnow from Australia and James from Thailand we had a very good crew for the racing. It makes the life of the competition director much easier when u don’t have to be on the water and off the water all time.

Thailand showed it’s windy side again, much better than Vietnam and so we managed to do the single and double elimination of the freestyle nearly to the end.

We crowned the Asian Freestyle champs already here but still one more stop for the Tour Champions to be announced.

The final party and awarding night was set at the end of the beach in front a rock face, very unique setup for a beach party and perfect for us.

 

Just a couple of days after the return to Boracay I had to move on to Vigan for the Filipino nationals. The spot up here is in Ilocos Sur is made for kiteboarding.

The half island wt a long stretch of sandbar makes a nice flat water spot on one side and some waves on the other side. And there are also some more wave spots just around the corner from here. The location is about 20Minute drive from town center.

The town itself is unique to the Philippines, lot’s of old colonial town houses building the core of the city, wt it’s pebble roads and horse carriages.

We had a small but good opening ceremony at the zoo, which has a lot of free running animals and some tigers in way to small cages.

The wind did not show it’s best side, but we could not expect too much since we went here very late in the season. We managed to do one race a bit of freestyle. There were not many competitors in the freestyle so it was a quick run to determine the winner.

The race was a twin tip class only wt a interesting course setup for the riders and especially for the spectators along the beach. We setup a course that had a upwind finish right in front of the judge tower.

So we pulled the maximum out of one day of wind, there was a little bit more wind on the last day, but never enough to do more competition.

We did a bit of sightseeing around town in the original horse cariages, wt the old bell tower as a highlight of the tour.

Then we finished the event wt the awarding ceremony and a good after party to close the event.

Thx to Dalan and Dani from Viganwatersports.com for being our local organizers and puling of the event in no time.

Hopefully we can get u on a full tour stop next season wt more wind, more competitors and more Empenadas ;-) We loved it up there!

Now were looking forward to our last stop in China mid of May on a new spot again, in Pingtan Island, between Xiamen and Taiwan. 30k$ up for grabs…

Videos are out.. check em out here
Thailand
http://vimeo.com/40142361
Vigan
http://vimeo.com/41071127

xoxo