Windsurfing Wedding

By Tom

As mentioned in the Previous post Chris Freeman and Liz Leete were married at Spreckelsville beach on Saturday December the 20th. This was a noteworthy event as a proper windsurfing wedding. Chris had managed to squeeze in a quick Ho'okipa session earlier and the wedding site was surrounded by windsurfing sails. It kind of looked like a Hot Sails Maui sponsored event! The windsurfers at Sprecks were probably much amused by the group of wedding goers in their formal attire hanging out waiting for the bride on the beach.





I have known Chris since the early 90s when he first came to Maui and we lived in the same house in Paia. He is an avid wave sailor and has traveled a lot, mostly to Maui for windsurfing. He has been a member of the Hot Sails Maui team for a few years and the Fire is his weapon of choice.





Liz I have know since not long after I met her sister Anne four years ago. Anne and I will be married in March so Chris and I will be related shortly - some people will do anything to keep their sponsorship!





Anne and I inadvertently introduced the two of them a couple of years ago when we took Liz with us over for a BBQ at Inga's where Chris was staying. I take no responsibility! Chris taught Liz to windsurf, which amazingly their relationship survived and Liz is now just as keen as Chris.

We had a special white wedding Superfreak made up for them which provided the perfect backdrop. This sail was taken up to the reception so everyone could sign it. Look for photos of it on the water shortly! It is a 4.2, so Liz will probably be first to use it.





It was a lovely wedding and a fantastic reception up at the Sugar House. A good time was had by all.

Liz and Chris are currently residing in Bahrain where Chris teaches and Liz is doing teacher training. They get a bit of windsurfing in when they can there, but tend to do most of their sailing on Maui. I know it won't be too long before they are back again.

Congratulations to Liz and Chris and good luck in your future together!

Windfishing

By Tom

My good friend Chris Freeman a fellow Brit(and Hot team rider) just got married to Liz Leete (my Fiances sister!) on Saturday. As part of the festivities there was a beach party stag night at Sprecks. With a light wind blowing I thought I might try a little windfishing and see if I could come up with something for the BBQ. This also proved an excellent opportunity to test the new Hi-5 7.5 on my 12"6" SUP. Much to the amazment of everyone (including myself) I caught two nice Omilu.



Andy, Chris's brother took this video of me when I returned to the beach with my catch.

Sprecks was turned into a colonial outpost with a British invasion. There followed beach games including Cricket, touch American Football and the headlining rock carrying event. I faired quite well in the games, scoring 7 and taking a couple of wickets in cricket, captaining Team England to Victory over Team USA (only one actual American - Will the captain- on the team.) and going undefeated in the Rock carrying. After the games we grilled up some food over the fire including the obligatory burnt sausage (a British BBQ staple). The fresh catch was cooked up by an ingenious method supplied by our Swedish friend David. We took brown paper bags and soaked then in seawater then rolled the fish up in them. This kept the fish from getting too hot and allowed it to cook slowly. The results were spectacular with delicious jucy fish that disapeared in about 30 seconds. Yum Yum!

More on the wedding to follow!

Venezuela Slalom

By Tom,




I have a little racing news from Venezuela. Diony lent out his 7.3 GPS to his good friend Juan Marino. He opted to use Diony's sail for the last race of the season rather than his North sails. It was a successful move and Juan was crowned Venezuelan Slalom champion using the GPS.



Congratulations Juan Marino!

I don't have much information about the event but Juan sent us this short note (translation by Diony):

"The past 13 and 14 of December Araya, state of Falcon, celebrated the 4th and last National event of the DIFI Winds in Venezuela.

This last championship had me very worried because I had a mountain bike accident where a shoulder injury had me 1 month resting, the doctor gave me permission to start training progressively, jajaja which I really did not do and went straight to the water for the contest.

I never used the GPS before, buy I felt very good with her despite the light winds. I felt the sail very in control, just in a few heats there was good wind and I felt how stable the sail is in those conditions, I hope to keep training very hard for next year and to be able to compete in the Canary Island tour of the PWA.

I send my greetings from Venezuela and hope to share with all of you the great spots we have to offer here.

Juan Marino
V103"





We welcome Juan to the Hot Sails Maui Race Team and wish him the best of luck for the 2009 race season.

Sail Registration

By Tom

Diony is back on Maui for a few weeks enjoying some winter waves. But waves are not his only focus however, as he intends to compete in slalom as well next year. It looks likely that he will do some World Cup events and is very keen to prove he is not a one trick pony. The decision to do World Cup is not yet a final one, but in order to compete in slalom Diony must use registered production sails, and the deadline for sail registration is today, December 15th. We had not planned to register so a few days ago none of the 2009 Grand Prix Speed sails had been measured.

Unfortunately I've been having a rough time of it with a virus that just will not quit. After a doctors appointment Tuesday I was ordered to bed for a couple of days. Obviously this just could not happen if we were to make the deadline. I stayed home wednesday and snuck in to work on thursday - my fiance believing I was tucked up in bed! I managed to get the most important sizes measured with the help of Laura Martinez (sister of Andre who can be seen ripping on his 2009 Smacks all over the website - look out for a new video of him on Hot TV coming shortly). I thought I got away with it, but Anne found my clipboard with all the measurements on that I had brought home to enter in the PWA spreadsheet. Busted!



Tom and Laura measure a GPS for PWA registration.


Luckily Wednesday's rest had got me over the hump and I feeling much improved now. I finished the remaining measurements Friday and submitted all the relavant documentation to the PWA in time. The final decision will not be made until Febuary, but it looks like we will be back in World Cup Competition. We have not been in World Cup for quite a few years, but we have enjoyed two World Championships with Jessica Crisp in the past. Other past World Cup notables for Hot Sails Maui include Finian Maynard, Svein Rasmussen (Starboard founder), Roberto Ricci (RRD), and Robert Teritehau.

New power!

While at the beach I saw huge things being off loaded a cargo ship yesterday. It turns out Maui just a got a load of new wind turbines that are desined to join the ones in the farm above Ma’alaea harbor. Later while driving to Kehei I passed this very long truck taking blades towards the base station.
Maui currently gets 10% of electric power from the wind, and this will double that. Also on the books is a wave power station that will make a nice dent too. The goal is 70% for the state of Hawaii which seems doable considering the wealth of available power here from sun, wind, wave and geothermal.
It makes paying the electric bill a little less criminal when I see these being built.

Busy Time

By Tom,

Well I don't have too much to report. I have been working like crazy and still under the weather. The fall shipment finnaly arrived and is now all inventoried and put away. So now we have plenty of 2009 Superfreaks and some 2009 GPS sails! Get 'em while you can! I also managed to upload a bunch of used sails including some nice GPS sails that toured Brazil and some old Superspeeds that emerged from under someones house.

Conditions have been quite good with plenty of waves and some wind now and then. Check out the action the boys had up at Ho'okipa. Ray Magnan took some nice pics of Diony (yellow Fire), Nick (blue Fire), Glenn (blue/yellow/white Fire)and Andreas (yellow Smack):

http://www.raymangan.com/gallery/3070372_qBNEX#429429266_ULNNS

http://www.raymangan.com/gallery/6725472_BLrAz#429501896_jjCAN