2015 Winter Windsurfing European Championship

This is an article by my good friend Paulius Voverys LTU 718 who just came back from WWEC in Finland.

Hello everybody! I have just came back from 2015 Winter Windsurfing European Championship I am still full experiences which I’ll share with you right now. Hosted by Finns and sponsored by TalviSurf.fi, Oy Brandt Ab, Honda, RipCurl, Fazer, Airice, 3D Wind Service the competition took place in Finland, Espoo.

My friend Robertas LTU 127 and I arrived to Finland on Friday, one day before the competition. Having a walk on the ice in the evening I have established that the ice is quite soft and decided to go for blunt blades (which wasn’t a good idea after all.). There was a lot of water on the ice and it was raining/snowing every single day since we arrived and without a doubt it was the most wet winter windsurfing competition in my life.

On the first day of the competition we had wind from 5 up to 7 m/s and I used my favorite 6.7 Neilpryde RS:S sail. As it turned out the ice only seemed very soft, but actually was very slippery. Therefore, I wasn’t feeling very confident throughout these races because the back of my sled was slipping if I pushed too hard (however, I had very good straight line speed due to very little friction). Having that in mind, I was pushing my sled to the limit and trying not to go over it. Unfortunately during the second race I pushed a little bit too much and had a huge crash. Happily my helmet was stronger than ice and without any serious injuries I picked up my equipment and I was going again in no time. Despite the rain and crash, conditions were perfect for me and I’ve won 3 back to back

course races, leaving my strongest opponent Janis Preiss LAT 23 in the second. After that, we moved to STS (short track slalom) area. The referee set up a short, five mark downwind track. During the qualification races I had a couple more crashes and couldn’t go on with sled slipping around and going sideways. Just before the group starts I managed to put on my sharper set of blades and was going again. Sharper blades were a little bit scraping and digging into the ice and I lost some straight line speed, but that didn’t matter because now I was able to push my sled in the corners as much as I wanted and that is what matters in STS.  Janis and I battled in every single race till the last inch with lots of overtaking, high speed jibes, tactical maneuvers and minimal distance from each other.  We had 4 races and I took two 1^st and two 2^nd places, which meant that me and Janis were even.  My friend Robertas was also very fast and managed to stay in 3^rd position course race, but struggling to battle with Feodor Gurvits FIN 413 on slalom track and placed 4^th.

The next day we had quite extreme conditions.  The wind was gusting up to 18 m/s and sometimes I wasn’t even able to stand still on the ice. I used my fastest Maui Sails TR5 5.1 sail and the same set of sharp blades. During the day we had some rain and snow, shifty and gusty wind.  In the afternoon ice got even softer. This meant that we had a lot of grip in the turns and could jibe instantaneously.   Having a lot of power in the sail and being able to push hard I was very fast. On the course track I achieved 78 km/h! Getting off the start line very quickly and avoiding mistakes lead me to winning both slalom and course race. Robertas did a great job and defended his place in course race, but taking a small 4.2 wave sail for the slalom track didn’t give him an advantage.

All in all it was a great competition with amazing people and high level racing. Huge thanks for the organizers, who did a great job! Looking forwards to 2016 WISSA.