KIA Cold Hawaii PWA World Cup

Day 3: Tension builds ahead of tomorrow when Cold Hawaii is expected to burst into life

As expected day three of the KIA Cold Hawaii PWA World Cup proved to be another lay day in Denmark with light offshore winds and small waves keeping the competitors on hold as the waiting game continues.

However, whilst it may not have been possible to start the contest today, the tension started to rise ahead of tomorrow when Cold Hawaii is expected to burst into life after a quite few days — allowing the world’s most radical sailors to finally show exactly what they are capable of.

Earlier in the day we caught up with Marcilio Browne (Goya Windsurfing / MFC) — who won the event here in 2013 — and Robby Swift (JP / NeilPryde / Mystic / Maui Ultra Fins) — to find out a bit about their extensive selection of boards that they have with them:

Marcilio Browne: “I have a lot of boards with me, but only 5 of them are actually for here. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Europe over the next couple of months, so I also have a couple of prototypes with me to test for Goya — one is a Ho’okipa board, but I didn’t want to wait two months to try it and there’s always a chance that we could get down-the-line here. My boards are 82-95l all quads.” 

PWA: Does having so many boards make it difficult to select which board to use?

Marcilio Browne: “No not really. I already know the boards that I’ve already rode and more importantly the ones that I really like.”

PWA: How are you feeling about tomorrow?

Marcilio Browne: “I’m hoping that we’ll be on. I think the forecast was showing a little bit more west in it — especially in the afternoon, I don’t see it happening early morning because of the waves, but once the wind swings I think it should be okay.”

Robby Swift has 9 boards with him and had this to say: “This is actually exactly the same as I had in the Canaries, but here I’ve also brought 2 side-shore down-the-line boards. Not necessarily for here — although we may get down-the-line — but for France — I haven’t been there but I think it can be a shorebreaky, fast wave. The red ones — thruster quads [see pic] are awesome everywhere, but at Ho’okipa I definitely prefer the green one — radical quad — so if it’s a fast sucky wave like that and we don’t have to do much jumping I’d definitely use that. I thought that if I’ve got 7 board bags already, then 2 more boards isn’t going to hurt. I’ve also brought my onshore sails (NeilPryde Atlas’s) here too, so I have extra sails here compared to the Canaries.”

We also asked Robby about board selection from so many boards to which he said: “It’s easy. I only actually have 4 boards, but I have a couple of backups of each plus the down-the-line ones. So I have 76-95l in the Thruster Quads and they’re only really the ones that I use. The other boards are 83l and 88l. They are all quads and I’ll use them like that as long as it’s side-shore — and even cross-on — however here last year I did set the Thruster Quads up as thrusters because it was bolt onshore and 5.4/5.8m weather as that just suits me better.”

PWA: How are you feeling ahead of tomorrow?

Robby Swift: “I’m feeling good. I like it when it’s side-shore, down-the-line riding, then it’s kind of like Chile, so I’m looking forward to it. It’d be nice if we could get another elimination like we got in Gran Canaria and Tenerife with 2 waves and 2 jumps because that was really fun and It was windy enough that you could do way more than you needed in your heats in terms of jumps and wave rides, It kind of sucks if you are slogging around and you don’t get the chance to catch the wave that you need, but hopefully it’ll be windy enough that we’ll have plenty going on in the heats. Hopefully we’ll get long heats, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

PWA: Thanks, Robby and Marcilio. Best of luck for tomorrow.

The forecast still looks promising for tomorrow with winds of up to 35 knots and almost 3 metre waves being predicted, but the conditions may prove to be best during the afternoon and evening when the wind is expected to swing more west. The skippers’ meeting has been called for 8:30am tomorrow morning with the action commencing from 9am onwards. Don’t miss any of the incredible action by tuning into www.pwaworldtour.com — here you’ll be able to follow everything as it happens via the PWA live stream and live ticker.

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