schauinslandreisen Windsurf World Cup Sylt
As is the norm in Sylt, the opening day of the 2023 schauinslandreisen Windsurf World Cup Sylt belonged to registration, followed by the sailors preparing their equipment for the next 9 days of competition. Over the course of the day Sylt showed off a glimpse of each season with a mixture of sunshine, showers and rainbows. The official opening ceremony was held at 4pm.
Earlier in the day we briefly caught up with Ricardo Campello (Naish / Naish Sails), who currently leads the Men’s Wave World Tour and is aiming to try and earn his first wave world title come the end of the year:
Hey Ricardo, so before this event, you've been training in Venezuela, right? You've been trying to spend some time in onshore conditions to get more comfortable with the likely Sylt conditions?
Ricardo: “Yes, you know one of my lowest points during the competitions is when I’ve been competing is the onshore conditions, which are the conditions that I don't really enjoy competing or sailing in. Every year I really want to win, but this year, I have a really good chance, so I was looking for a place to train. I was going back to Maui after the Canaries, but you know, in Maui, it's kind of hard to train super, super onshore conditions, because the wind can die in a matter of seconds. So I looked at the forecast, and in Venezuela there is a place called Adicora, which is normally really windy and kind of onshore and the forecast was looking good, even though now is not normally the good season for wind - usually August is dead there. But I think with the transition from La Niña to El Niño, the wind held on a little longer than normal. In the end, I spent almost two months over there, I didn’t sail everyday because the wind was coming and going, but it was pretty good overall.
I used my 5.3m and 5.6m a lot with my 95. And it's full onshore. Sometimes you could jump or ride on both tacks, or sometimes one tack or the other, but it was fun. It was super special for me to be able to train in Venezuela because it's something I don't really do often.”
Obviously the climate is super different from Venezuela compared to here, but how do the conditions compared?
Ricardo: “The shorebreak is not like here, the waves are much smaller, but as long as you're training in full onshore conditions, it helps a lot. And honestly I feel a lot more comfortable now having trained in Venezuela.”
How's the situation getting in and out of Venezuela now? Easier than before?
Ricardo: “It’s still quite hard if you're coming through the US, which was my case, if you go via Europe, it's easy. There are direct flights. I normally fly with American Airlines everywhere. And I have to go through America. I had a long long connection because I had to stop in Amsterdam to get some stuff from Brunotti. I had about five flights, unfortunately on one of those flights my bags went missing and are still missing. I have no information about it, so I’m kind of stressing because I have no updates on my windsurfing bags and my clothing bags as well. The only ‘good’ thing is that the forecast is not looking epic for the first days, so let's hope I get the bags before the contest begins.”
Thanks Ricardo. Good luck for the contest and fingers crossed your bags turn up ASAP.
The forecast for Saturday currently predicts westerly winds between 9-22 knots, so hopefully we will see the official competition begin tomorrow. The skippers’ meeting times for each fleet can be seen below:
- Slalom - 9:30am - first possible start 11:30am
- Freestyle - 10:30am
- Wave - 13:00
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