Sylt World Cup 2023
October 10, 2023
I love Maui and have great memories from there, so I was really keen to be back there for the last event of the year, I haven’t been since the pandemic!
After Competing in Fiji, Pozo and Sylt I came into the last event of the year leading the tour.
Combining the IWT & the PWA tour has been interesting and definitely made the tour more diverse, so I was really looking forward to fight for that title.
After my 24 hr trip through Miami and LAX, I was happy to see my Maui buddy Lina Erpenstein!
We’re competitors but before that friends, windsurfing mates and adventure buddies! Competing in Maui comes with lots of adventures and activities.
The forecast for the competition was quite sketchy with not too many waves and light winds, and on top of that we could only run 5 days during the waiting period, so this was quite a tough job for our head judge Duncan.
In the single elimination I competed right at the end of the day, and by then I had seen some awesome action.
I went out on my 5,0 and 88L hyper, and just overdid it on my first couple of waves, I wanted to slice and dice the waves so badly, but I was messing up a lot.
Finally I calmed down and told myself to get the scores in, which I did finally to progress to the next round.
Pushing too hard
Getting the score
The day after we finished the single elimination and for the first time I felt like I could really draw on my competition experience from previous years. I rigged big and competed on my 5.3. I recall Matt Pritchard telling me some years ago, If you’re not moving, you’re not catching any waves!!
Also Ricardo, gave me some advice that I really needed to hear, which was to be patient.
I still tend to go for every bump I see, but this time this advice really stuck and I felt like I was able to pick out the good size waves. On my 5,3 I was able to move around and pump on to waves quite easily, and even with the onshore wind, I felt like I was able to ride properly.
I got the scores I needed and won the final of the single elimination
I never calculate anything, I usually tell myself to do the best I can do. But as I walked up to the beach it did quickly cross my mind that if I won the single should I’d be in a very good position to win the title. I saw Sarah Jackson the social media manager walking up to me, and we locked eyes a bit awkwardly… I was waiting for her to confirm what I thought could be possible and then she said “Sarah-Quita wave world champion!”
Wooooow! I had to hug some body so I grabbed her hahaha. Until then I was pretty relaxed about everything, but it was so satisfying and a relief to hear that no matter what, I had secured the title! That morning I didn’t expect that my day would end like that!
We still had to run the double elimination where I would have to defend my 1st place in the sngle, so the last day was quite nervewracking. I watched heats all day, calculated at what time I would have to compete and at some point I just decided to get ready as I watched Sarah Hauser making her amazing comeback up the rankings. But finally they were not able to finish the double elimination and I secured my 1st place for the event as well.
It’s pretty cool for me to have won the Aloha Classic 3 times now. Coming from Aruba it’s something that I’m proud of.
And looking at my year overall, I podiumed at every event I competed at and won 1 event in each discipline.
It’s something that I have been working hard for and it tells me that I’m doing something right towards my goal of becoming the best overall windsurfer I can be.
3rd wave world title in the pocket, that’s just incredible!
In the men’s division it was incredibly tight! It was sad to see Ricardo Campello get to close, but Vice world champion is amazing, And of course, Titoun in 3rd and Marcilio in 1st very much reflects the level of these guys.
Unfortunately we didn’t have the strongest wind during this trip but we sure made the best of it !
During the off days Lina and I would pack our car with everything and be open for spontaneous adventures. Somehow everything would just come together and we’d max out our days!
We did a lovely hike in Iao valley, caught some nice surf near the harbour, got lost and then found our way again in the bamboo forrest, hunted the best coffee on the North shore, clear winner was Momona in Kahului!, We tried to surf as much as possible, and paddling out at Ho’okipa was challenging some days! At some point I decided that buying fruit is too expensive in Maui especially since most of them were hanging from trees, so we hunted banana’s, avocado’s and guava to save on costs.
I’d say it was a 3 weeks well spent in Maui !
Thank you to IWT & PWA for a solid wave year on tour.
Photos by: FISHBOWL DIARIES
Watch our vlogs of our trip here:
