Boss Man’s note: The 2013 PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash Series has just gotten under way in South Africa. The series consists of weekly downwind races in Cape Town, which has some of the best winds (and, increasingly, the fastest Stand Up Paddlers) in the world.

We covered every race in the 2012 Downwind Dash Series, which attracted almost 100 paddlers and wrapped up just last month. The 2012 edition was won by wild man of SUP Chris Bertish and we look forward to regular updates from the 2013 Series thanks to our South African correspondent Peter Petersen of SUP Culture.

Full race recap, results and pics from race #1 of the 2013 series is below, plus I’d encourage you to go check out the overall results from the 2012 Series as well; it was fascinating to see different paddlers winning each week and where they all finished in the overall points table.

*****

The opening round of the 2013 PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash Wednesday night SUP race series had been postponed twice, due to poor wind conditions, but thankfully the forecast for this weeks race was promising. It’s literally been windy every day lately, excepting the last two Wednesdays… and by 5pm today the wind still hadn’t filled in all the way to Big Bay.

There was still 15knots+ at the start, so we called the race on hoping for the wind to fill in along the course. It was looking all good until about halfway when the gentle push from behind was exchanged for a slight side-wind on the left cheek. This made for very testing conditions for the 30 Stand Up Paddlers as the water was extremely choppy and the runners had virtually dried up.

Dylan Frick excelled in these conditions as did anyone on a Starboard, as they virtually had a podium lock-out in both the men’s and ladies’. The rest of the competitors had to settle for the scraps and it took a beer or two post-race to garner some enthusiasm from the broken paddlers. Francois Frick also motored to take a fine 2nd as did Andrew Cillie (Master’s Division) who is clearly regaining his form. Times were not exciting though, with only Dylan managing to average over 10km/h.

Brigette van Aswegen continued her unbeaten streak, but young Mishka Steyn is edging closer every week and I expect a real challenge from her by the end of the series. Third lady home was Patricia Kohrs, somewhat further back.

The Juniors was narrowly won by Ethan Koopmans with Joshua Robertson getting very close to stealing a win, they were literally a wave apart.

Despite the race possibly qualifying as the worst downwind conditions in the history of the event, it was great to get the series off the ground and those who had been feasting on the pies over x-mas were found wanting, while it was great to see the juniors really stepping it up and put themselves into the top 6.

Squeezing runs out of such marginal conditions is a fine art and Dylan showed the field that fitness and technique will make you fly in any conditions – for the rest of the field next week can only get better and we have cooking conditions forecast for the weekend so we expect some serious training to go down!

– Peter

(all photos © Jane Amoury)

2013 PRIMI Naish Downwind Dash Series – Race #1 RESULTS 

Date: 23rd January 2013
Wind: 15 knots S-SW
Swell: 2m
Course: 10.1km

#	Name	Time	Class	Division	% of 1st	Grade	km/h	min/km	Board
1	Dylan Frick	0:59:19	14'	Open	100.00	Elite	10.22	0:05:52	Starboard 14' Ace Pro
2	Francois Frick	1:02:10	14'	Open	95.42	Elite	9.75	0:06:09	Starboard 14' Ace Pro
3	Andrew Cillie	1:02:31	14'	Masters	94.88	A	9.69	0:06:11	Starboard 14' Ace
4	Sebastian Cattelan	1:04:06	14'	Open	92.54	A	9.45	0:06:21	Starboard 14' OO
5	Ethan Koopmans	1:04:31	14'	Junior	91.94	A	9.39	0:06:23	Naish 14 Glide
6	Joshua Robertson	1:04:59	14'	Junior	91.28	A	9.33	0:06:26	Naish 14 LE
7	Peter Petersen	1:05:22	14'	Masters	90.74	A	9.27	0:06:28	Naish 14 LE
8	Brad Adams	1:05:52	14'	Open	90.06	A	9.20	0:06:31	Fanatic Falcon 14'
9	Greg Bertish	1:05:53	14'	Open	90.03	A	9.20	0:06:31	Starboard 14' Ace Pro
10	Pietro Muscas	1:05:54	14'	Masters	90.01	A	9.20	0:06:31	Naish 14 Glide
11	Nic Muhl	1:06:45	14'	Open	88.86	B	9.08	0:06:37	Naish 14 Glide AST
12	Armien Wohlgemuth	1:07:24	14'	Masters	88.01	B	8.99	0:06:40	Naish 14 Glide
13	Nico Pfitzenmaier	1:08:42	14'	Open	86.34	B	8.82	0:06:48	Naish 14 Glide AST
14	Dave Maxwell	1:09:24	14'	Masters	85.47	B	8.73	0:06:52	Naish 14 Glide
15	Oscar Wollheim	1:09:55	14'	Masters	84.84	C	8.67	0:06:55	Naish 14 Glide AST
16	Brigette van Aswegen	1:10:18	14'	Lady	84.38	C	8.62	0:06:58	Starboard 14' Ace Pro
17	Mishka Steyn	1:12:21	14'	Lady junior	81.99	C	8.38	0:07:10	Starboard 14' OO
18	Mitch Wagstaff	1:13:28	14'	Open	80.74	C	8.25	0:07:16	Starboard 14' OO
19	Tom King	1:13:58	14'	Open	80.19	C	8.19	0:07:19	Fanatic Falcon 14'
20	Mike Fiet	1:14:14	14'	Open	79.91	D	8.16	0:07:21	Coreban 14 Dart
21	Tyran Cooper	1:14:24	14'	Open	79.73	D	8.15	0:07:22	Coreban 14 Dart
22	Danny Aeberli	1:14:43	14'	Open	79.39	D	8.11	0:07:24	Starboard 14' OO
23	Rob Munro	1:15:15	14'	Masters	78.83	D	8.05	0:07:27	Fanatic 14 OO
24	Patricia Kohrs	1:19:20	14'	Lady	74.77	D	7.64	0:07:51	Naish 14 Glide AST
25	Wayne Robertson	1:19:28	14'	Open	74.64	D	7.63	0:07:52	Coreban 14 Dart
26	Craig Ginsberg	1:19:51	14'	Masters	74.29	D	7.59	0:07:54	Naish 14 Glide
27	Steve Tripney	1:19:55	14'	Masters	74.22	D	7.58	0:07:55	Coreban 14 Dart
28	Monika Wohlgemuth	1:20:08	14'	Lady	74.02	D	7.56	0:07:56	Naish 14 Glide
29	Tammy Robarts	1:25:24	12'6	Lady	69.46	D	7.10	0:08:27	Coreban 12'6 Alpha
30	Calvin Ginsberg	1:26:04	14'	Junior	68.92	D	7.04	0:08:31	Naish 14 Glide AST