The Addictions proved once again to be great kites in these conditions–I had speed on nearly everyone upwind and down. The rest of the races were held in lighter wind, and the fleet was a little more mixed up. Racing proved challenging in a tactical way, providing everyone with an opportunity to use their strengths.

I finished the regatta 4th overall, my second top 5 finish in the last two Course Racing World Championships! Thanks to RRD for all the support!

FINAL RESULTS

Top 10 men:

1. Adam Koch (Ozone/USA)
2. Damien LeRoy (Cabrinha/USA)
3. Bruno Sroka (Cabrinha/FRA)
4. Johnny Heineken (RRD/USA)
5. Sky Solbach (North/USA)
6. Sean Farley (North/USA)
7. Jesse Richman (Cabrinha/USA)
8. Kent Marinkovic (Cabrinha/USA)
9. Abel Lago (RRD/USA).
10. Chip Wasson (Ozone/USA)

To give you my perspective I am dedicated surfboard riding wavekiter and i generally prefer strapped and hooked in with down the line off the lip aerials manoeuvres what floats my boat. 

There was a lot of hype about a ‘dedicated wave kite’ at least 6m ago, but when the kite failed to materialise people were starting to wonder was it all just ‘piss and wind’, but then those of us lucky enough to get a quiver rom the fisrt batch to arrive in Australia 2 weeks ago have been well impressed, and I do not apologise for pimping such a great wavekite as it may just be the advance that a lot of dedicated surfboard riders have been waiting for.

How does it fly?
This is not touted as ‘do it all’ kite, but as a dedicated wave kite and it’s all about the turn……… incredibly quick and smooth with no stall, no jerk, and quicker around the corner than a type 9, which is saying something. It is absolutely the fastest turning kite I or I expect anyone else will have ever used, and it may take a bit of getting used to if you have been riding slow kites til now. The 11.5 turns nearly as quick as the 9m type 9 and faster than most 7m kites. This opens the door on performance riding in 12-15 kts. When you’re on the 7m its so quick you forget just what you can achieve to start with. A section looms downwind and where previously you would have been waiting for the kite to come around you have already snapped around and bashed the lip on the religion.

The struts and LE are big and solid [it takes a lot of pumping but is one pump as with all RRDs] and the whole thing feel absolutely rock solid in the air. It has been reinforced to take a hammering if you drop it, with big Dacron cross reinforcments on the canopy. Consequently, combined with it’s bold square low aspect shape this kite is going to really stand out from every other kite at your local. 

If you do more park and ride style, It drifts back beautifully as you ride downwind, but is always just sitting there waiting for bar input. The power level as it is thrown across the window is constant and smooth and easily killed with depower, keeping the rider in control, but by the same token it would not satisfy someone wanting massive boosts. Upwind is much improved on the type 9 and is on par with the Obsession and most modern kites. The bar pressure is really light coming off the type 9 and I expect those who have suffered elbow tendonitis will welcome this, but for me it takes a little adjusting not to be able to crank down on the bar for balance or any extra squirt of power. 

The RELIGIONS are not grunty size for size and alot of the quoted area is in those big foward sitting square tips for turning speed. I would suggest one compares the religion more with a C kite [and to look at they are really a low aspect bridled C] than a bow, on a size to wind range comparison, so the 11.5 would have equivalent wind range to most 10s in a more bow shape.

Finally the long awaited Wave Master has arrived in the UK, arguably one of the best Wave kites on the current market.

Order now from your local RRD dealer..

For more info call : 01903 503 664

With the summer season rapidly upon is we the guys thought it best to put together a new site that could be updated by all our riders and also have the facility to have our readers & customers make there points, you can now comment on our blog posts, gallery pics and riders blogs.

Thanks to Distinktive Design for putting it together

A revolutionary twintip concept has been further improved. The new Venom 2010, with a new construction technology and the new outline and tip design technology bring life to unlimited possibilities of use on this model. It can be used both with and without the tips to be switched from a full-on freestyle flat short board to a serious wave board with hi-nose kick. It is the perfect board to approach the waves easily and mix freestyle to wave riding!

The Venom is a fantastic concept: is a twintip board that allows you to ride in waves because of the twin fin tips configuration and the softer rails of the boards with a little TUE. The size of the board is 142 x 42 and this year for the first time we designed a board with the tips that are removable, so you can remove the tips and use the board in freestyle configuration, while if you put the tips you can use the board in waves.

The board has a great low end because of the straight rocker line in the middle section, so the board start to get going and to get upwind really fast, but as soon as you start to turn in the waves you feel that the boards it s easy to turn as a twintip board should be, but the boards keeps momentum because of the flatter section. In the mean time, the tips forgive a lot of mistakes, allowing to leaning too much forward or backward while surfing, without the board catching or slowing down too much. So this tips configuration makes even easier approach to the waves and the fact of having a full symmetrical outline and a twin tip stance, will allows to do all the freestyle manoeuvres full on.

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With the huge success of Apple’s i-PHONE we thought it would make sense to build our new site to be iphone friendly, so you can now check out all the latest news, reviews, tests and even keep up top date with our team riders on the go

We are even currently working on an iphone APP to keep you up to date on the wind speed at your nearest beach

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