Dream yourself away for a moment to one of the absolute most desired place in the world for windsurfing. That place is the little known Icaraizinho or Icarai de Amontada in Brazil. This place offers winds nearly all year round. Mixed with its dreamy surroundings and comfortable temperature, its hard to find any better! Our rider from Brazil Mathias Pinheiro took the win at this event and has now taken the lead of the Brazilian overall rankings. Check out his account of this event here:
For the 2017 season, the Windsurf Brazilian Association implemented a vote with the members to choose the number of events and locations to host the Windsurf Slalom Championship. The chosen option was for 3 stops in different locations to compose the Brazilian Windsurf Slalom Calendar with 1 discard.
The 1st stop was in Buzios – Rio de Janeiro with a total of 11 races concluded and 32 windsurfers entered. The winner of this event was Mateus Isaac – Bra767 (NP/JP) with a large margin of points over me – Mathias Pinheiro Bra-5 (Point-7/Goya) 2nd place and Ricardo Winick Bra-1 (Point-7/Goya) in 3rd place.
The 2nd stop happened from 2 to 4 of November in Icarai de Amontada or Icaraizinho, at “Casa Janjao”, a beautiful remote fisherman village, 200km from Fortaleza. This place gets the trade winds 300 days per year becoming the most favourite place for windsurfing and kitesurfing in Brazil.
This is the 2nd favourite spot for windsurfing after Jericoacoara. The windsurf started here already in the middle of the 90’s with local slalom competitions having taken place for years.
The Event
Thirty three windsurfers in two different categories as Amateurs and Pro, they competed in 12 very tight races during 3 days of competition.
Day 1:
After the registration and skippers meeting, we started racing around 2:00 pm with two eliminations and one winners final. The wind was from 18 to 25kts. I choose my medium gear – AC-One 7.8 and medium board. I managed to win every elimination and all three winners final which left me pretty relaxed looking forward for the day after with the forecast showing stronger winds.
Day 2:
Early in the morning while I was having my breakfast I could see the coconut trees shaking furiously. Arriving at Casa Janjao – the place of the competition, the wind meter was reaching 26kts at the beach with some 29kts in the gust. Because of my big advantage from the 1st day I chose to replace my AC-One 7.8 for the AC-X 7.0. I switched only the sail, keeping the C100 460, P7 Carbon Boom 190-240 and my Goya Proton medium board with 37 MFC H1 fin.
Also, the race crew decided to do only winners finals because some sailors gave up to race in stronger conditions. The second day had 16 windsurfers fighting for the top places.
I had to focus more in the moment of the start, looking for no mistakes. I could remember every single class and advises that I took from the Point-7 Slalom Pro Training, in Lanzarote. I managed to do very good starts gybing the 1st mark in the front pack.
In the end, I extended my lead having won 4 races out of 5 for the day. The AC-X was performing very well in this kind of wind. Sometimes, in the gust, the sail would twist more, releasing the extra wind, keeping the control. The big advantage is the gybes, constant speed and easy riding. With that, I proved to everyone that is possible race and have fun with a No Cam slalom sail.
Day 3:
The wind was still blowing early in the morning but was meant to drop throughout the day. The race crew managed to do 4 more races. With a great margin lead over the second place I decided to push my limits starting around 3 or 4 seconds behind all. Was hard to gybe in front so I challenged myself to do it safe and clear with no mistakes. In the end, it pays off, having me winning 3 more races in a total of 4.
After great 12 races I managed to win 10 of that, discard one 1st place and two 2nd, becoming the leader of the Brazilian Circuit of Slalom.
Next Stop
From 2-5 of December we will have the final stop of the Circuit, also the South American Championship of Slalom, in Porto Alegre – Brazil. At this contest we will have PWA’s sailors making the event even bigger. All the Brazilians big names of the sport will be there, apart from Gabriel Browne which is on Maui developing the 2018 slalom Goya’s boards.
Final Results – Icaraizinho:
1. Mathias Pinheiro BRA5 (Point-7/Goya) – 6.3pts
2. Levi Lenz BRA90 (Goya) – 25pts
3. Ian Mouro BRA291 – 27pts
Brazilian Ranking
1. Mathias Pinheiro BRA5 – 3pts
2. Guto Brito BRA941 – 15pts
3. Christian Hackbarth BRA34 – 17pts.
