After running the event for many years, Tinho Dornelles and his wife Susie, decided to take a much deserved break last year from running the traditional Calema mid Winters. It’s amazing how many people missed having the event on, so this year, with the news of the event back on, everyone was eager to head to Calema which always provides good competition, great organization, superb race comity and a mixture of pros and amateurs all racing together on many classes such as formula, formula sports, kona, RS-X, Technos and longboards.

Most sailors arrived on a Thursday and practiced all day on light winds and Florida’s sunny warm conditions, forecast looked great and after having a Thursday night skippers meeting, principal race office Darren Rogers explained all the courses and set the sailors up for a 10am start on Friday.

With lighter winds in the morning, the Kona fleet, RS-X, Technos and longboards got a bunch of races in as Darren waited for stronger winds to start the formula. With 10 to 15 knots winds, the first formula race with close to 40 competitors got under way around noon. They manage to do 4 races on the first day and with a bunch of mixed results for the top guys made the competition very tight. The standing with one discard was Gabriel Browne BRA50 in first with 5 points, Paulo dos Reis BRA3333 in second with 7 points, Wilhelm Schurmann BRA999 and Micah Buzianis US34 tied in third with 8 points each, followed by Mathias Pinheiro BRA5 with 12 points and Taty Franz NB9 with 16 points showing that yes, he can be very good on a formula board as well.

On Saturday, sunny and warm, everyone arrived and rigged early as the wind was already a steady 15 to 20 knots with some gusts over 25. Most sailors rigged 10s and some 11s.

With basically the same course and wind direction, which was taking around just over 18 minutes to complete, sailors set out for another 4 races, however the wind died in the late afternoon and big shifts made it hard to do a fair race, so after 3 races the competitors got dismissed for the day.

The three races were very exciting with many of the top sailors having their misfortune, some able to recover fast and some not. Gabriel Browne, Wilhelm Schurmann, Paulo dos Reis and, all at one point got the layline so perfect 😉 that rounded a bit toooooo close to the buoy and ended up getting their fins caught and falling over, Mathias had to abandon a race after a crash with Micah just after the start, and a few other sailors crashed on the downwind with the close chop and strong winds.

Saturday night was the official dinner which was fantastic with great food, open bar and plenty of pictures and video from all the action on the projector.

Sunday, or better, strong and cold Sunday, the cold front predicted came through with winds that were gusting to over 40 knots at some point and a temperature that dropped from 32 C the day before to around 10 C on Sunday.

Tinho went out several times to measure the winds and was keeping track of forecasts around the area which showed no signs of the winds dying out, after talking it over with Darren and considering that 7 good races were run in light, medium and strong winds so far and for safety reason that it was just not safe to send the sailors out there, as it would me more of survival than fair competition, they made the call at 12:30 to rap up the event which made 99% of the sailors very happy.

In the end, Brazil came strong and secured 4 out of the top 5 positions, with Gabriel Browne sailing a very consistent race to take the event title, in second was Micah Buzianis followed by Paulo dos Reis in third, Wilhelm Schurmann in fourth and Mathias Pinheiro as top 5.

The Grand Master was won by Ron Kern.

The Masters by Vincent Barre

The Men by Mateus Isaac

The women by Monica Arche.

For more than 600 pictures from the event, go to calema facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/CalemaWindsurfingandWatersports/photos

Special thanks to all the sponsors, the organizer Tinho and Susie Dornellas, Darren Rogers the Principal race officer, Toby the announcer that kept everyone informed, and the whole crew, specially everyone that prepared the lovely lunch each day.

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Wilhelm Schurmann