| |
Friday saw a big south west swell and strong south west winds battering the coastline. | |
|
|
Smackfest finalists Andrew Morris, Kim Anderson, Brenden Petersen and James Atkinson were finally able to battle head to head in some challeging conditions. There were a lot of big wipeouts as competitors wrangled with the unpredictable wave and shallow reef. Brenden Petersen of Newcastle edged out Denmarks Kim Anderson with his big clean forward loops. The highlight heat of the whole event was the grand final between Andrew Morris of Newcastle and James Atkinson of Launceston.
James went out with guns blazing nailing a clean one handed forward. On his first wave going for the lip he was a fraction too late and was enveloped by a thick 3/4 mast lip. Whilst swimming for his gear, Andrew ‘Morry’ Morris clocked up some clean forwards and a nice one handed table top. After recovering his gear, James kept upwind and concentrated on upping his jump score, attempting a double forward and sticking a nice backloop. Morry struggled a little with his timing but still managed to pull off some syko carves in the bowl. He was edged out though by Atkinson who whacked an awesome speed whack to floater over an almost dry kelp bed. The rest of us freesailed the afternoon away, enjoying the waves as they cleaned up and got a little bigger.
Results
The second Smackfest Challange is over now. Saturday night the big presentation party took place at the Marrawah Pub. A best of video with footage from the week has been screend and trophies and prizes have been handed over. Three bands (‘The Voyeurs’ & ‘Stand Defiant’, ‘The Scandal’) provided some good action for the moshing pit and one more time the liver sacrifice has been a serious thing. A tough week for all the competitors is over now: lot’s of sailing, surfing and parties. 26 Contestants from Australia, News Zealand and Europe put their names down to find out who is the ‘Smacker’ of this years event. Huey pleased us with some outstanding conditions and everybody tried to score as high as possible. Fully stoked we all hope that Smackfest #3 will happen in 2005. Most of the competitors and their accompaning friends have left the island and the area of Marrawah is back into serenety. We want to thank the people of Marrawah for having us here and we want to thank the sponsors OES Australia, Events Tasmania and RedBull for supporting the event.
| |
