With the second stop of the CKA aka “College Kiteboarding Association” is now in the books after a weekend spent over in Cocoa Beach, Florida! This stop was held in one of my favorite spots in Florida at the 520 Slick. This spot offers some of the flattest water possible when kiting with a fun little lift off of the surrounding mangrove trees.
We got lucky and had enough wind to run the whole event on Saturday starting off with the Freestyle division. This time we had enough competitors to run an Amateur division and Advance division, which was exciting to see as in the first contest everyone was grouped together. The wind never got above 15 mph for the freestyle and had most competitors on 14-17m kites. I could barely stay up wind throughout my heat but was able to get in enough tricks somehow to manage a 2nd place in Freestyle.
After the freestyle was a wrap we started a course race on twintips with all the competitors together in one group. Where we had to downwind it to a marker then back upwind through are gate of markers then back downwind until back to the original mark. I managed to get a great start battling with my buddy Sean Buell for the first mark but once around the corner I was able to hold off everyone to win the race!
Huge thanks to everyone who came out and made this event what it was! Also a big thanks to Ryan Druyor and Billy Bosch and Bret Sullivan for organizing this event and making it happening not only work during the event but all the work leading into a event like this! Excited to tie for 1st after this contest and still be in the lead going into the 3rd stop of the series!
Drew Christianson 