L'AWT ainsi que la dernière étape de vague PWA (PWA Nove Nove Maui Aloha CLassic) se tenaient il y a quelques jours à Maui - Hawaii.
Etape remportée par les habitués du spot puisque le top 3 se compose de Morgan Noireaux, Kauli Seadi et Levi Siver.
A l'issu ce cette compétition c'est Iballa Ruano Moreno et Philip Koster qui sont sacrés Champions du monde de vagues 2015.
Ce dernier n'a pourtant pas vraiment brillé lors de cette épreuve puisqu'il termine 33eme. Après avoir fait respectivement des places de 1 - 2 - 1 sur les trois étapes précédentes, seul Victor Fernandez peut lui ravir le titre mais avec des place de 2 - 1 - 2 il est "condamné" à gagner Maui pour remporter le titre.
Terminant sixième, il montre qu'il est surement l'un des plus polyvalents du circuit mais grace à la Wildcard, le plus mauvais des résultats sur ces quatre compétitions saute et permet à Koester de prendre le titre.
Quelques vidéos PWA résument l'évènement sur le blog vidéo.
D'autres vidéos sont aussi disponbiles, c'est le cas de celle ci dessous qui nous donne un point de vu assez nouveau puisqu'elle est filmée des air avec un drone. On les doit à Karim Iliya durant l'AWT et c'est absolument superbe !
Windsurfing by Drone- AWT Aloha Classic 2015 Hookipa from Karim Iliya on Vimeo.
The best windsurfers on the planet gathered on Maui, Hawaii for the 2015 Aloha Classic of the American Windsurfing Tour.
Windsurfing is an incredibly dynamic and difficult sport. A couple of the toughest people go out in the water to search for different angles. I took to the skies with a quadrocopter drone. It is by far the most difficult to film aerials of. With high winds and massive waves, the scene is constantly shifting and sailing. The windsurfer changes speed, and I discovered while shooting, that the wave slows down when it hits the reef. You must avoid salt water ocean spray coming off the waves. Sometimes the drone is not fast enough to keep up with the sailor. Battery time is cut in half, down to 6 or 8 minutes while battling the wind. With each battery swap I had to clean salt water off the drone's camera. Sometimes the drone can't keep up with the windsurfer, and so I would have to turn the drone, and tilt the camera to keep them in the shot. It was a balance. The closer I got to the windsurfer, the more chance I had of messing up the shot. I also almost had a near mid-air collision with Ricardo Campello's drone. The screws in the quad are rusted, but it's still holding up. As challenging is it was filming this, it was also the most fun subject to film.
Drones:
DJI Inspire 1
Phantom 3 (when the wind finally calmed)
Filmed and edited by Karim Iliya
www.karimphotography.com
Music: Walls by Postcards
Thanks to Andres Martinez for narrating anticipatory jumps during the final free sailing heat, and Erika Myszynski and Michael Restrepo for giving me editing feedback, and to all the windsurfers who did an incredible job and were stoked to have a drone buzzing around them while competing.
