KSP World Tour 2012 Round 1 Cascais Pro, Guincho, Portugal

Lee ‘Pasty’ Harvey recently drove down to Portugal for the first stop on the 2012 Kite Surf Pro Tour at Guincho near Lisbon.

After a pretty miserable winter on the wave front in Cornwall, I travelled out a week early to get some practise in the famous howling winds of Guincho armed with a full quiver of North kites from 12 down to 5m. An epic session at Buracos on the way down followed by a few windy days, one even on the 5 and when it was time for the comp to start, I was feeling confident on a good result and start the year off well on achieving my goal of bettering my 2011 rank of 10^th.

So the first day of competition saw no wind but waking on the Sunday, it looked promising wit good waves and little cloud. The wind was up and down all day but we finally started around 3pm. I was up in heat 3 and dominated my heat riding on the 6’0 Wam and 12m Fuse against Chilean ripper and ranked 7^th, Juan Pablo and Mark Moore from Canada. This meant I advanced into round 3 and a match up against Mitu Monteiro which I was really looking forward to. In the next few heats the wind gradually dropped until it was called in heat 5.

The next few days were super light with heat 5 being run 3 more times until it eventually counted. By the end of the week it was looking like we may not have time to finish due to the poor forecast so the organisers decided to run round 2 of the men’s and women’s simultaneously. With only a few hours of good wind, this was unfortunately still not enough and I didn’t get to fight against Mitu and we were left with no result and equal points.

The closing party was held in the city of Cascais at the Citadel, which was great fun and awards were given out for the highest wave scores for both men and women.

Still I had a great time yet again in Portugal with some amazing waves and super friendly people. You can check out my video of the trip including some spots before and after the comp http://youtu.be/Mlh0xelHg7w

I would like to thank- Mum, Dad & Tara for helping towards fuel costs and all of my sponsors for keeping me going with kit throughout the year- North, Resin8, West, FCS, Freeriders, BKSA.

Stay tuned to my website www.leepasty.co.uk where you can also like my Facebook fan page to stay up to date with all my adventures. Next up Mauritius in September for the One Eye Pro.

Cheers

Lee