Reining UK slalom and speed champion and recent signing to the BPF team Ant Baker K77 reports from the third round of the BSA in the UK hosted by K66 Distribution who are Black Projects Fins UK representatives.

“Round 3 of this years British Slalom Association (BSA) was on the sunny south coast of England in my home town of Worthing, and with an awesome forecast for the saturday I was getting pretty excited.

Day #1: was greeted with perfect southwesterly 25-30 knots so we all rigged small and hit the water, I was lucky to have just received my new Black Project RS fins so i bolted the 34cm in my Fanatic Falcon 102 and hit the water. A downwind slalom course was set which took the crew quite a while to set due to the big waves and now increasing wind.

I haven’t raced since last year so was pretty nervous before the start which felt like it took ages to come, so when the red flag went up the excitement kicked in, I had an awesome start at the pin end but the first reach was very broad and by this time the wind had increased by quite a bit making this a very tough reach, I managed to get to mark #1 first and made a good gybe followed by James Dinsmore and Simon Cofield.

The second reach was tight so all the positions stayed the same and we all gybed well so all good until run 3 which was very, very broad which I wasnt very comfy so got overtaken by James and from there I was just trying to hold on the results for race #1 were, James, Myself and then Simon.

After a short break we changed to a figure of eight course and i changed down to a 5.7 which i was still hanging on to as the wind had built even more. So we started and I was just behind James who on his 5m and was in good control so I tried to catch up but not much changed so we finished James, Myself and then Simon.

Day #2: Sunday there was no wind so we all just hung out and laughed and cried about big saturday

Overall i was pretty happy being first loser as my kit felt really good so the future is awesome and again I’m excited!!”Ant Baker (Fanatic / North / ION / Black Project Fins)

Ant uses the Type Rand Type RS for slalom racing, check out what they can do for your sailing.

More to follow…