PWA Cold Hawaii World Cup - Sun, rain, hail and rainbows on day 1

by Chris Yates on 17 Sep 2013 The opening day of the 2013 KIA Cold Hawaii PWA World Cup saw a complete mixture of weather as sun, rain, hail and rainbows all made an appearance at some point during the day. However, the one crucially missing ingredient throughout the day was consistent wind, which fluctuated considerably as the squalls passed through Cold Hawaii.

Unfortunately the brief periods of wind were too short for any competition to take place. After a long day on hold the sailors were eventually released at 6:45pm and the focus will now turn tomorrow.

With plenty of downtime today we caught up with Robby Swift (JP / NeilPryde / Mystic / Maui Ultra Fins), who is making his first appearance of 2013 after recovering from a suffering a severe injury just before Pozo in July. You can read more about his injury here.

PWA: How is your ankle now Robby?

RS: 'It’s okay, it’s still a bit swollen. Apparently the bones have completely healed, I had a CT scan and the surgeon said that you can’t even see that there was ever a fracture. Obviously though the ligaments take longer to completely heal - they weren’t that badly damaged - when the surgeon operated he said that they weren’t too bad, but it’s still pretty early. I went and spoke to the physio before coming out here and they were happy for me to come here and try, but he said not to push it too much, so I’m just going to have to take it easy and see if I can make it through a couple of heats, which would be nice, and then hopefully just get stronger in time for Maui and Chile.'

PWA: Have you been sailing already?

RS: 'I went out just on flat water a couple of weeks ago and that was okay. Then last weekend I went sailing in waves at East Runton, England, which was howling 4.0 weather, that was pretty scary! I did a few jumps and stuff and that was okay, I didn’t sail for too long. Since then I’ve been in the gym most days as well as having physio, so it feels stronger now than it did then, so I’m hoping that it will be okay. It’s just with the chop here it might not feel very good, but we’ll see.'

PWA: How are you feeling confidence-wise?

RS: 'Right now my confidence isn’t amazing, but I just wanna go and have fun and get back out on the water. If I can make it through some heats that would be nice, if not then at least I’m back sailing. You know you’ve got to start sailing again somewhere, and there are these events so I might as well come and do this you know, otherwise I’d just go back to Maui and just be sailing wishing that I was here.'

PWA: Thanks Robby and good luck for the rest of the week.

The forecast for tomorrow offers both wind and waves, which should see the competition begin in excellent wave riding conditions. To take full advantage of the forecast the skippers’ meeting has been called for 06:30am tomorrow morning with the action commencing from 7am - starting with the three trails heats. PWA World Cold Hawaii event site