Speaking of Kent, here's one of my favorite stories out of the race. I heard it from both Kent's side, and then from Thomas's when I got into work this morning.
A little background: I kite in Delray (when I have to) so I knew where the checkpoint was and what it looks like from the ocean. But if I didn't, I probably would have been confused, and when I got to the point where it felt like "halfway there" I would have gone into shore wherever I saw a few people milling around, not wanting to miss the check-in.
So ... Andy's footstrap broke a couple of miles north of the checkpoint in Delray ... at Briney Breezes, which is right where Thomas (the Best R&D guy) lives. Thomas and a bunch of his friends were milling around on the beach, filming and watching the procession. None of them knew about the whole "checkpoint" thing, where all the riders had to stop in Delray and shout out their name/number to be accounted for ... all they were expecting to do was watch kiters racing by their beach.
All of a sudden Thomas sees Andy kiting in, near the shore, pointing at his footstrap. Simultaneously, the guys right behind Andy must've figured, "Andy's from Delray, he knows what he's doing, this must be the check point," so they sort of follow him to the "checkpoint that wasn't the checkpoint."
Kent comes to the shore, yelling and pointing at himself, "I'm Kent!! I'm Kent!! ME, I'm Kent!" The crowd is just standing there ... not knowing what to do with this piece of information, looking around perplexed, not sure why a random kiter was coming into introduce himself. Thomas said, "Yeah, I know who you are! You're Kent! GOOD! GOOD JOB!!" The crowd was cheering ... Woohoo! Way to go! Giving him the thumbs up gesture ... Meanwhile Kent kept trying to make himself understood ... Kent! Kent! I'm Kent!
Thomas said he ran inside to get Andy a new board, and he came out and Kent was still "circling around" ... hehehehe. That cracks me up. I'm Kent!
Unfortunately, Thomas didn't get that part on film, since he put the camera down as soon as he saw Andy in trouble. He said it was the funniest part of the race for his little group though
. We were laughing about it all day.
He also said Billy Parker was going so fast he was barely touching the water. I can't wait to see the footage. It'll probably take a few weeks for them to finish the video, but I'll post the link here when it's up.