Greetings to the Personal Watercraft Racing Community. There is starting to be less daylight each day and some of the air smells like fall starting to come and take the place of summer. These are the signs that we will all soon gather in Lake Havasu City for the 24th annual quakysense World Finals.
However, summer has not yet retired for 2015. There is still plenty of great racing going on throughout the world. We have wrapped great events in Kuwait City, Doncaster, Nysa, Parker, Vladivostok, Tavares, Baytown, Belgrade, Mossdale, and other very awesome locations. Still to come are events in Columbia, Pacific City, Cocoa Beach, and Parhump. Some major events, such at the IJSBA World Inca Raid and King’s Cup will happen after World Finals. The sport is global and it seems that there is always racing somewhere and good racing at that!
We know all of you are busy between wrapping up your competition season and preparing for World Finals. Kids have gone back to school and other obligations and distractions also demand some of your time (knowing PWC racers the way we do, we suspect that a handful of our members may have been scrambling to find out if their emails were on the recently hacked Ashley Madison list), so we appreciate taking the time to read the updates. There will be an update every week beginning with next week! Time will pass by quickly so, to be best prepared please share the following news and information with your friends and colleagues in the sport!
- IJSBA expects full pits again this year and we are making preparations to keep the pit space allocations far and efficient. In doing so, we are asking persons with trailers larger than 30 feet to contact IJSBA so we can help place you. IJSBA is also inviting groups, of four or more competitors, who are willing to share one trailer, to contact IJSBA and we can secure your trailer space in advance. IJSBA is not expanding the pit spaces that come with sponsor packages nor are we increasing the prepaid pro-pit opportunities. We are going to have fair access to pits by using a hybrid of first come, first served and a lottery system. Space saving and taking more than one pit space will not be tolerated. If you have special needs or requests, please feel free to email info@ijsba.com so that we may discuss them.
- IJSBA has been instructed to prevent contact with waterfowl as part of our obligations in securing the permit for World Finals. The truth be told, none of us can remember any waterfowl ever coming into the competition area. If, for some reason, they aquatic friendly birds decide to become spectators, course marshals and perimeter patrol will be there with air horns to chase them away. So, if you are in the permitted area doing any tuning or warm ups and you see anything that resembles a bird, you need to stay away or face fines, getting yelled at, and possible disqualification and ejection from the race site. We seriously do not think this is going to be a problem. However, the regulatory agencies have asked us to make this a priority and that is what we are going to do. PWC racers appreciate our riding areas and we are good stewards of the environments entrusted to us. More on this subject will be discussed at the riders’ meetings.
- Safety is the number one concern at the World Finals. We ask your cooperation in all aspects of protecting the safety and wellbeing of competitors, spectators, and staff members. This means we are going to ask for compliance in the following areas:
- No underage children driving pit vehicles
- No speeding in the pits
- No aerial drones
- Riding on the course may be done by registered competitors only
- No riding of the course except during competition and authorized practice
- Antics such as burnout contests, off-roading on the grounds, misuse of venue infrastructure, vandalism, fires, fireworks, and consumption of alcohol in the pits are all prohibited
- ABSOLUTELY NO USE OF THE CHANNEL OR PERIMITER BUOYS AS PRACTICE TURN BUOYS
Maintaining a safe and responsible environment helps ensure we continue to have a place to ride and we can keep our insurance and operating costs low. Most importantly, we want all of our competitors to stay in one piece and to be able to come back time and time again for more great racing.
- Speaking of keeping costs low, IJSBA was proud to announce that we were able to maintain World Finals participation costs for another year. There have been no price increases for 2015 except in Vintage Ski and Vintage X2 classes where there was an adjustment to account for these two classes becoming trophy earning classes for 2015. If you have not yet downloaded your entry form, you can do so here: https://ijsba.com/ijsba-world-finals-entryforms/. Online registration will begin next week.
- IJSBA is trying something different with the Race Director program this year. Well, not all that different as it is something that we have done a few the years ago. 2015 will bring rotating race director positions on the beach, a fixed race director in the announcing tower, rotating flaggers in the starting tower, and a jury system. We hope that the approach of using many staff members will help balance out different perceptions and different styles of communication in implementing calls on the race course. Of course a jumped start, or a missed buoy, are going to be the same penalty no matter who sees them. In any event, this year brought the opportunity for something new and we hope it brings progress to the continuing evolution of a positive outlook towards race administration.
- Vendors in the tradeshow have reached the biggest count ever. We have more surprises coming, too. As of right now, there are 63 confirmed vendors at the event. If you would like to be on the waiting list to be part of the largest personal watercraft event and trade show, anywhere in the world, please email info@ijsba.com.
- Competition at the 2015 quakysense World Finals is looking big. We already have confirmed riders from a large amount of countries and the list has just started. Some nations are sending their biggest team count to date. Here is the country count of confirmed riders so far:
Serbia
Italy
Thailand
France
United Kingdom
Canada
Indonesia
Hungary
Peru
Kuwait
Sweden
Austria
Belgium
Portugal
Russia
Ukraine
Estonia
China
Japan
Norway
Australia
United Arab Emirates
New Zealand
Martinique
South Korea
Germany
South Africa
Poland
Brazil
And competitors will be present from the host country of the United States
That’s it for this update. This update was mostly written on a plane and is being sent at a layover stop between countries. Forgive any typos. Please send any questions regarding this update, or the 2015 quakysense World Finals to info@ijsba.com or call +1-714-751-8695 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, PST, Monday through Thursday.
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