Surf Contest

Last week we helped host the Sri Lanka Nationals, the first nation wide surfing competition in Sri Lanka. After a very rushed lead up and planning, the two day event finally got up and running. It was so good how everyone from the community pulled together in the last couple of days to make it happen. This included a couple of tourists giving of their time to film and photograph the event as well as one of the long time visiting aussies volunteering to judge.

As for me my main role was to organise the food and be a judge. I was somewhat successful in that we had breakfast and lunch provided for the contestants. My only let down was that one of the days we ended up with two restaurants providing break

fast and consequently double the amount of food than originally asked for. Somewhat of a communication breakdown. It would definitely help if cooks would talk to their managers before volunteering to sponsor a surfing event and also would help if they wouldn't nod their head when I ask if they're the manager. None the less, there was more than enough food.

As for my second job, I couldn't believe judging could be so fun. I tried to make the judging as fair as possible, rewarding those who did critical manoeuvres and give lower scores to anyone who even slightly resembled Adriano De Souzer. Thankfully no one did any double claims after performing a serious weak floaters. At the start we were told that the surf club wanted us to judge the comp because they have live here afterwards and would have to live with the repercussions of their judging. But there were not real disputes aside from a heated discussion with a spectator about not receiving a free t-shirt. Aside from that everything ran smoothly.

My highlight of the event happened on day two when there were a couple of heats which we had 5 surfers and only 4 rash guards. We decided to that one of the surfers would just surf without and we'd write down there colour as 'skin'. After announcing each surfer's colours for the next heat, the 5th surfer finally came up to the stage and asked where the skin coloured rash guard was. For some of these surfers I think it was their first competition.

Overall I think the surf club was completely stoked at the help we provided for em and I'm sure we've made some life long friendships.

Special thanks to Amir for photographing on the day and providing photos for this blog.