Vette tops her repechage heat

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GISBORNE surfer Saffi Vette won her first repechage heat at the 2017 Vissla ISA World Junior Championships in Japan yesterday.

Vette topped her heat with a 10.37 two-wave total, overcoming her three competitors from South Africa, Guam and Italy.

The fourth day of competition at Hyuga provided the biggest waves on offer yet, with a decent one-metre swell, later affected by onshore winds.

The New Zealand junior surfing team had a day of mixed results. They had four wins throughout the day, but also had three team members exiting the event altogether.

Raiha Ensor (Mt Maunganui) surfed her way into the last eight of under-18 girls’ qualifying.

Elliot Brown (Dunedin) and Caleb Cutmore (Hamilton) also advanced from their repechage heats.

Kehu Butler (Mt Maunganui) and Jonas Tawharu (Mt Maunganui) were both relegated to the repechage rounds of the u18 boys’ division and William Van Der Beek (Mt Maunganui) suffered the same fate in the u16 boys’ division.

Jared Gebert (Ohope) bowed out of the u18 boys’ division, finishing 65th overall. Dylan Preston (Mt Maunganui) was eliminated in the same round of the u16 boys’ division, finishing 65th.

Tegen Bishop (Christchurch) was eliminated from the under-16 girls’ division, finishing 33rd overall.

Elin Tawharu (Mt Maunganui) and Kaya Horne (Gold Coast) were scheduled to surf late in the day before organisers decided to halt proceedings.

The two surfers will be up early on Day 5 of the event today. The swell is forecast to decrease heading into Day 5 and continue that trend through to the weekend, when the finals will be contested.

The New Zealand team started yesterday in equal-first position with 11 other teams who had not dropped a surfer out of the event. However, at the end of the day the team sat in 11th place.

France, Australia, Japan and the USA are tied for first, having not lost any surfers from the event.

The championships, which run until October 1, are being streamed live through ISAWorlds.com.

Japan is four hours behind New Zealand and action is expected to start between 7.30am and 8am each day (Japan time).

If Vette’s Round 3 repechage heat runs today it will likely be this evening (NZ time).