SURFING / HUNTINGTON BEACH OPEN : Strong Offshore Winds Force Delay in Third-Round Heats

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Ronnie Meistrell, contest director of the Professional Surfing Assn. of America tour, feared the worst when he heard the weather report Wednesday night.

Strong offshore winds for Huntington Beach on Thursday.

His worst fears came true as gusting northwesterly winds forced contest officials Thursday to postpone 12 third-round heats at the Huntington Beach Open. Only four third-round heats had been completed.

The wind chased most of the spectators off Huntington State Beach during the late-morning heats, and forced contest judges off the scaffolding as officials scrambled to secure it.

“The wind had to be gusting up to 40 m.p.h.” said tour photographer Mike Balzer, who was on a scaffolding platform. “You could feel the front of the scaffolding start to lift up.”

The wind also created choppy conditions in the water and large clouds of blowing sand on the beach. Surfers had been competing in 3- and 4-foot waves before the winds hit.

Meistrell said competition will resume at 6:20 this morning with the completion of Round 3, followed by Round 4, and then the first round of the bodyboard division.

The PSAA tour has been plagued by weather delays the past two years.

Fog delayed early round heats at Bolsa Chica State Beach and Lower Trestles contests last year. But tour officials rescheduled the heats, and both contests finished on time.

Richie Collins of Newport Beach barely advanced in his third-round heat, edging Chris Drummy for second place. Kasey Curtis of San Juan Capistrano won the heat.

Collins, winner of the 1989 Op Pro and one of the pre-contest favorites at Huntington, caught only four waves in his 20-minute heat.

“I just sat for the first seven minutes and didn’t do anything,” Collins said. “Everything I did was in the last one-third of the heat.”

Although he lives only a few miles from Huntington State Beach, Collins rarely surfs there.

“This was only about the fifth time I’ve been here,” he said. “The first time I came out here, I was 10 years old and I broke the nose of my board.”

Results

Round 2 (continued from Wednesday)

Heat 1--Pocho Ahina (Honolulu), Kimo Gaspar (Honolulu); Heat 2--Todd Bonnet (Huntington Beach), Strider Wasilweski (Santa Monica); Heat 3--James Pribram, Justin Fuller (Manhattan Beach); Heat 4--Bill Ferguson (Encinitas), Morgan Bonan; Heat 5--Chris Drummy, Joe Schirmer; Heat 6--Kirk Tice (Huntington Beach), Nicolai Glazer (Pacific Palisades); Heat 7--Evan Slater (Ventura), Chad Navarro; Heat 8--Evan Caples, Paul Barga (Encinitas).

Round 3

(Top two advance to fourth round)

Heat 1--Kasey Curtis (San Juan Capistrano), Richie Collins (Newport Beach); Heat 2--Tony Foster (Cayucos, Calif.), Chad Navarro; Heat 3--Allen Johnson (Del Mar), Wasilweski; Heat 4--Tice, Cordell Miller (Laguna Niguel). (Remaining 12 heats are scheduled today.)