Fraisthorpe

The promise

It promised to be the hottest day of 2008 so I checked www.xcweather.co.uk to see where the best coastal location was for some boarding.

The predicition was about perfect for Fraisthorpe - 20mph cross-on winds, mid-day high tide (15:45) and glorious sunshine to boot! What could be better?

So, I packed up all my kitesurf and landboard gear and headed out to see what I could find. I intended to get on the water as the conditions promised to be about as good as they were ever going to get.

Site surveyOn arrival, the tide was out and there wasn't anyone else on the beach so I had it all to myself. This was good in one way in that I had no-one to bother with on the board. However, it was very bad from a safety perspective as I would have no-one to help out if anything went wrong. For this reason I reluctantely decided to avoid kitesurfing and went for a landboard session.

12pm - land session

I had fun with the 9m Atom and the trampa whizzing up & down the beach and getting some power slide turns in throwing wet sand up everywhere. I had a few tumbles where my board hit soft sand and stayed where it was ejecting me across the sand. I stayed out for just over 2hrs before the tide started to edge it's way in and I wasn't sure how rapidly it would rise so I packed up and headed back to the car.

By this time a handful of kitesurf guys had turned up and were having a great time out on the water, typically with 12m Waroo and 1 guy had a 16m North Rebel. I vowed to get out on the water when the tide was heading back out so I hung around.

The wind meter was showing a healthy clean 23mph!

5pm - water sessionThe high water mark was incredibly high and left no beach to launch from so everyone came off and waited until it was usable, which turned out to be 5pm.I went north up the beach (downwind) away from the guys and got all of my kit setup and I guess it was 17:30 when I was ready to go; at which point one of the other kiters came inland where I was and shouted "someone's switched it off!" and I looked around to see everyones kites were down. The wind had dropped to 5mph if we were lucky. :(I had a mess around in the water with the board & kite and managed a few small runs but was largely under-powered and struggled. In the end I just had a mess around with some body dragging and static jumps for entertainment.I gave it another try at 19:30 when the wind picked up again but it was inconsistent and invariably disappeared as soon as I was ready in the water.All in all, it was a good day with excellent conditions in the morning and some failing weather in the afternoon. Very happy and raring to go again. :)