Ponte

I popped along to Pontefract again today hoping for a good session as the forecast was for 15mph winds. The trees were swaying and everything pointed towards a great day.

I arrived at about 11am and setup my 9m Atom as I don't need too much power when on land, the wind started to drop and I rapidly ran out of power completely and the Atom fell out of the sky after just a couple of runs. It's always a pig to launch if there's not much wind as it just won't roll over.

I packed that up and opened up the 14m Waroo with a little more success but there still wasn't enough power to get upwind. I eventually gave up and just lazed around on the grass talking to Tony (Bibbler) and Gary who were similarly frustrated with the lack of promised wind.

Ho hum, another day with little mileage.

Tags: pontefract, trampa, kite landboard, Simeon Pashley, kite, kites, kiting, power kite

A year in review - start doing, stop doing, keep doing

I thought I'd take a little time to review my last years kiting and think about things a little.

I've broken it down into some classic lists of start, stop and keep to give some focus to it all.

Keeping Doing
Weather variety - whatever the weather you can pretty much find something to do and you're always learning. high wind, low wind, smooth wind, gusty wind, it's all valuable experience.
Practice on the land board - I enjoy doing this and I don't really get to do it enough. It's a good into to kitesurfing but the 2 are a little differnt. landboard does however get you used to balancing against the power of the kite.
Get out with the guys - meeting up with other like minded people is important. I learn faster and have a good laugh too. The occasional long distance trip with the RaceKites.com crew is a fantastic get away and always good.

Stop Doing
Being a wuss - I think all aspects of kiting are easier with more power. More power comes from bigger kites and/or higher winds. More power takes some getting used to and in particular when you know the spankings are going to be even harder.
It's also important to get on with it for the kitesurfing, don't wuss out, get up and going.
Talking about it - it's good to get out and meet the guys but I need to balance that by getting out and doing it. I can easily spend ages just chatting away, even when there's good kiting winds to be had.
Buying things! - I know in my heart of hearts that I have everything I need to have a good time. However, there's still the lure of the new shiny thing, the different experience or the new venue. It's quite scarey to look at the stuff I've bought and sold over the year.

Start Doing
Kite surfing! - my little foray into kite surfing was great and I *really* want to get it cracked so I can make the most of it. This will make a good summer sport.
I'm right at the beginning of the learning curve on this so it's particularly interesting and I now have everything I need so there's no excuses other than time.
Focus - dump the kit I don't need, stop swapping around, get good at it. I think bow kites are the way to go. I'll keep the arcs for inland and the bows for inland/water.
Beat Paul! - we're having a Speed Champ 2008 competition between the 2 of us. So far I'm winning but Paul's got some new kites that pose a serious threat.

Waroo @ Ponte

I popped out to Pontefract Park yesterday to roll out my newly acquired 14m Waroo, it was forecast 8mph and a bit of rain so I didn't hold out much hope. I was intending just to give it a test flight and maybe have a bomb about on my trampa.

When I arrived the winds were in the region of 7mph-9mph so marginal for flying an SLE but I decided to continue and just check out the kite, lines & bar.

I set it all up and it looks very nice & clean so that's all good, I'd already test inflated it at home so no worries there. I had it sent on the 1st rear knot (longest lines) and max depower trim.

The winds turned up a couple of notches so it was time for a static fly although, to be honest, I thought it would be a bit much. Paul commented "thats a big f**ker!", which is true and that also got me worried.

So, with some trepedation up it went and to my surprise it was brilliantly behaved and incredibly controllable. It was also easy to cope with the gusts with the massive depower range available and this inspired confidence to take on such a big kite. The safety of 100% depower when letting the bar go was initially a stumbling point for me as you can read in my previous but, again, it added to my confidence in taking on such a large kite.

I built up enough confidence to jump on the trampa and I had a few runs up & down the field with my trampa and I'm very pleased with it. It's great to get upwind with too.

100% depower?

Right, I've been reading the manual for the Waroo and I think the last-post-but-one was entirely my bad.
I suspect I was keeping the bar in the safe zone resulting in no power at all. This is very differnt to my previous kites that all required the bar to be sheeted out completely as they launched.

The Arcs (venom/guerilla) all required aggressive input to get them to turn at any decent rate and they still retained power throughout 100% of the bar throw.

I'll reset the Atom and see how I get on with it.

[new] waroo 14m

My new 14m Waroo arrived yesterday, pumped it up, checked it over, looks good.


I've got all the kit now: 14m Waroo, 9m Atom, O'Neill Evo wetsuit, Custom Kiteboard 146x40, impact vest, waistharness and oceanus reel leash.

Faffing with the atom

Well, I went out this evening for my first twilight fly at Herringthorpe. The wind looked pretty good from my window so I plumped for the 9m Atom and intended to do a bit of boarding too. If nothing else I'd get some time to learn the kite including relaunch some more before heading out on the water. I also wanted to double check it held it's pressure for a long period under normal flying conditions.

Herringthore Playing Fields
The inland wind conditions were suffering from the usual huge swings in direction and gusts. It's the norm really so it wasn't a blocker. The site looked clear and it was a nice warm evening.

Launch
After setting up the kite I tried really hard to self-launch but it was frustrating to see it spin around and do everything *except* launch. It made more infuriating after I tried the techniques I'd learned for the Ozone Light during my kitesurf lessons. It simply wouldn't launch and I thought something was wrong.

After much rushing about it eventually launched but it wasn't right. Sluggish turns, unresponsive, falling out of the sky, etc. Not happy really, especially when it came down in a lull and wouldn't go back up. It would only fly on max power trimming and fell out of the sky on slight bar pressure.

Tweak
I eventually downed the kite and decided to tighten the back lines a bit to instill some more responsiveness. I tied an extra knot on the pigtail, reattached the back lines and tried it all again.

The Atom was now more like the Instinct - it launched much easier, handled better, etc. etc. I'm now much happier with it. Relaunching was now a doddle too so it was mission accomplished!

It's a shame the wind was so shite!

Summer Games
Just as things were going well a load of people turned up and proceeded to setup 3 cricket matches that basically consumed the whole of the playing field. I guess it was some kind of local match/league but my safe flying zone was not unusable so I was forced to pack up. It didn't help that people were driving their cars around the playing fields. :(

kite surf lesson

Well, I'm back home after my first kitesurf lesson. First thing is that it's a changeable feast due to the varying weather conditions. My first day was cancelled due to zero wind, the second day was better but still not brilliant for wind. In hindsight it's obvious but you rarely get 2 consecutive days of good wind so it's therefore rare to get 2 adjacent days training.

The days wind


Start the day with a splash!
I've already got a relatively large amount of experience so I was keen to get in the water ASAP. The instructor bumped me up to day 2 status so I joined a guy who'd already done his 1st day.
The wind was 10mph at best, bang onshore and the tide was coming in so it wasn't ideal but it was enough for what we wanted to do.

We were suited up and headed up out with a couple of 9m Ozone Instinct Light kites.


We setup the kites on the beach and went through the safety systems, quickly got the kite in the air and wandered down to the water for some body dragging.





New Kite
I struggled for quite a while as I had to unlearn the characteristics of the kites I'm used to as I was too aggressive with the kite and it kept flying out of the window. The winds were light and my kites are faster on the turn. So, I spent most of my time water relaunching the kite. Relaunching is hard enough, relaunching when the kite is swallowed by waves and your being bounced around yourself is hard work. This in itself was frustrating but valuable lessons in how to water relaunch in various situations - the upshot was at all costs keep the kite flying!

Body Dragging
Once I'd got the kite sussed I quickly got into body dragging downwind, rapidly followed by a lesson in body dragging upwind. The upwind drag involved being a lot deeper in the water so I swallowed quite a bit of nasty sea water. Still, I got the principal pretty quickly and moved on.

The most tiring bit was repeatedly walking out into deep water with the kite - wind pulling me inshore, an incoming tide trying to push me into shore and a floatation vest preventing me from going anything deeper than chest height. All in all it took a lifetime to walk out, then about 10 seconds to body drag back in!

After a spot of lunch and some theory our instructor let us use his 13m Ozone Instict Sport to generate more power so we could get on the board.

On the board
This was the interesting bit and what I'd come for. Trying to fly the kite 1 handed, get your feet in the straps, get everything lined up avoiding spinning round+slipping feet+moving kite, dive the kite to get power (in light winds), weight over, plane away, keep the kite moving in low winds and battle with the waves was extremely challenging.



It took quite a lot of effort and a lot of trial & error but I eventually got up on the board for about 2m! This was an accomplishment after a solid day of working and it was good to do. I understand the prinicpal of what I should be doing and I think I'll get it with some practice.

We debriefed and it would have been easier to do if there had been more wind that would have meant I could focus on board skills rather than trying to do that *and* keep the kite in the air by moving it around a lot.

In the end, it was a great day and definetly worth going on the training course to progress a lot faster than I would have done on my own. Plus, most importantly, it was safer working with trained instructors and having the backup of lifeguards around.

Technorati Tags:kite, kitesurf, kiting, kites

Kite surfing

As I write I'm currently camping a little outside of Ainsdale waiting for the wind to pickup before I venture out for my first kite surfing lesson with West Coast Kitesurf School at Ainsdale.

My 2 day lesson was supposed to start today but it was post-poned due to a complete lack of wind, it was at best 10 mph. Never mind, at least there's always tommorrow where the wind forecast is a little better.

I'm hoping to at least come out of this with the basics of water specific skills nailed so I can venture out on my own with more confidence. I'm hoping my general kite, landboard & buggying skills will at least give me a head start.