01 Dec 2014 - Surrey hills rescue crew

After a couple of sweaty days, I couldn't wait for an after work session to lower my core temperature.  Headed down to Mentone for a 7pm session, meeting up with Pete and Stu Styles.  Stu was having a great time - first time that he was really staying upwind and doing well.  It was all looking great, got rigged with shorts on, on my very first run out I see Stu Styles has wrapped his kite around the marker with the big x on the top.  Luckily he'd pulled the safety, I pulled in close by to give advice and help out.  Within seconds my board is wrapped hard in his lines.  Having seen he was still in some difficulty, I grabbed his board, kited in with it, landed and swam out to assist.  He'd freed the kite from the marker, we grabbed the kite, lines and board and I showed him how to sail in on his kite.  By the time we'd got in, Pete grasped what had happened and had paddled out to free his bar from the x - Stu had untied his lines to free the kite.  I cut the line from my board - it had wedged in hard and may have even severed one of the lines - thank goodness for the line knife in my harness.  Setup the kite and had some fun runs in the little surf.  Had to give Pete the line knife to cut the bar free from the pole - I reckon the lines around the top will stay as a reminder for quite some time !
Pete and I got in another 30 minutes before it really started to fade out - great to get a cool down and have some unplanned adventure into the mix.

The scoreboard is still heavily leaning toward the Beaumaris rescue crew after the Paynesville trip, but at least the Surrey Hills crew has now scored a win (....actually, we could probably claim one rescue of Amelia from Paynesville as well....)