Kiteventure

After a beautiful morning of surfing and suping (using Pete and Mike's extensive equipment warehouse) we waiting for the afternoon session as called out by predictwind.  Funnily enough it only predicted wind at Inverloch - a south easterly when everywhere else it was blowing northerly. Sure enough it came in, so Pete, Amelia, Mike, Eric and I headed out.  The key was staying out of the channels and on the sandbar, the water wasn't moving as fast there and you could stay upwind with some effort.  It was glorious - not just because of the wind - but the setting sun, sandbars and uncrowded beauty correlated to make a fantastic session.  I finally summoned the courage to do jumps with kiteloops, which turned out great.  I pulled off 4 in a row - not that bad really - particularly in light winds.  It really capped off a tremendous couple of days. Waiting for wind Picture courtesy of Peter Campbell

After a lighter wind session, predictwind came to the party and delivered pretty much spot on 4pm.  With perfect wind, the whole inlet to discover and beautiful flat water, its no surprise that I stayed out until I had cramps in my upper legs 3 hours later. Put up the 10, took out the twin tip as the tide was going out and the sand bars were bound to start creating some little hazards.  The flat water created across the sand bars was just magnificent, very low impact but I had to exercise caution when jumping.  The outgoing tide meant that it wasn't easy to go upwind, but if you stayed out of the channels it was much better. Pretty much all of us made the mistake of going right across the inlet to the venus bay side, getting stuck in a wind shadow and also a fast running channel.  I was keen to go out to the surf but it appeared that the wind was only really charging in the inlet itself.  Had a heap of fun watching Mike, Eric, Stu and Amelia carving it up. ...

After a hearty breakfast at Kilcunda, where the crew of Stu Styles, Anthony, Mike, Eric, Amelia, Peter and I chomped down on avocado breakfasts, we headed off to Inverloch anticipating a 4pm session.  Heading straight to the inlet we were stoked to see kites already in the air - so we setup almost immediately.  Pete blew up both the zero and the flite 14.5m. After watching Pete charge around on the zero, I grabbed it for a go with my twin tip.  It is still a nightmare.  It flies in light winds, but the slightest gust pulls you over the front rail fighting to stay on a line.  Needless to say I got blown a fair bit downwind, and felt like I was in a panic the whole time. Not so on the flite, which I tried soon after.  It looks like a kite, and flies like one too, good consistent pull and very reactive.  Pete had gone off on the inflatable sup to rescue Stu Styles, so I grabbed the sector 60 and had a fantastic time charging around the inlet.

Headed over to Altona with Tarren - it took us right on 20 minutes so we hit the beach at 6:20 - it was still dark !  We called in at Apex park - but it was very stinky with no beach to speak of, so we returned to the main beach.  We setup in the dark, and did the first 15 minutes under the street lights in fantastic wind.  Perfect to do a lot of rotations and try riding blind - which I continue to fail at ! Mike and Dobbo joined in, you couldn't get the smile off Dobbo's face as he had his first real runs - he was absolutely stoked.  Mike was having a ball too, swapping boards around for the best possible runs. I was loathe to do many darkslides or try a lot of looping jumps - it was so shallow, so only went with stuff that I was 100% to nail.  Almost 2 hours on the water had me well knackered for the rest of the day - but in the best possible way.

Met up with Bruce at St Kilda for a session in rock solid 20 knot winds.  Worked on rotations, toeside backrolls, backroll to toeside and frontroll transitions.  Rotations are going really well, got some consistency there, but still struggling to lock in backroll to toeside and toeside backrolls. Ate a lot of water.  Going to have to go back to the instructional videos.

I gave Tarren a lift down to Aspendale, we were umming and ahhing most of the morning and decided to go down and give it a crack.  There was about 15 with gusts to 18, so we lost a bit of ground.   Pete showed up with his van full of stuff - I grabbed the sector 60 and was immediately going upwind like crazy and stacking hard.  Tarren had bought his amazing light wind board - about 140 but sticks in the water like crazy, so we were both setup for a fun session.  I changed back to the twin tip a couple of times, had a go of Tarren's board (amazing upwind, no pop).  Really fun 1.5 hour session but thank goodness for the sector !

Nothing like a good dawn patrol - perfect set up to kick off a day at work. I heard Tarren's car bauble in at about 6 - 15 minutes before we had agreed to meet up.  He was so excited he couldn't wait - and he'd been waiting around before heading over !  We met up with James, Mike and Pete at St Kilda, with a good 20 knots on hand.   I worked hard to get upwind, before spotting Tarren and Mike down in the kiddies pool.  I headed over and found that the wind there was real flukey, then spent a fair bit of time getting back onto the main beach.  Running along the main beach was great - there was noone there except for us, and we got to experience the sun slowly rising.  Went into work very happy after about 1.5 hours on the water - beats the crap out of sitting in meetings all day. Great way to start the day !  Photo : Peter Campbell

After a frustrating day (wind wise) the day before, I was very happy to see a nice 17 knots pumping up the bay.  Went down to Mentone, where Stu, Anthony, James and Tarren were already up and about.  As it often goes at Mentone, the wind close to shore was not quite enough, you had to really work it along and tack out to get some decent wind behind the breakers.  Once there, it was fantastic, a good opportunity to try all sorts of things. Got 3 out of 5 backroll kiteloops on the preferred, stuffed one up majorly in front of Tarren which had me flying backwards mid loop.  Tarren gave me a nice applause - good to share a good stack.  Concreted in the technique now, got to be at least halfway through before the loop and have to have your hand midway along the bar to really crank it.  Attempted one on the goofy side that went well - landed into a transition which was unexpected but hey - I'll take it.  Still struggling with powering out of toeside backlo...