2016 10 31 - Big surf at Ocean Grove
After an epic day out the day before, we were keen to have a somewhat lower key session. But that is not what nature had in store for us.
We waited for Pete to grab a new board, then headed to Ocean grove to grab some of the 17 knot westerly. We were greeted at the beach by absolutely massive surf. It was the biggest surf I'd ever been out in, kind of scary. I got my new kite up and the wind was fickle - slightly cross offshore - crappy wind conditions for big surf. Ideally you want solid wind - this was anything but.
I did a couple of runs and realised that I was losing ground - not enough wind and the big surf pushing me down the beach. I decided to do a long run out the back, so I had to jump over some big waves. Pretty exciting/terrifying - the waves were huge. I was a little too intimidated to actually surf any of them - I didn't want to kill my kite. I took a long tack and again - couldn't make up any ground.
After a while I headed out towards two waves breaking over each other. I tried to jump them - although I got pretty high it was not quite high enough - so I hit them at full speed (or they hit me). It was like hitting a wall - I had the wind knocked out of me, then got tumbled under water. I wanted to keep the power in my kite so I looped it - but to no avail, I could feel the lines go slack and wrap around the bar, while I was being held underwater. I came up to see my kite in the water, the next wave about to hit and a mess where my bar and lines were.
I swam with the kite whenever I could to keep the tension off so that it didn't get busted from the waves. Washed in to shore and decided to let nature win the battle. Kite was good, I was fine except for bruised ego, and looking forward to a benign kite back in the bay!
We waited for Pete to grab a new board, then headed to Ocean grove to grab some of the 17 knot westerly. We were greeted at the beach by absolutely massive surf. It was the biggest surf I'd ever been out in, kind of scary. I got my new kite up and the wind was fickle - slightly cross offshore - crappy wind conditions for big surf. Ideally you want solid wind - this was anything but.
I did a couple of runs and realised that I was losing ground - not enough wind and the big surf pushing me down the beach. I decided to do a long run out the back, so I had to jump over some big waves. Pretty exciting/terrifying - the waves were huge. I was a little too intimidated to actually surf any of them - I didn't want to kill my kite. I took a long tack and again - couldn't make up any ground.
After a while I headed out towards two waves breaking over each other. I tried to jump them - although I got pretty high it was not quite high enough - so I hit them at full speed (or they hit me). It was like hitting a wall - I had the wind knocked out of me, then got tumbled under water. I wanted to keep the power in my kite so I looped it - but to no avail, I could feel the lines go slack and wrap around the bar, while I was being held underwater. I came up to see my kite in the water, the next wave about to hit and a mess where my bar and lines were.
I swam with the kite whenever I could to keep the tension off so that it didn't get busted from the waves. Washed in to shore and decided to let nature win the battle. Kite was good, I was fine except for bruised ego, and looking forward to a benign kite back in the bay!
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