Kiteventure

Every part of me is now sore following the massive downwinder from Frankston to Mentone.  Two and a half hours of surfing waves and hitting ramps for massive jumps with James, Stu, Job, Mike and Anthony.  I'd given Marty some kite instruction in the morning with my old 7m kite, then called in for some dodgy advice from SHQ to repair my bar.  We met up at Mentone, loaded into Anthony's van and Mikes car and hit Frankston.  Given that I'd destroyed my 7m bar trying to repair it, I took my 10m to Frankston, only to find about 25knots of wind.  I was a  bit skeptical about taking the big kite out, given the long trip, heavy wind and dodgy launch area, but once in the air the kite was fine.  Great surf at Frankston provided some fantastic ramps for massive jumps, and fun surfing opportunities on the way back in.  Riding the waves toeside as they crest up alongside you is magnificent.  The best section was between Frankston and Seaford, fantastic...

Bad dodgy wind, ne. Bit of walking back up the beach.

Perfect seabreeze wind at Hampton - rock solid 20 knots throughout.  I joined James, who had been out for an hour, and Anthony - who had been out forever. Did quite a few double backrolls and double forwards, forward with kiteloop and slow backward transitions.  Worked on forward transitions, ended up adding kiteloops for power to come out strong.  Worked hard on double backrolls going on my weaker side - with heaps of crashes as a result.  The kite keeps going too far back - I'm going to have to work on that a lot more.  Must have stacked in 10 times, but each time a little less impact.

Grant was kind enough to invite James, Pete and I onto the boat to practice foiling.  Cam and Hamish joined in the fun too. Foiling is very challenging, getting stable on the board to start with is difficult enough, then actually getting up on the foil is next level. Key things I learnt - weight as far forward as possible.  When getting up, don't lean back, just lean straight forward to pop onto the board. - reacts quickly to slight changes of balance - leaning back just a little will start the thing dolphining up and down - smashes weren't as bad as I expected.  After crashing a stack of jumps, it was pretty tame by comparison ! Was great fun hanging out in the boat with the guys - lots of laughs as we all had crash after crash. Pete took some photos and footage https://youtu.be/fLHpnWY1kz8

Good seabreeze and dirty water, so opted to go to Beaumaris.  Great wind, lots of loops and rotations.

 the water was bad, the rotations were good. Dark slide, triple back, double front, front with loop, back with loop, all happening

 the looping action continued with a nice session at Beaumaris with Stu Styles.

Perfect conditions at port, seabreeze with Tarren and Athol.  Nailed the frontroll kiteloop, way easier than expected, hardly any massive power. Got one nice dark slide in too, but noticing a tingling in my arm  when I do it - not sure what is going on there.  Even landed frontroll kiteloop going the other way, but it needs more work.

What a name and what an epic joint.  Fantastic cranking wind too of 20-25 knots, with some fantastic ramps.  Amazing place.

A puff of wind blew up so we all jumped on it for the final stretch of the downwinder.  Had to work the kite hard and it died completely once we got to the final bicheno bay.  I had to ditch in the water and swim out to give Taz a hand to make sure he didn't drift into the evil rocks.

Visited the blowhole in Bicheno and checked out a few spots just north of there for a downwinder.  The wind was pretty marginal, so we continued to wait for a window between rainstorms.  We finally got set after lunch, with just enough wind and a challenging bit of surf.  Took a lot of working the kite, and a couple of people ditched and got washed in.  I was having a ball until I lost balance on a backroll, kite hit the water and I couldn't get it back up for the life of me.  Had to pull safety and swim the kite through the surf to prevent it getting mashed.  Thankfully the guys grabbed my board, but kite was wet as hell. Damn Relaunched and reloaded, kite was so wet though and wind was so crap that it didn't last long - we all pulled up at about the same spot.