Kiteventure

After doing a little detour via Beaumaris, I ended up at Port with Mike.  Great conditions, about 18 knots throughout.  Athol dropped by and captured some fantastic moments, he is a gun photographer. After the photo session, we headed up to South Melbourne for some fun wave action.  Just what the doctor ordered, stunning session. Mike - taking the dead man to the next level More great photos from Athol at https://atholhill.smugmug.com/Sports/Kitesurfing/2018-12-30-Port-Melbourne-Kiteboarding/

It's been such a strange summer season, a horrible lack of sea breezes and really inconsistent wind.  When it blew up a little I was straight down the beach to try and grab an opportunistic session.  I headed first to Hampton, where it wasn't hitting the beach at all.  Then up to Brighton, where one guy was out and there seemed to be a little more on the beach in the straight southerly.  The only catch - heaps of people around and Brighton is really crap if you don't have enough wind as downwind is chaos -  a pier and a yacht club. I launched and quickly jumped in the water, but soon realised there was not quite enough wind.  I went out a long way, and ended up on a tack just in front of the yacht club.  After about 30 mins, the wind picked up and I was suddenly able to get some air and pull some rotational tricks.  Perfect wind for looping so I did a lot of looping transitions and tried some new tricks from the trickbag.  To my amusement,...

Forecast looked great, but Altona absolutely stunk.  The water was murky, and the wind wasn't quite strong enough - a pretty consistent 13 to 14 knots.  James, Mike and I all tried to make a go of it, but no great joy.

Having effectively given up on the downwinder, I deflated my kite.  Even the yachts out in the middle of the bay were just bobbing along.  The second after my kite was fully deflated, we were hit with a big gust, an instance of 20 knots right in our face.  The water rippled up, and it seemed like the wind was back in town. I quickly pumped up again and got out on the water.  The wind was good, but not enough for me to hold a line.  I tried to wait as long as I could, then bit the bullet and rode with the wind towards mordialloc.  As I hit Seaford it got a lot stronger, it ended up being a great ride for me all the way until Aspendale, well powered wind and a nice little wave.  Pete overtook me, and I could see James making up ground.  I couldn't see Stu so figured him and Dobbo had opted out. Turned out that Stu caught up and Dobbo got stuck behind Seaford pier - damn.  The window of wind was really short, I was just fortunate to be able t...

Forecast looked great so we met up at Mordialloc pier - Stu, James, Pete, Dobbo - with the aim of doing a down winder from Frankston to Mordy.  It's the best section of beach around here so seemed like a great plan.  On arrival at Mordy it was almost blowing hard enough, we were all pretty excited to hit the water.  We arrived at Gould St and all systems go, kites up and ready to go.  The wind however had other ideas, it was ok at first, then dropped to close to nothing.  I had to walk the kite back up the beach and watch even the yachts out at sea struggling along.

Great team effort down at Hampton, we had James, Rich, Stu, Dobbo and Lee all on the water at the same time.  Wind was a perfect 18-22 knots, enough to go for a couple of triples (one got close to landing, another went bang), lots of doubles, 3 dead men which went fine, but the recovery bar grab didn't so I got dunked every time.  The bar ends up being so far away !  Really fun session.

Met up with Stu, Pete, Anthony & Rich down at Hampton.  It had been intermittently blowing hard all day, then backing off, and we arrived just in a lull of around 5-10 knots.  Looking at the sky it looked very similar to our Point Lonsdale experience, where it blew up to 50 knots.  Scanning the horizon I could see a front building and it looked like it was going to get crazy.  So somewhat non-intuitively I blew up the 7m in virtually no wind and setup.  Stu followed my lead but went a bit bigger. As soon as we were all hooked up it started to build.  We got straight out on the water and had a perfect 20 knots for about 20 minutes.  Then it went harder...and harder...and harder to about 30-35 knots, I was getting big air and having a ball.  Great session and definitely took advantage of the hurricane !