Jump to content

Extreme Kites Speed Week 2010


.Joel

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 166
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

A quick mid-speed week update as i'm back in Melbourne tonight.

Nigel's got some big news when he gets back. I'll let him break the news. :clapping:

Saturday - rain, rain, rain, and more rain. No wind. No one kited.

Sunday - wind, lots of it. Quite gusty and NW which meant kiting at the inlet. A few of us braver water kiters headed out for an offshore session and had varying levels of success. The gusts were hitting like bullets causing all sorts of problems with kites falling out of the sky or inverting. When the tide had gone out the land crabs headed out to make a mess on the inlets spit and had a bit of fun. Surpisingly the best kite out that day was a fixed bridle Zebra kite! More on that from those in the know.

Monday (today) - SW (onshore, good conditions) 6-8 knots in the morning, which increased to ~12-15kn with it a bit stronger down by the inlet with maybe 18kn. A little bit of cloud, but everyone looked like they were having a great time when i had to leave for the afternoon.

I'll be back down there tomorrow morning ready to ride again!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well big and little SoutherlyBuster had a whale of a time. As Jason said, no kiting on Saturday just no wind to speak of, but that didn't stop us from having a good time, we hit the local hills with the landboards for some gravity runs, woo hoo.

Sunday at the inlet was frigin nuts. Pulled out the 8m^2 Synergy for some action on the water. Wind was very gusty, even looped the kite a few times by accident, ya then the joy of untwisting the lines by looping it back the other way :eek: . In the end it was too over the place and during the luls could not get up wind enough and did the chicken run to the SW beach and landed the kite and called it a day.

The land action, oh dear .... Well for the landboard, the spit as I discovered last time round the sand just does not harden up enough. I get a small stretch in ok, then hit the soft patch, front wheel digs in and the landboard cartwheels. So I gave the land action a miss, really need BIG wheels to have any sucess there. The fellas on the bugs with the small kites were screeming along, but even they were avoiding the centre spit were the sand was soft.

Monday, oh ya, on shore/cross shore winds. Had some nice crusy runs down to the sand dunes on the main beach with the 4 wheel landboard and the 12m^2 Fly Surfer Speed III and Zachary was having a ball with his Ozone 3m^2 Flow doing free style action --- should have seen all the skid marks he made on the beach, it was like painting the beach with his landboard. I had a preview of Jollies vid from the day should make some good viewing, can't wait to seem them all strung up into one vid.

Tuesday, the wind picked up some more but was more cross shore than Monday, so heavy tacking on the way back was the order of the day. Beat my person best on the 4 wheel landboard with the 8m^2 Peter Lynn Synergy of 45.3 km/hr, that was on the second run. The first run saw some scarry speed wobbles which I managed to conquer without falling off, stopped the wobbles and kept on kiting. At the end of the day decided to give the 3 wheel Cross Bow landboard a burl. Initially I thought the fast toe side runs would be scary, but they went fine. No hint of speed wobble at all and I could carve the board (some nice sine wave courses) easly down wind and even let the kite float with little to no line tension, no speed wobble. By the time I came back doing the mega tacks I was absolutely knackered, stoped the board, face planted (softly) in the sand at the pit stop and just lay there for a while (recovering), but with a big grin :D .

Zachary had limitless energy. Kathlene said, do you think you should tell him to pack up now? My reply, no the tide will tell him when it comes up. I'll let Zachary give his account of the weekend when he comes back home from school today.

Big thanks to Joel and his many helpers to make it a top weekend. Also a big thanks to all the kiters that came along and made the event a great social and kiting event, your enthusiasm added to the sucess of the weekend.

As usual there was a smorga sport of different buggies to look at. One huge home made buggy from Andy666 on it's maiden flight.

The social nights were top, great food (and plenty of it), very entertaining.

Now to come back to work to have rest ....

Regards,

Norman.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well it looks like I get in first before Nigel :D (the advantage of being on holidays)

Firstly a big thank you to Joel and Mel and everyone who helped organise Speed Week 2010, for me and Nigel it will always be the best and most memorable.

As posted previously Saturday was a no buggy day due to the weather, Sunday a few of us braved the showers and went to the market before heading off to the inlet to either have a fly or in my case watch everyone trying not to drown their kites in the sea with the unpredictable gusty wind. Just a tip for anyone don't loan your Kite to Joel or it might take an unexpected bath (Joel I hope you had your video camera running :D ). The star of the day was Andyfly's 2.5m Zebra Z1, it just sat in the sky and took everything the wind gusts could throw at it.

Monday dawned with good conditions for the main beach and everyone had a great time. I buggyed further than I had ever been by myself before using my 3m core. After my arms had recovered (still to scared to try a harness or backstrap and it's a long way down the beach and back on handles) Andyfly was kind enough to loan me his Zebra to fly. It's a great little kite and very stable and easy to use, I would highly recommend it to anyone who is learning as it is a very forgiving kite. I'm pretty sure one will be my next kite purchase (Andyfly you should ask Jason for commission for sales from Speedweek).

Monday night was also the scene of the second BBQ and with the kids happily playing with Lee's Xbox the rest of us raised some funds for Movember. Nigel or Sinbad will post some photo's of the great shave with a beard trimmer and the Wolfie who is going home with a new look. (A little tip for all those looking at shaving to raise funds - don't get Jason to shave you using a beard trimmer!!!!! :D )

Tuesday was also great on the main beach with similar conditions to Monday but with a few less kiters as some had a long drive home ahead of them. There was a run away buggy that set off down the beach itself when someone forgot they hadn't put their seat belt on and put the buggy up in their normal two wheel position and somehow ejected from the buggy but no harm done :D It may have been part of the plan to add how to dodge runaway buggy's to my education!!!! needless to say I need more practice as I missed the buggy but managed to drop my kite :(

Now for the best bit from Speed week and the reason this speed week will always be the most special and memorable to me. You might have noticed that I left out any mention of the first BBQ which was held on Sunday night as I thought I would save the biggest and best highlight for last.

Nigel asked me to become his wife on Sunday in front of everyone who attended the BBQ and of course I said yes.

:nigel::maninlove::D:air_kiss::angel::yahoo::dance::yes3::clapping::good::dance4::maninlove::thankyou2::yes4::yes::nigel:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is what Zahchary had to say about the week end:

YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!!!! It was awsome!!!! :rofl::party::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::derisive:

It was so much fun on Monday and Tuesday.

On monday it was perfect I did realy good jumps. :dance4::dance3:

Tuesday LOL I made slide tracks and they were huge!!!! :crazypilot: Realy windy too!!! :cool:

OH Yea down hill land boarding in no wind!!!!!! :goplay:

Santa left on Monday. :fear::santa::crybaby: .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Congratulations Kathleen and Nigel

Now mind you I thought Nigel's big news was going to be that he did over 100km/h

If your interested in keeping the theme going there's a chapel on the beach at Rydges Resort Yeppoon and you could have the ceremony at Easter during the XK meet next year. :D:P Just Kidding

All the best with the fun part, the wedding planning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks guys for the write ups :good: sounds like it turned out OK compared to the rain reports.

Good to hear you had a blast Zach

and of course

A big Congrats to Nigel and Kathleen, best wishes with the prep for the big day.

JD

PS, I was with everybody else ... really expected to hear about a 100km record

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...

×
×
  • Create New...