Kitesurfing?

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This is the beach I've been spending a lot of time on and will be spending a whole lot more time to come. You see, this beach has a few very important properties.

1. It's within an hour's drive to Wellington
2. It's got a long, shallow beach front and tides that extend the beach even further
3. It's on the West coast but is exposed from North all the way through West to South
4. It has steady, fairly strong winds.
   

All this combines to make it the best "beginners" beach in the region for all sorts of wind sport activities. In my particular case: Kite Surfing. I spoke of this wonderful activity recently... It's a relatively new sport which came about by the development of powerkites. Essentially, you get a big honkin' kite, a wake board and a harness, you attach them all to your body, find a good wind and go. It's more similar to wakeboarding / waterskiing then to any other form of wind based activity.



My particular experience so far has been pretty standard. I bought a small (3sq meter) kite to learn kite flying skills. I then signed up for two lessons. The first lesson was to go over the anatomy of a kite, its safety systems and to get comfortable with flying a kite attached to me. This involved a lot of getting dragged (intentionally) through the water by said kite, learning all about the dynamics of power. This was no problem for me, big kites and small work on the same principles.
The second lesson, we added a board to the equation. Now, I've tried to water ski before, not successfully, so I was a little nervous about this. We picked a day that was just at the very lower limit of wind speed, but I still managed to get up on the water multiple time, with a 12 second ride being the day's best. The main problem I was having wasn't getting up on the water, it was keeping from sinking once it slowed down :) My instructor assured me that with proper equipment (a properly sized kite, board and reasonable wind) I shouldn't have any problems given my comfort and skill.

Conveniently enough, he also had a properly sized kite he was looking to sell for a good price. Guess what came next?

So now I've got a 14sq meter kite (a 2008 Airush Vapor II) a board coming in the mail (Jimmy Lewis Model 3 145x42) a proper harness and of course my wetsuit I got for Christmas.

We (Wes, Carly and I) headed out to Waikanae yesterday for a short body dragging session so that I could get used to the larger kite.



Inflating the kite, attaching the lines and launching all went fairly well, with the help of a local instructor showing Carly what to do. The kite in the air was very docile. These kites have a TON of adjustable settings to work with the available wind, allowing you to power up or depower for appropriate wind conditions (and in my case skill levels!)

Once I was in the water, I just flew the kite, letting it pull me down the beach for a good couple of hundred meters.



Going the other direction was significantly harder because of the direction of the wind, and, though I managed a few times, overall it was quicker and easier to just walk the kite back.

We practiced landing, water relaunching (for when you screw up :P ) and generalized flying in all sorts of conditions. Because you're never in deep water (at most chest high) you're never in any real danger of losing control. At worse, your kite crashes and you do some damage. Now, that's not to say it's a completely safe sport, given its reputation as an "Extreme Sport" but learning the basics with an instructor gave me a definite head start.

So what was the net result? A much higher comfort level with my new kite, a sunburn on my head, a bruised up chest from where the harness contact points were and an incredible desire to head back there today, tomorrow and Sunday.

I think this could be the start of a wonderful relationship :)