Kiteboarding: begining to stand up

21 october

Got out to test my board which arrived on Friday but there was hardly enough wind to fly the kite. First off I went to Elliot heads but northerlies just don’t make much wind there, was a lovey beach day though.

Archies beach was much more wintry, but the water was warm and so we had to navigate around the swimmers. I reckon ive got the hang of driving the kite with one hand now. This weekend the forecast finally has something other than a 10-15knot northerly all weekend. But I’m planning to visit dad in Biloela instead.

24 October

The call went out that there was enough leftover wind from the day before to try kiting before biblestudy. I had just had a haircut so I could test that out at the same time.

There was enough wing that I struggled merely standing still. Tony more than me would have benefited from a smaller kite, he hast as much ballast as me. Decided that we need to try the board in the Elliot before the ocean, but I did put it to good use in holding down the kite whilst setting up and packing up.



27 October

Went to bilo thinking of surfing on lake callied, but it was all muddy and sticky and not enough wind, so I went for a sail on dads cat instead.

12 November

Looked like a nice beach day so went to Elliot heads at Eduard’s suggestion. It was an easterly at 15-20knotts and I’m not so scared of that wind now. Also the tide was still rising but pretty full. It seems that tacking and holding my body like a board was not a good way to prepare to lean to stand up. The better way to learn standing was to fly downwind really fast with my top half out of the water. Because that is what it felt like when I eventually got to stand up for a decent amount of time.

So yeah I had one big run with the board. I was going along the shore, slowly getting closer to it. The waves (`20cm high) I didn’t want o catch because that would have made the run shorter. I didn’t have enough room to tack. Where the river bends and I would have had heaps of room again I didn’t want to go, so I jumped off the board ad flew the kite high. It gave me a lot of speed but when I landed on the beach I was able to stop moving fairly quickly. The dismount was a bit scary.

I was able to get quite a bit of speed but I kept the kite doing figure eights right on the edge of the wind envelope so that I coul go slow. It was a balancing act of going fast enough to keep upright but not going down wind much and thus running out of water.

Just need to get Tony to have a go now and get a photo of myself.