Forecast looked good Saturday so I got the wife to call the boss for our Saturday afternoon job and tell them I was "sick" ... I missed Friday night cos of work so didn't want to miss this and Sunday will be borked!
... this PC went tits up in the morning; I think it's due to the heat and looks like the memory - again! So I fannied around with that for a while, hoping to get one more look at the weather so I'd know when to hit the lake. No joy, so I relied on my memory (yikes!) and headed down at 2pm cos I seemed to remember 3pm was the sweet spot.
Set up, sat around, waited for the wind to pick up. It was looking good - 12 knots average - but I was hoping for more ... and I got it too! Hit the water at around 13 knots average and was up and riding (ah, thank you Mother Lake! So much better than the ocean!) but still heading downwind ... only just, had to do a little walking twice but on the third run out from shore, it was all on like Donkey Kong!
Epic session! Well-powered, I rode the Cab Crossbow and Square One upwind as far as I wanted ... then got stuck into progression!
Worked on controlling my speed with the board by edging upwind and shifting weight, rather than just depowering ... handy!
Practiced good stance ... but IMHO you gotta work your stance around to edge and weight-shift effectively, especially if you're trying to keep the speed down but want to keep power in the kite ... we'll get there!
Load'n'pop ... can you load'n'pop every wave you see? I tried. Even tried on the flat water between waves - see below ...
Occasionally, the pops got a bit carried away and I went soaring! Experienced my first 'hang time' jumps where I seriously floated at the apex instead of just paraboling back down. Rode out most of them too although it involved a lot of dangling under the kite and "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" from me ... even impressed the Master of Disaster who cheered as he went past!
Did some serious toe-side riding ... hurts my gammy hip and could only manage a beam reach at best but sliding back to heel-side was fun and carving around to the other direction was hawt!
Had a crack at carving heel to toe-side but have to slow down to slide around ... fun but loses ground.
Tried some load'n'pop spins to toe side too - fun but hard to get right.
Toe-side water starts - can do!
Got slammed and lobbed around a few times, even went flying a bit too :D aerial transitions - not as easy as they look!
Bloody good day! Out on the water for about 4 hours and my hands are killing me ... the rest of me is just stiff! Cabrinha bar is real hard eh ... so is packing the damn kite back in the world's tiniest bag :(
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