Forecast looked bearable and at 2pm, the wind looked nice out at the in-law's house so I hit the estuary for high-tide around 3:30pm ...
Looked fine to begin with - me and a german guy hit the water on 13m kites and I was on the Flyradical, but very soon I went to the Flydoor then gave up on the LEI all together - simply not enough wind for fun, even in the gusts. Was pretty amazing to be riding at all though - hoorah for flat water!
As I came in to land the Crossbow, Sam turned up and went out on his 14m Rise ... he was barely holding ground. I looked at the horizon, thought about the forecast (wind falling after 4pm) and decided to break out ol' Relentless.
Good decision! Oh yeah baby, nicely powered! Big jumps ... then bigger jumps then OMFG it went up. Then up again. Then up again and right at the top I looked down and went ... fuck ... what do I do now? So I just hung on and ended up splashing down. What fun!
Wind slowly dropped off so I was reduced to boosting in the gusts, then doing rotations in the gusts, then working the kite just to get back to the shore. I gave up and packed up. Must have got on the water about 2:45pm, got off about 5:45. Nice!
Moment of the Day was looking down from the zenith of that monster jump :D comes in only just ahead of actually clicking to how to do really good back rotation transitions!
Weather was lousy. Epic dropping to crappy but man when it was good it was really good!
What I learned today ...
• I need to learn what to do when the gusts lift me directly up on a jump and I've lost all forward momentum ... plop!
• When the kite is moving back over the zenith is the time to do the back-spin rotation so when it pops out in the new direction, it pulls you in the erm new direction.
• Same goes for back- and front-spins - do 'em lazy and use the redirect to yoink you out of it!
• It seems they work best when you aim for most of the rotation then use the kite to finish ... oh isn't that what I said just above?
• The new Flyboards binding is crap. So many times it went bung on me. What's wrong with velcro?
• Wide stance on the 'door is the shiznit.
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