Charge! Argh!

Things ... they move slowly but they do move. Took a while to sell of enough Synergy's to fund the upgrade to Chargers, but it's happening slowly. Here is the story of the first to arrive.

"What are the odds!?"

The postman ... they come in the middle of the day when, of course, nobody is home and leave an "Undelivered Notice" which means I have to call and get the post office to redeliver it sometime between 7 and 9 in the evening.

Now the amazing thing is that they ALWAYS seem to arrange it so that mail arrives at the house on a Tuesday - when I have to work late and can't be home before 8:30pm ... which means I have to either wait until Wednesday night for them to redeliver, or go in and pick it up Wednesday morning and deal with the utter retards behind the counter. Being only slightly more tolerant than impatient, Wednesday morning I left the house 5 minutes earlier than usual and went in and picked up the light-rasta Peter Lynn Charger 15 that arrived - on a Tuesday, of course - from Spain for me.

"I wonder what the weather is up to?"

Very light work load today; I'd planned on goofing off and meddling with my slightly broken Psycho3 13 and unpacking the Charger and having an Ooh-Aah Ogle session when about 11am I wondered what the wind would be doing today ... checked the Yahoo! Weather page and was disappointed with the prediction of 1m/s but checked GPV anyway - whoa! 10m/s northerlies from 2pm!

Crap, my swim suits are at home wet in a puddle at the bottom of my harness bucket. Check the air temp forecast to see if I've got an excuse to pussy out. Nope, 8 degrees C - that should be ... survivable. Ok I'll make a run for home during my lunch hour, wash my gear to get the lake funk out of it and hopefully dry it out a little from the spin cycle. Done.

"Say hello to my little friend!"

Got to the beach at 4:30pm and I'm all alone - nobody else is there but the wind is crankin'! How odd ... could it be because IT'S FREEZING you freaking dolt!

I get changed and unpack my secret weapon against wind-chill - the jacket of the $40 rain suit I bought from the local DIY store ... in 2003 :D it's done me good service on the bike but it doesn't breath at all - which is good and bad.

Unroll the 15m Charger ...




Check the bag ... says 15 yup - gee it's small! Maybe I'm just used to looking at the 19m Synergy all the time, but I swear it looks too small to be a 15! Sticks in (ah that's why it was sold - spar cap stuck in the sleeve! :D ) set the straps to 1/2 all round and the VPC second knot from the top - too cold to stand around checking the manual to see if that's right. Fills quickly.

"Who ordered the Clam Chowder?"

Thinking the kite is totally full, I close the zip then go back and to put my harness on, hook into the bar and get ready to launch. Dither a bit trying to decide if I should use some trim or not, cos the rear leaders looked muy short - the Synergy launched best with no trim but had pigtails ... the Charger does not. Go for about 2 inches of trim.

Line comes off clean, tip comes up and for a few milliseconds, it looks all good - then the kite clams up. Flaps around while I try the tricks - more trim, less trim, jerk the center lines, jerk the bar, run backwards, run forwards ... I get close on occasion - close to a bow-tie too :D - but eventually I get it into the air. Phew!

Pulling hard, good lofts so should be good to go on the water.

"Skunked in the shift!"

Water is cold but my poo-hoo jacket does its job! Wind is almost directly onshore (NE) so I gotta walk it out a fair way ... kite is a bit twitchy while I get the board on, probably cos I'm rushing to get out of the water! Finally get it done, dive the kite and off we go.

Working it like a mofo but I'm not getting upwind away from the beach. Make one turn, head back and am making ground now. Another turn, more ground. Turn again, heading down the beach but the wind has definitely gone ... while walking back up the beach, it almost dies off completely.

Stand around on the beach playing with kite kite, enjoying the sunshine and trying to warm my right hand up. Wind changes direction and is now NW and finally, the 9m/s has arrived!

"Warp factor 9, Mr Sulu!"

With the wind cross-shore, I ride out only a short distance ... fighting my way through the breakers is tough, I'm going downwind a lot to keep speed in the kite and board - every bounce over a wave costs me ground upwind and pull from the kite.

On the turn to head back in - sweet mother of mercy! the Charger screams across the window so fast I almost don't have time to get myself pointed back in the other direction before it's pulling so hard and shooting into the wind!

We're off like a race horse heading back to the shore! Riding with the waves, the water is flatter so we're really hauling ass! The beach is rushing towards me - I edge hard, shoot upwind for a bit, stall the kite then send it back the other way for another burst of mad speed!

This kite is so fast and reacts so quickly ... take eyes off it for a second, look back at it and I'm diving it straight at the water LE down, and I swear - without a meter or two of a crash I've turned it and sent it back up again! Bar pressure for the turns is lighter than Synergy, more like a big LEI but is a bit heavier on the sheet-in, like my FSers on "Hard" WAC ... which is probably a good thing!

Out and back a few times, on to the beach to warm my hands up ... then back out again. Repeat until the sun is starting to slip behind the hills ...

A quick review ... wind was about 7 to 10m/s.
I think the 15m Charger will rock in 10m/s plus ie. over 20 knots constant. So it probably won't get much use around here :(
Charger is faster than the Synergy through the window and in response to turn input - the near-crash and recovery happened a couple of times!
Holds a tighter line through the corner and pulls harder on the way through than a Synergy, I reckon - speed sure is power!
Less bar pressure than the Synergy - more like a heavy LEI, although sheeting in hard was an effort - that was more like a Flysurfer on "Hard" WAC setting.
Auto-zenith is no more or less vague than the Synergy IMHO; hunting from left to right but generally "up".
Think it needs pigtails - will ask the experts.
The little jumps I did on land seemed very floaty, compared to the Synergy. May just have been the wind but when the water is less cold and I won't mind being dunked in it - we'll see!

"Oh that's why it was so cold!"

Drag my gear back across the road, looking forward to a warm shower at the club house but - the water is all off! Bah. Probably a good thing cos the pins'n'needles as my skin reacts to the hot water is unpleasant. I get back into dry clothes and head home.

Within a few hours, we've got snow again ... 2 inches fall overnight. Bah humbug.

What I learned today ...
• Winter isn't over yet.
• Rain suit is the bomb for keeping wind-chill down ... wonder if they do gloves? Should find the pants too :D
• Charger - so fast, lots of power with the speed but it's like a 2-stroke - gotta rev it up! Gotta rev ME up!
• Gotta work on the launch.
• I think the 19m is also going to suffer from the lament of the arc - 15 knots or more for anything groovy to happen. But it'll be fun trying!
• Charger will be awesome when I can get some flat-water riding in ... it's hard work in choppy conditions keeping speed in kite and board.