After many years of contemplation I decided to attempt the monster downwinder that is the whole of 90 mile beach (it is actually 80km..). A very stong SSW was blowing so I started in a gusty slightly cross off at Ahipara. I was on my 9m Takoon and the dvnt Wavetip board which worked sooo well for this challenge. It is a very long way - but still could not help going in and out picking off the downwind wave faces for slashing and carving adding many more kms! This was a risky tactic as it was more of a mission than I had at first thought as Bluff (3/4 point) never seemed to appear in the distance and I was getting tired. At one point I passed a group of kiters 20km north of Ahipara and they were spots in the distance in no time as I locked into a respectable 60km/h speed run for some distance(measured by support car). Towards Bluff the wind dropped off for a while but I did not want to change kites - I wanted to do this in one go without stopping, so it was very hard work for this part until the wind kicked back in past the Bluff wind shadow. 20 stingray hops , 100s of wave slashes and 2 1/2 hours later I arrived at the finish -Te Paki stream at the end of an epic downwinder. Stoked...
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Monster Downwinder on DVNT Wavetip
After many years of contemplation I decided to attempt the monster downwinder that is the whole of 90 mile beach (it is actually 80km..). A very stong SSW was blowing so I started in a gusty slightly cross off at Ahipara. I was on my 9m Takoon and the dvnt Wavetip board which worked sooo well for this challenge. It is a very long way - but still could not help going in and out picking off the downwind wave faces for slashing and carving adding many more kms! This was a risky tactic as it was more of a mission than I had at first thought as Bluff (3/4 point) never seemed to appear in the distance and I was getting tired. At one point I passed a group of kiters 20km north of Ahipara and they were spots in the distance in no time as I locked into a respectable 60km/h speed run for some distance(measured by support car). Towards Bluff the wind dropped off for a while but I did not want to change kites - I wanted to do this in one go without stopping, so it was very hard work for this part until the wind kicked back in past the Bluff wind shadow. 20 stingray hops , 100s of wave slashes and 2 1/2 hours later I arrived at the finish -Te Paki stream at the end of an epic downwinder. Stoked...
