Deep down winder today, Thursday

Thursday...it's sometime after midnight. My body is sore and it won't let me go to bed....well what I mean is I have been tossing and turning for a while and I can't get to sleep. My body is twitching and a all lot of parts hurt. Boo hoo.

Today it really blew. I don't know how early it exactly started because Ruth and I were at Ralph's shopping, but I think I got a text from Kyle around 1 o'clock that the wind was up. Rijk and I got to the water around 2 and immediately hooked up with Juliano and Mark about doing a down winder but we had to wait a little while for Klaus and Dan.

This is what the beach scene looked like at around 2. A few kiters but not that many.

While we were waiting Mitch took a break from the tower and grabbed Bongo's new Weiman and did a little sand sliding and jumping.

By the time Klaus got to the beach it was close to 3 so we had to say good bye to waiting for Dan. The 5 of us took off; Klaus, Rijk, Mark, Juliano and me. We headed towards the Marina entrance.

Something happened to Juliano's kite. I think it turned inside-out. Klaus grabbed his board, took it to the beach and then returned and dragged Juli to safety in the shore break.

After we waved good bye to Juliano, we headed for Seal. Kyle had been there earlier and warned us about the strict rules. So we played it safe and just jumped and stuff.

At some point Klaus yelled out, "Let's go to Sunset." I figured everyone got the message so we set out for part two of our down winder. Mark misunderstood the signal and he kept kiting at Seal. Then he saw that we were now down wind so he headed back to Belmont. A good thing too.

After we played at Surfside and Sunset Klaus pointed out to sea. We found out later that he was getting cold and wanted to head back. The first challenge was to get up-wind to Seal. The open ocean was very choppy and the wind was quite high, but we made it to Seal...no problem.

When the three of us got back to Seal I proceeded to play in the "slot" as they call it. Going back and forth in the kite zone. Then I noticed Klaus was carrying another board. What was going on, was he getting Boy Scout points for all of these rescues? OK, OK I'm sorry, he was doing a good dead and helping out.

Finally Rijk and Klaus joined me and we started tacking up-wind to get back to Belmont. For Rijk and myself it was straight into shore and time for a beer. Klaus decided to do more jumping until I waved him in for a picture. Juliano was leaving.

It was about that time that Mark walked back to the pad and told us he had broken his chicken loop. It was really a good thing that he didn't follow us to Sunset. We would have left him there and sent Ruth to get him. Did I say that?

Juliana and Juliano were happy the day was over. No more problems. Actually, as it turns out, once he got his lines correct he was able to contunue kiting. Not so with Mark.

Juliano was very grateful for Klaus's help. Both learned something. Klaus learned how to pull a kiter that was holding on to him, dragging his kite. And Juliano got to get a self rescue under his belt.

Left to Right, Mark, Rijk, Juliano, Klaus in front and me. All were very happy about the adventures today.

Unfortunately Dan got to Belmont a little late, but just in time to get in a little kiting...very little. The wind died.

The end of the day the last kiter tried to get in a ride. That's it, were heading home.

See you on the beach tomorrow.