The weather man was right.....huge wind!!!!

Tuesday October 27, 2009

The weather man was right.....today we had great wind!!!!

The texts, emails and phone calls started early this morning.

Michael D. @8:35 A.M."Crazy wind predictions, what about the spill? "

Mike N. @12:26 P.M., "Seeing clearing winds in PV, how's Belmont??"

Kyle V. @12:44 P.M., ...."How's it looking????"
Juliano C. @1:32 P.M.,"Wind SW@Pier J (from 6 to 11) LAX gusting 23

Rijk W.@ ??:?? P.M.,"Anything????"

Dan C. @12:44 P.M., "On my way!!!!"

Michael D. by the house @2:15 P.M., "I took the day off, let's go!!!!!"
Klaus S. @2:33 P.M."What's going on man? We want wind????"

I got to the beach at about 2:30 and it was blowing pretty good

I took out my camera and there was already two kites on the water. Let's get rigging. As you can see from their tacks they were going almost straight out.

The wind was side shore. Coming straight from the West, out of downtown Long Beach. It made for a great reach.

One of my down winder buddy's, Matt Naigus, was doing a little walk up the beach. He was just letting me know he was around. See you in a few.

As I started to go out the first thing I noticed what that the flags on Chaffee were blowing straight to the left. Oh boy....lets go!!

On my first tack I was able to stay to the right of Chaffee. So I knew I was able to stay up-wind. On my second tack Matt was out there with me. Cool, I'm not going to the breakwater alone. It's just a little insurance policy.

As Matt and I headed towards LaPalapa I noticed Rijk was heading out to the breakwater too. So naturally I followed him. As we were heading towards the wall I felt the wind dying.

I dropped into the water as Rijk kept going towards the breakwater. Then I saw his kite go down. "Oh crap." Then I heard the Lifeguard boat going South from White Island. "OK he's going to get rescued." Just then Rijk's kite jumped out of the water and he was back up.

Like a bullet he was right next to me. We were both heading back to Belmont. He was so close that we did a passing had slap...going the same direction. No problem. Then we "surfed" our way back to Belmont. This was a lot of fun. Because of the wind direction there were mini-waves that we rode all the way home. Then we just messed around until the wind dropped a little. That was it for us.

Thanks to Radko we got a group shot on the launch ramp. From the left; Klaus, Rijk, me, Mark, Robert (with the spring suit), Juliano, Dan and Raoul. BTW Raoul became a daddy today. And he picked such a great name, Daniel. Just like my son to his right.

After Radko took the above picture he held up the wind meter and it recorded 27.3

As the wind kept gusting and the sand kept blowing, two kiters were getting ready to go out.

My neighbor Christopher (clewfirst.com) held on as he came out of the water.

Just then James Lin and Matt went out for their last run. Matt called me after dark and said he and James had just gotten in. Now that's what I call "The Last Ride of the Day."

We may have only kited for two to three hours but today was a long day. It started early and ended late.....I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. I hope it's wind.