Great wind and Ruth's Birthday!!!!

April 28, 2010

An unreal day




When Klaus and I arrived at Belmont we discovered the wind to be very mild. Naturally we were hoping for a lot more wind later. I pumped the Wainman Big Mama and Klaus pumped his F-One 15.

The wind was so light that Omar decided to use his giant 19 foil. Mike gave him a hand.

Omar wasn't out but a few minutes and he was back with one of the first stingray bites. It didn't take him very long to be back on the water.

There wasn't much wind but Klaus and I decided to do the best we could. He said as we went out "Let's do a mini-adventure the day before Gabor's adventure." I said "Great!!! Let's go."

I recently came across this shot of the bay and decided to give some names so you can understand were we kite.

On our first reach we came close to the back of the oil platform. There is an interesting thing that happens the water in the open ocean becomes long rollers and its very clear. When we jibed we decided to go to the windward side of Chaffee Island but didn't make it because of the current. With one tack we made it past Chaffee and headed for White Island and made it past it. That was one long tack.

Once past White we headed for the far end of the bay. If you want to go back up two pictures and double click on it to make it larger. Unfortunately for Klaus, since he was on his twin tip, he had to flip around for home. On my directional I was able to go quite a bit farther. I couldn't quite get all the way to Grissom but it was close. We headed back for Belmont because we were afraid the wind was going to stop.

Once we arrived back at Belmont I noticed the wind started to really blow. Here Trevor Nelson is getting ready to go out. I always get a kick out of seeing other photographers taking pictures of kite boarding at Belmont. Today Steve Carr from the Press Telegram was down taking shots for his newspaper. If you want to check out some pro shots click on http://presstelegram.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=990207&CategoryID=29035&ListSubAlbums=0 Picture 4 is Trevor, 5 is Klaus and myself and 7 is Klaus.

I grabbed a few shots including Aaron Lininger getting air.

Unfortunately I missed the passing hand slap by a fraction. So.....

they re-enacted it on the beach. Great job guys.

Bobby went out and pulled off this unreal jump. Not only did he get some great air, but when he inverts it looks great. Double click for a closer look.

Here's my shot of Trevor.

And Klaus getting air.

Klaus up there again.

Catching Dan doing a back roll needs multiple shots to get it right. Maybe my next camera.

Here Dan does a rail grab. He makes it look easy.

Here are the two adventure guys.

Ruth came over to take this shot of 10 guys that had a lot of fun today. From the left: Michael with gloves in air, Roberto, Bobby, Dan, Aaron, Klaus, Radko in front of him, me and Omar in front of him. On the launch ramp is Ryan Newsome who has shot a video using his GoPro waterproof video camera. Check it out at whttp://www.vimeo.com/11289969

Here we broke out in song to sing "Happy Birthday" to Ruth. I can feel it, can't you???

After we cleaned up we headed out to Michael's in Naples.

We were happy to be relaxed and having a little wine to celebrate her Birthday.

Naturally I enlisted our server to get a shot of us at our table.

What is a birthday without a candle and ice cream. Ruth was a happy girl.

The bartender was so sweet. He sent over two glasses of Lemoncello. MMMMMM.

I think you can tell Ruth had a great evening.

When we got home we realized it was a full moon. This really added to the day.