Any Colour You Like

It wasn’t as bad as the title sounds. Yesterday was slightly off-shore wind of at least 35mph. We sent Adam (our traditional test dummy) out to see if it was kiteable and he pulled off some insane jumps before… Twang. His chickenloop snapped and the kite was released onto the safety system. After several attempts to relaunch it unhooked it was still pulling him under water and out to sea. In the end he was forced to detach himself from the kite entirely and swim back in. I didn’t have my kite flying at the time so I ran about 2km down the beach after it and started swimming about 200m down wind of the kite. It was quite far out but I only just managed to intercept it (it was litterally drifting through my fingers by the time I got out there). I was then able to tow it back into land behind me and start the long walk home.

On the way down the beach some locals said there was no point in chasing because it was going to be impossible to get back. So when I carried it past them on the way back I got a massive cheer. Needless to say dinner was on Adam and some important lessons were learned about strong off shore wind!