Saturday, August 25, 2012

Bracing kitesurfing conditions upwind at Brighton

Session 187. Saturday 25 August 2012

Stuart, Tarren and I headed down to Hampton in the morning, but there was no wind.  We drove around to Brighton and watched for a while.  To our great relief the wind picked up to over 15 knots to we kitted up and headed out.   It took a bit longer for me to set up my kitecam, boardcam and helmet cam, as well as fitting fins to the Sector 60.  Once on the water, Stuart was off shore with his kite down and winding it in - he had snapped a line he recently replaced.  Tarrren took his board in, then he sailed his kite back to shore.  

The water was very cold.  Even wearing booties my feet got cold.  It would have been nice to have a drysuit!  

The Sector 60 board was hooting along with my Switchblade 10m kite, but my gybes were very rusty after several recent great sessions on the surfboard.  The Sector 60 turns quite differently, and the more wind the easier it is to gybe.  I tried a couple of pre-gybe turns but lost to much boardspeed and plopped in.  

Here is a video of the session, taken with two Contour ROAM cameras, one on the board and the other on my helmet.


There was a wind hole about 200 meters offshore, where I turned and came back in.  Then the wind picked up a bit so I did a couple of upwind tacks and cleared the Brighton breakwater and headed right up to Elwood.  I hit some wood once.  Some wood and debris seems to have been washed into the bay by recent heavy rains and is floating around. It is hard to see.

I did a very fast downwind leg back to Brighton then came in.   The Sector 60 board is great for these conditions.  I could have gone to St Kilda quite easily if I wanted too.











Kitecam photos - slideshow


GPS Log 
Note that there are maximum speed reading anomalies

2 comments:

Shaun said...

Nice gybes Peter. What time where you out? I must have missed you. It was cold!

Peter Campbell said...

Thanks Shaun. We were on the water at about 10:00 and finished by 11:30.

My feet were cold even with booties on. I am going to punch some holes in the bottom of my wetsuit legs to let the water out so it doesn't run into my booties!