Into the Woods

Today, the wind forecast for Revere Beach in Boston was about 14mph from the Southwest, so I emailed my kiteboarding (the sport where you use a large inflatable kite to power you while riding a small board on the water) buddy Joe Betz and we agreed to meet at Revere around 4:30pm, after work. When we arrived, the wind was blowing, with gusts shooting well over 20mph. We began by launching my 15 meter Slingshot Fuel kite. Joe had a few good runs on it, and then I took over. I had a few good runs myself, though the wind started really picking up and I was well overpowered. We decide to haul that kite in, but not before I had a few small jumps, and probably reached my fastest stop speed.

The wind really started to pickup, with gusts approaching 30mph so we pumped up the 11 meter Best Yarga kite. Joe again went first and had some decent runs, but seemed perhaps a bit under powered. When I took over, the wind seemed to pickup even more, with ridiculous gusts. I had some really fast runs, but on my way back, I caught a huge gust that picked me up, about 10+ feed out of the water, dropped me, then picked me up again. This rather unenjoyable process is called “tea-bagging” in the kiteboarding world, for obvious reasons. However, I managed not to drop the kite. I had some great runs to close out my evening. During Joe’s last run, he lost the board, and the kite got disconnected from his harness. He managed, by the skin of his teeth, to get back to shore safely, but had to swim back out against the waves to fetch his board. All-in-all, it was a great day and I can’t wait until the wind blows from the SW again.