Posts Tagged ‘kitesurfing’

If you are anywhere near Sauble Beach on Lake Huron or are looking for something interesting to do the second weekend of September  – then Sauble Beach is the place for you.

Sauble Beach is the setting for a kite festival – the Sauble Beach Kite Jam Festival which starts on Friday, 10th September and finishes on Sunday the 12th. This is a new festival that celebrates all and everything to do with kitesurfing and kiting.  It will be a weekend filled with live music, kite and kitesurfing demonstrations along with a family flying area for these new to the sport.

Lake Huron in Ontario has kilometres of the softest beach sand and most pristine waters in the state. It was voted  “Number one Beach in Ontario” by both the Toronto Star and Maclean’s Magazine. The beautiful sand dunes of Sauble are part of an ecosystem that has evolved over thousands of years.

There was a time following the Second World War when Sauble Beach was among the dancehall capitals of Ontario. Located on the beach, it was a romantic place, just right for Saturday night strolls or cutting a rug to the sounds of many a great band. This festival aims to bring back the strain of big bands to this fabled area.

The roots of the spectacular sport of kite surfing go all the way back  to the 13th century, when Chinese people used kites to harness the energy of the wind to power their canoes across the ocean.

Centuries later, in the 1800’s George Pocock (a British teacher and inventor) took this technique to the next level, by designing bigger kites and using them to propel carts over land.

In the 1980’s, the first kites to be flown over water were designed and thus began the rapid growth in popularity of this exhilarating extreme  sport. Every October,  off the coast of Maui in Hawaii, the world’s most famous Kitesurfing competition, known as ”King of the Air” takes place. During this prestigious event, the most experienced competitors from around the world  represent their country in a sport that is destined to become the most spectacular of this new millennium.

Sauble Beach celebrates the evolvement of this sport and is keen that kite clubs come to the festival to fly demonstrations. For more information please go directly to their website.

From the 16th – 19th September the little town of San Teodoro, 27 km from Olbia on the east coast of Sardinia, comes alive with a watersport event to crown the end of summer.

La Cinta beach is the venue for this festival celebrating windsurfing, kitesurfing and stand-up paddle surfing. This will be the fifth time the event has been held here and as before athletes from around the world have been invited to show off their extreme tricks and talents.

Perfect wind conditions and wide, safe areas make this the ideal venue for the year’s closing event which begins on Thursday 16^th September and ends on Sunday. It’s the party that everyone’s been waiting for – a celebration of our favourite water sports and an invitation to return next year…

This is a long video from 2006 (MarkWhite82), the inaugural year, but evocative of what’s it all about.

There’s more to this event than racing. It also showcases new technology that is due to be released for the 2011 season with test areas to try out the equipment – horribly tempting!

And that’s not all. There will be plenty of other activities including beach tennis tournaments and a big Half Pipe where renowned  athletes will show off  their best tricks on BMX’s and rollerblades. There will be a concert on the Friday night … with a surprise… and of course non-stop beach parties and great clubs in San Teodoro itself.

The watersports racing events are not only for the worlds’ best. Kite and windsurf enthusiasts who want to test their skills against contemporaries will also have the chance to take part in competitions. There will be freestyle, in & out, match race, Freestyle Grinch Super Session for windsurfers and, most importantly and as always, the famous Long Distance Race. This is a 20 mile race which will pit you against each other and yourself – it’s a long hard endurance run.

BMW are sponsors this year and if you’re into extreme water sports you are almost bound to be into classy fast cars. Not only will you be able to admire the latest arrivals in the BMW X1 series and Z4 spider, but you’ll be able to test drive them too – with an approved BMW co-pilot of course!

Need any more incentive?

Besides the fact that you look incredibly cool, kitesurfing is gaining in popularity because it combines so many other sports – wakeboarding, windsurfing, paragliding, snowboarding, and power kite flying, all rolled into one exhilarating extreme sport.

Who wouldn’t want to look like Ruben Lenten (ridersmatch)?

Of course it will take a fair amount of practice, perseverance and skill to get to this level of expertise but it ain’t impossible.

And its not only all about tricks. There’s nothing wrong with straight flat out kiting. The Crathorne family have just broken 3 records by being the first family to kitesurf across the English Channel, the busiest shipping lane in the world, from Dungeness to Boulogne in just 3 hours and 40 minutes. And the records they broke?

1. Lucy and Polly are the first Women to kite surf the channel to France
2. Polly is the youngest person at 16 to have kite surfed across and
3. Ralph is the oldest (for the moment) at 51.

And there’s been another landmark crossing. Having had to wait a year for the right weather conditions, 5 friends, Fraser Dooley, Martin Sandwith, Stuart Wood, Nick Elliott and John Flynn, have just successfully crossed the Irish Sea – a 110 mile 9 hour crossing from Cloghy in Northern Island to Silloth in West Cumbria. A massive undertaking. But despite the 9 hours battling the elements they had enough stamina left for a champagne celebration on the beach with family and friends!

Sir Richard Branson intends to kite the channel for his 60th birthday present to himself, accompanied by 5 time world champion Aaron Hadlow and Laird Hamilton of Big Wave surfing fame. “Kitesurfing is one of my favourite sports. I absolutely love the amazing rush you get when going at high speeds, in high winds, with the most beautiful kite acting as your only guide,” he said and added “My wife [Joan] swears I get more barking as I get older. This year I’ve almost crippled myself running 26.2 miles in my first marathon. Now I’m putting my poor 60-year-old bones through an arduous 24.4 miles, over water, hanging on to a giant kite.”

He too is making it a family affair – his daughter, Holly, son, Sam and his nephews will be kiting with him.

“Get the knowledge. Get the training. Get the insurance” says BKSA (British Kitesurfing Association). Good advice to follow if you are thinking of  getting started in this very popular extreme sport…

Why settle for mundane when you can add some extreme spice to your life? Thank you to AnnaRoussos for this thought provoking and enticing video… Perfect for contemplation during the weekend ahead.

After all, it’s your life!

As you may well know by now, especially if you’ve been reading us for a while, kitesurfing is considered one of the most extreme of the extreme sports, and being such an exhilarating sport it is constantly evolving as kitesurfers keep searching for the ultimate thrill, the addictive adrenaline rush, the pure freedom of the sport.

Kitesurfing has developed many forms from big air to low freestyle technical tricks. From wakestyle to waves. And now there is a new kid on the block – Kite Racing. This may well be the style that becomes the biggest and most influential in terms of kite and board development (ExtremeElementsTV).

It’s been around for a while, but is now gaining rapidly in popularity. In 2005 a sailing club and a kite surfing organization got together and experimented with sending kite surfers around a course. The experiment was a great success and top riders around the world, in search of new direction from freestyle kitesurfing, started experimenting with course racing and discovered that  Kite Racing is not dissimilar to yacht racing and greater speeds can be achieved in light and medium winds.

By 2007 the level of involvement and enthusiasm resulted in a national competition being organized in the USA.

By this time manufacturers were pricking up their ears. Equipment was just as important as technique and several factors had been noted such as boards with a hydrofoil underneath were very quick upwind, but proved slow in other directions. Directional board designs proved to be much more competitive than other types. Boards with too many fins were slower, etc.

The race was on… in more ways than one!

The interesting thing about Kite Racing is that equipment has to be designed to allow you to travel at speed in winds of 6 mph. 6 mph is not much of a breeze, but with the new equipment racers can speed around with ease.

The United States have taken to this sport like ducks to water. Every weekend there is a competition somewhere, everyone eager to challenge the other. IKA and ISAF are involved and it is suspected that this could shortly become the newest Olympic Sport.

Besides all this, kite racing makes for a spectacular spectator sport. Run close to shore and over relatively short courses the scene boggles the eye – the colourful kites jostling for position, the wake stream behind the boards as they slice through the water, the speed and dexterity that the riders use to manoeuvre around the buoys.

Is this the sport for you?

The advantage of kite racing, and this will be of particular importance to all avid kitesurfers, is that you are able to kitesurf in less than favourable winds. How many times have you raced off to the beach dreaming of a halcyon day slicing through the water only to find the wind is insufficient … well, with Kite Racing equipment, even the lightest breeze is enough.

There are some sports where you just don’t get the chance to discuss every move, savour every glorious minute, dissect in detail the fabulous day you just spent – because there was no-one there to witness it!

Many of our extreme sports are individual sports – no team effort required. There might be other people out there on the same wave, but they are thinking only about themselves and the next move and will only be keeping an eye on you to avoid crashes etc, certainly not to enjoy your miraculous moments but endeavouring to create their own!

So what can you do about it? The best thing I’ve come across to date is, of course, a GoPro Headcam – the handiest little sports cam ever. It got the top selling Product award from Dealer News Top 100 Retailer Poll (Motorcycle Industry)in both 2008 and 2009.  “I can see GoPro completely dominating the POV market,” said Ben DeCamp, Staff Photographer of Surfer Magazine. But check it out for yourself in the following video from curlcurllocal.  It gives you a very clear idea of what this little ‘gadget’ is all about.

Alternatively, who says you only have to have one on your helmet… if you wear one.. a helmet I mean? You can put one of these great little things pretty well anywhere: on the sail, your board, your car, your bike, wherever you want. As Mark Anders from Surfline.com says  “…after testing it for the past six months I can honestly say it’s one of the coolest, handiest little cameras I’ve ever used.” Thanks to tomasleeman for this fun video:

GoPro are understandably proud of their product and consider it the world’s highest performance-wearable 1080p HD video and stills photo camera on the market. It gives professional quality picture and records at 30 and 60 frames per second. It’s battery time is pretty impressive too – it will record up to 2.5 hours on a single charge and up to 9 hours total on a 32GB SD card, although this card is not included in the price.

What is included, though, are mounts for attaching the camera to three helmets and two pieces of gear or vehicles, as well as a head strap allowing you to wear the camera like a headlamp. You can also pull this strap over helmets for easy camera sharing between friends. One of the above mentioned helmet mounts is a lace-through strap-mount designed for vented helmets.

GoPro are proud to say that they are also shockproof, bombproof and waterproof! As self-confessed sports geeks, and needless to say extreme sports are in there in spadefuls, they have made sure that this little number will impress even the most exacting customers.

Perhaps you should go check out the GoPro Helmet HERO WIDE Waterproof Digital Camera for Sport at Amazon.com yourself and make up your own mind…