Benone Monday 8th August

For about a week now the forecast for today was to be solid NW wind all day. In anticipation I had booked a short notice day off work. I had hoped to spend the whole working day at the beach, but I had to work for a while in the morning. Still, I managed to be at the beach for just after 11.

It was blowing nicely when I got there, so I set up the 12 and went out. It was super up and down; must have ranged from 10-25+ mph, sometimes the kite wanted to drop, other times I couldn't hold the kite. The waves were big too, and fairly messy, although with the wind direction it was still possible to ride in a long distance without getting into the foam.

Met some new people today, a girl whose name I didn't get, who is a youth worker locally, she was out on the sand, and I met Mark from NIKF. Mark is up and riding, but still finding his feet, and was a bit daunted by the waves. Still, he looked to be getting on well.

After lunch it was back out again for another while, and during the afternoon the waves got bigger, but further apart, leaving huge areas of flat water in between breaks.

ST was there working with Pete to get him up and riding, but unfortunately his 9 burst its leading edge. Apparently they got on grand on Petes 11 later on.

As for me, I had a great day 'mowing the lawn' as ST talks about. Its good fun riding out over the break, and riding in along with it. I worked harder today than I have in a long time. I worked quite a bit on my toeside riding, and my toeside to heelside carving turns (going towards my left). The toeside riding is still quite flakey, sometimes when I think I've got it, I can't hold the kite, or mess up the board. I managed to control it pretty well today though, didn't have to ditch it once. Some of the turns are epic, others are embarrassing. Really nice when it works well, but you can go quite a distance downwind on a large circle turn.

On the jumps, I felt like I was actually making some progress just before I left, mainly on the way out, using the waves as a ramp. ST says I'm still not agressive enough with my kite motion, so I will continue to work on that.