Yesterday was one of those rare days when the elements do the right thing and create a perfect playground for an epic down winder. Wind was around 20kts, tide on the bottom third of the ebb, nice sets of 1.5-2.0 m waves angled perpendicular to the wind.. perfect conditions.

The first third of the trip was my best kitesurfing day to date, finally got my figure 8 timing right travelling down the line, awesome bottom turns and top turns, doing the odd cut back.. loving it. Head out behind the break to line up another set and then I see it. A 2m+ tiger shark doing it's snakey swim in towards shore. Put in a quick turn and haul arse back to shore, looking back fully expecting to see the dorsal fin in my wake, which of course it wasn't. No worries, I think to myself, I'll just haul arse down the break for a bit to get out of range.

There was a definate change in my kitesurfing though, gone was my aggressive attack the wave mentality replaced with a sort of paranoid style. Focusing so much on not screwing up my style just went to balls which of course led me to falling off with the subsequent body dragging to the jaws theme. From that point things went from bad to worse; the wind dropped off so I went into shorten my lines after which it picked up again, so I went back in to lengthen them, botched my first self land in ages, almost got dragged and damaged my new bar in the process.

The shark shouldn't really have bothered me, in reality kitesurfing at least four days a week there is no doubt in my mind that I've been within meters of them on numerous occasions without knowing it. The big take away for me was that if your mind isn't in the game you become a liability to yourself. You need to be having fun and getting stuck in or packing your stuff up and going home before you do yourself a mischief!

Anyone know of a good method to replace torn off grip on an ozone bar?

Hey Jace, what time did you see it ? - I saw something big yesterday when I was coming around Pt Arkwright solo about 4.30ish that gave me the creeps.

You still on Switch or Ozones now?

samokta said..

After having a few run ins with Sharks i have trained myself not to freak out and fall off. The shadow of my kite still scares me sometimes and I use this "scare" as a drill for when i do kite next to a GWS which happend to me a few years back......lucky i held it together!!!!

Yeah you guys can keep your GWS's!

Watch out Jace, it usually comes in three's
I've had two sh!t endings to great day's in the last week! Can't wait for the third one, it's madness down here at this time of year (flatwater).

Had a kite launch off the beach into my lines which initially made my kite drop, then roll over and power up into a loop which dragged me up the beach about 20m and eventually stop half a metre from rocks with oysters all over them, my brand new kite flew over top of about four trees and came to rest on a shade sail in the park. End result, a few grazes and bruises on me but zero damage to the kite....

Two days later at the same spot, heading out on a port tack about 100m from the beach I could here a boat coming from behind me so I look over my shoulder to see a speedboat on the plane approx. 30m away coming directly towards me, so I made a split second decision to stand down and avoid a collision to find that while I was sitting in the water with my kite at 12, this fark!n c*#ksucker is still coming directly towards me at speed so I spun around with my board still on my feet and raised it out of the water for protection then BANG....He smashes straight into me and then, to my absolute disbelief turns around to come over and start abusing me for getting in his way After a heated exchange of words with him threatening to run over my kite if I didn't get out of the way, I managed to relaunch and head back into shore and meet him at the boat ramp. As I was heading over, I look over my shoulder to see about a dozen angry fellow kiters who had witnessed what had happened following me. Needless to say, it didn't end quietly .

Anyway on a brighter note, I remember reading on here somewhere that u took a Reo out for a spin Interested to hear ur thoughts mate as I am pretty keen to demo one cos I just absolutely love, love, love my Zephyr

I'm guessing u guy's are getting the same breezes we are getting down here, this week looking epic.....yeeeeew!
Stay safe and good winds

Oh, as for ur bar, have a look here some good suggestions:
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kitesurfing/General/Glue-for-bar-repair/

ajs18s said..

I hope you took down his Rego and with your witnesses reported him to the authorities. With an response and attitude like that I'm thinking he is also unlicensed. Hope you were not injured.

Sure did!
One of the guy's had a camera with him, so we got car and boat rego
The a*#hole never once asked if I was ok and even his poor excuse for a partner came out with statements like "we are in a boat, we have as much right to use the water as you" WTF??? YOU JUST RAN INTO ME

Just a few grazes, thanks mate.

Dl33ta said..

Thanks for the Sika tip, god I hate using that stuff, doesn't matter how hard you try you always get it everywhere!

Might get a bit messy on the Ozone bar around the red, white and blue parts. As stated the contact adhesive or other glues mentioned will suffice.

Thanks for the feedback on the Reo mate, have been practicing in flatwater on strapless SB and starting to get my gybes dialed in so I'm thinking I will be using it more so in the surf on an SB but would still like to have as an allrounder and am leaning more towards the Drifter because of this. Got some great feedback off Mick this morning so thanks guy's for ur help

Hey Gilly - sorry to hear of you grief and I hope No 3 doesn't come ur way ! Power gives way to sail - right ????? What was that co"k thinking??
Sounds like he needs a tune up with his rules and attitude - I hope for every ones sake he gets it!! - as in a big fine !! - but I suspect he wont :-(