We woke up and again checked the forecast before doing anything else. Prior to going to bed, we made plans to meet up for breakfast with our friend AJ whom we met a decade prior in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. AJ now lives in Melbourne and had the skinny on the kite scene in the area. While having breakfast, we hashed out a plan to get out in the ocean to do a couple of downwinders.
If you’re unfamiliar with what that means, it’s when you move down the coast a predetermined distance moving with the wind, it’s an amazing way to travel! The alternative to down winding is to park and play, which means that you will have to keep your position where you are parked and constantly work to stay upwind.
kite friends are the best friends
We finished breakfast and immediately went to the ocean to stare lustily at the open playground of water ramps rolling in toward the shore. We staged the vehicles and got busy moving to the beat of the ocean, bobbing, weaving, and surfing the waves. We moved as a pack down the beach, each experiencing something different, but also the same.
We did two down wind runs and there was still enough time to head over to the flat-water location on the causeway.
I was the only one to go out in this location. It was a new location for me so I started out taking it easy. I continued to ride on perfectly flat water and would edge hard to hold the maximum amount of power into the kite, I would sling the kite over my head, and then I would be floating.
Floating weightlessly through the air, having time to look around to see the sailboats moored, the sun dipping down towards the water, which changed the color of the water to a brilliant yellow/red. The sun continued to sink into the water and the sky lit up and changed colors.
I witnessed this event while harnessing the raw power of the wind by holding it on top of the water with a board and a kite, truly spectacular!
Epic eats and an early bed followed the full kiting day. The wind looked good for Monday so the plan for me was to kite a couple of hours and then hit the road. When I woke up in the morning I did the same thing I always do, I checked the wind forecast before doing anything else. I noticed that the wind looked a little too light until the afternoon so I decided to head north. I bid my friend farewell and pointed the van towards the north. I was hoping to stop in St Augustine and grab a session with another friend before making the final push home.
As I advanced northward, I got in contact with Ben and he was all about grabbing a session. He sent me directions on where I should meet him.
We left my vehicle where we met and drove up the beach to partake in another downwinder. We got out in the ocean for an hour and covered about 7 miles. The ocean was turned up pretty good by this point and the waves were large. You would come up and see a wave towering over your head and you had to make a decision, go over it, launch off of it, or turn and surf it. These are the types of decisions you are faced with in the moment and the only wrong decision you can make is reading the wave improperly. If the wave is standing too much, then you want to turn and run away, you have the power, its right in your fingertips in the form of a control bar that steers the kite.
These types of decisions are made automatically after you have had a lot of time under a kite. It becomes an extension of you as a person. You do not even realize that you are flying a kite, it’s just a part of you, and you move together in harmony, or disharmony, however it may be in that moment. We made it to the end of the downwinder and I said goodbye to yet another friend. I needed to get back to North Carolina.
As I drove North up I-95 I thought of all of the events of the weekend. I thought about the text message that I received just a few days before. I could have easily said I was tired from recently traveling, I could have said thanks, but no thanks. After all, I have been doing this over a decade, I do it for a living, I do it for my life, I have made it my life, so why would it be big deal be if I just said, I’ll take a pass on this one? I didn’t say that, because the sport still feels new to me. I still feel just as excited about the sport as I did on the very first day that I ever tried it.
