Wed pm, late December. Green arrows galore - best day on Seabreeze yet - 20's no gusts. Left wk early - week before xmas so things quiet, and most of the office at lunch every afternoon - so took the chance to get some action in.

Scootered home, picked up the loaded van, straight to Proto's and we're blowing up kites in Brighton before you know it. Sun shining. Wind blowing. Green cards and green arrows for the afternoon.

Getting my shortie on when the phone rings. "Private Number". That means work....do I...don't I....

Well I did. "Just thought I'd let you know he's just walked into the office". Now "he", ie the boss, was supposed to be many hours away in a different state, on hols. NOT in the office. Fk. Fk. Fk.

Ok at this time of year - you don;t want to ck things up - half the office might well be p1ssed but you're not them and you work for someone different. So - over to Proto - who's enthusiastically pumping up the 14m...

OK, we had to leg it back. Drop Proto. Van back home. Quick change to suit. Back on Scooter. 45mins. At my desk. Calm.

He understood. Disappointed clearly. But not as disappointed as the next day - when we went for a re-run to find the wind was shitty, and the greatest fun we could get was by tormenting ourselves with the print-out from yesterday's Seabrook charts. Green arrows green arrows all the way through til 8 o' clock.

Not been a day like it since.

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Out at Dolls Point Saturday. Cuspy'd bought his brand new 12m Switchblade along so we were all gaggin for a go on that.
Wind was sh1tty to start, Cusp finding it hard to learn the new ways in shoddy conditions. But then it picked up and he got some of his money's worth. Proto had a go as well.

Cuspy was just picking up the kite to get set for me to have a go when some bloke said "Oi - there's a big Southerly coming in". At that moment Cusp was still trying to get the lines right so I didn't launch. Fortunately.

A minute later 30 knot gusts came in and swept sand over the beach. Very dramatic moment. Same bloke - thank god there's some sense on Dolls - screamed at some other bloke not to launch, while a way-overpowered 20m red was given a helping hand.

That was that.

The curse of. I didn't even get to fly the kite.

Don't like Dolls. Too many other kiters messing up and doing stupid stuff. Bloke with flouro yellow number spent most of the afternoon pissing off the sunbathers at the northern end of Dolls with lines and kites twisting all over the shop. This flour-guy's afternoon ended with a bollocking from some bloke whose girl had been hit by his kite.

Saw four kites drop badly on the beach. And in our midst is the casual bathers and family swimmers. Too hairy for me. Back to the north end of B-l-Sands, or give me Kurnell anyday.

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It was worth leaving the keyboard and getting down to Kurnell again.

Me 'n Proto had a few good runs. Incident free. The wind not as strong as Saturday - but just enough for the 14m. Even my 12m sort of flew.

So all in all a top weekend for the kite thing. Lots of excitement about Cuspoy floggin all his old gear and buying into a Cabrinha Switchblade. Met bloke on beach - Ad - flyi9ng a 16m - makes the whole thing look dead easy, loads of easy control, twice as much power/depower. Thinking of putting a 14 on the wedding list.

...
and to finish off previous comments...
The upshot was we spent over an hour f'in around trying to retrieve the board form the middle of Botany. The tide/wind was fortunately pushing it gradually inshore as it progressed towards the heads and the the big open sea.

We were saved from the wrath of Stevie at Kitepower by a bloke with a telescope. After the jetskiers did a shot job of not finding it, we were hollered over by bloke on balcony. He'd been watching the commotion, and gone and had a look through his scope. And could see exactly where the bugger - light blue - nice colour - was.

That was handy - then Proto bravely faced the shark-infested waters to swim out and retrieve it. He wa lucky the low tide kept them at bay.

Looking fwd to crackin this sport this summer.
Cuspy's last chance!!!
Tho Proto might be proving that wring at the moment!

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We broke the 3-month kite-drought yesterday, with a trip to Kurnell with ProtoCole and Cuspy, plus the kitechicks and new groupie - Archie.

The wind was 20-25 but quite gusty, westerly - so cross-shore at Kurnell. Pretty reasonable conditions.

Proto did alright. I did OK. Cuspy proved he was still on the cusp.

Til I saw Proto running back up the beach - - Cusp'd lost his board. Eh? He leashes on with one of those reel leashes. But he'd come a cropper in the middle of the Bay and the shoddily attached leash had come undone. I think maybe I have to take some of the blame for that. But anyway...

I had thought we'd covered most of the ground on kite-mishaps (read the previous 30 odd entries below!). Here was a new one. Cuspy got two jetskis to go in search but that was to no avail. And of course it wasn't just one of our old boards. No it was the Demo one we borrowed from Kitepower that morning. The one that had reluctantly been lent to us as the owner wasn't keen on his board being in Kurnell for the day.

[ I'll finish this later - as the butterfly effect has just been proved: The beans I had for brekkie appear to have brought us a single green arrow at the airport. And we're tracking above 5 at Kurnell. Plenty enough to torment me and Proto. And the two groupies for today...hopefully I'll be concluding this later with tales of upwind action and beautiful consistent 15 knot wind that came up behind that single green arrow.]

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