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October 19, 2005
90-mile Beach Speed Run
Speeeeeed.
Take a wide, flat, hard, and most of all, long Northland beach. Add a bunch of excitable kite buggy pilots, and about 30 knots of onshore gales and its bound to happen.
These were the conditions when we arrived at 90-mile Beach earlier this month. It was our last chance to buggy before embarking on the long drive home before the next low tide. The skies were looking very changeable. Bright blue and sunshine one minutes, frigid rain the next. Fortunately the wind just kept on screaming, rain or shine, so we kept on bugging! Our stubbornness paid off too because after bugging through a few heavy rain showers (thank God for Goretex), the clouds broke apart and the sun came out to stay.
As I said the wind was strong! I flew one 1.2m2 delta kite. Perin was flying a 2 point something N-Gen. Craig did one leg with a Venom, and the return trip with a 2.5m2 Rebble foil. We all were cruising at 60-70kph! Craig hit 80kph with the little red Rebble!
Craig doing 70-80kph on his lowered bigfoot.
Perin flying an N-gen in his bigfoot buggy with a suspension back axle.
"Turbo-duning" - sitting the kite right on top of the sand dune to catch the pressure wave created as the wind pushes over it. It gives a nice turbo boost that makes it very difficult to overtake anyone upwind (see video).
We got back and packed up with just enough time to get off the beach before dark. It was a memorable run on one of New Zealands celebrated beaches. It took me days to wipe the grin off my face!
Finally, here's some video footage of a little battle Perin and I had as he tried to overtake me during the run. I'm in the five-wheel buggy, and Perin is in the Bigfoot. Of course I edited the video to make it look like I won the race, but in truth he left me behind soon after these shots...
Video (1.8mb)- 90mile_teaser.wmv
Posted by murrayneill at October 19, 2005 09:27 PM