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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 09:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Home From Mooseland
Well we're all back safe and sound from our trip North. We kite buggied in the dunes of Mooseland at Muriwai Beach, got a couple of lovely runs on Baylys Beach, and the highlight for me was an awesome speed run along Ninety-mile Beach in a screaming (30 knot) onshore wind blast. As Craig would put it, the weather was a monkey's wedding most of the time, meaning it was glorious sunshine one minute and freezing wind blown rain the next (and often both at the same time). Fortunatly there was also wind. Lots, and lots of wind.
I've got hundreds of photos to go through and several hours of great video footage to play with, but while I'm doing that here's my favourite photo from the trip for you to enjoy. It is Perin from Kiteworks jumping his suspension bigfoot buggy in the dunes of Baylys Beach.
Click here or on the picture for a 1024 x 768 pixels version for your desktop wallpaper. I've posted a few more wallpapers on my blog.
There will be lots more photos, some video, and a few stories about the trip here very soon...
Posted by murrayneill at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)