After working on the new doghouse from about 10:30 until 3:30, I loaded up the car and headed over to
Luna Pier for the first cold water session of the season!
Just after I got there, my buddy Patrick showed up and we both set up our second largest kites - mine being the 12 meter LF Menace.
Conditions really looked good when we first got there and it was good... to start out.
I didn't get a chance to wait for my gear to dry, so I was really glad that the Matrix has plastic in the back! My gear was wet because I caught a duck, today.
The first part of our session was great! I logged just under 6 miles of riding before the wind dropped a bit. That was okay with me because my feet were a little cold (Water temp 39 degrees). Just before another buddy, Ryan, got there, I decided that the wind had picked up enough to give it another try. Patrick launched my kite and I walked out to the end of the pier where I jumped in. I'd never done that there before, so I was a little worried when I jumped off because there could have been rocks under the water where I was jumping. Luckily, there weren't any. I had a great ride down the distance of the shoreline (see gps tracks map below) and I turned to come back when my kite fell out of the sky. I relaunched it once and then it fell again. By this time, I was getting close to the rocks. That wasn't so bad, though. I could touch bottom where I was and the kite was far enough away from the rocks that I wasn't worried. I got the kite to the edge of the
wind window four times after that. Each time, it looked like it was going to launch and then it would dive nose first into the water. I've never seen a kite behave like that. On the fifth attempt, the kite flipped over so that the leading edge was facing me and it was getting closer to the rocks. I was getting cold, having spent 10 minutes or so trying to get the kite relaunched. So, I gave up and let the kite go into the rocks. It wasn't going to re-launch because of the way that it was laying on the water, so I pulled in my safety line as far as I could - just in case - and started winding up my lines. When I got about 15 feet away from the kite, I found out why the kite wasn't re-launching. There was a dead duck tangled in my lines!! By now, my kite was taking quite a beating on the rocks and my board was getting thrashed about as well. When I finally got out of the water, I pulled my kite over
the wall, detached the lines, deflated the kite and made the long walk back to the car. I called it a day shortly after that. Ryan and Patrick were pretty much done, too. Including the walk back, I logged almost 8 miles, on Sunday.
A dead duck with its neck all wrapped up in my lines... ugh. And to think that we worry about our kites getting shot at during duck hunting season! It's not the hunters we have to worry about, it's the ducks!
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