by Brett Gibson 

 

Assateague is cursed for me. I swear it. The last time I rode there, I was about a mile upwind of the launch when my brand new kite went down on a botched jump. It hit the water and the canopy split straight down the middle near the center strut from the leading edge to the trailing edge. As I was hiking back, luckily, Matt rode by and body dragged me in as I held onto his harness w/ my board and kite in hand. Today would be little different.

I arrived at Assateague bayside at abou 9:30 a.m. There was a single 17m Best Yarga up, but didn’t have enough to really go.

 

The wind was dropping a bit. I slowly set up my 15m Waroo. The wind was still crap, but I’d driven three hours to kite, so threw it up and set out on my Jimmy Flight Deck.

 

The wind stunk (check the graph below at 10:30 am), but I was sure that if I headed far enough out to the center of the bay, I could at least stay upwind. That turned out to be a big mistake. I downlooped the kite halfway across the bay to stay powered as I headed back. Then I spun the bar around. Oops, spun it the wrong way. As I was spinning it back, my kite stalled and hit the water. There was no way that thing was relaunching in 8mph wind, but that didn’t stop me from trying for about 10 mins, as I slowly drifted further in water where I couldn’t touch.

 

So I started winding my lines in. When I got halfway, I just swam to the kite. I started trying to swim back towards shore, but I was really just floating due South. Man, that sucked.

 

I haven’t had to try to swim in for years. Luckily, after a half hour of failed launch attempts, wrapping lines, drifting and swimming, a friendly fisherman and wife came by and gave me a lift in. Otherwise I’d have probably been another hour swimming back in. I now have to pay it back w/ a good deed of my own.

 

Meanwhile, while I was exhausting myself swimming, the wind had filled in a bit. So when I got back, my 12m out, and headed back to the beach.

 

Rode from 1pm to 3:30 pm on the 12m Waroo and Flight Deck. The wind was more S than SW, was gusty, so it was a pain to stay upwind. It was just right on the edge of being nicely powered, but then dropping a few mph.

 

Meanwhile, more bad news, two kiters lost their boards in the water.

 

Vali and Tomas had arrived w/ Vali’s new F-One Bandits. Tomas hit the water on the black 13m and was cranking. Lon and Ankur had arrived as well.

 

In between sessions I was showing a new kiter how to flip the kite over to walk upwind with it when I somehow lost my hold on it and it flipped into a bush. No harm was done (it was a bulletproof Slingshot), but still, it was just another bizarre bad happening for the day.

 

After telling Vali of my bad luck at Assateague, he was kind enough to gamble and let me take out his 13m Bandit. The wind had picked up so it was perfect w/ my 133 Jimmy Model 3. While I was on the 13m, Tomas was out on the 7m Bandit and looked well powered, heading upwind, boosting.

 

The kite pulls very strong and smooth, which reminded me of my experience with the Eclipse Thruster. I didn’t really pay attention to the bar setup, as it was just handed to me on the fly. The depower strap is a hard to reach cleat, which is simple enough, but turned me off for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, I fly Waroos, and the Best Bar setup is not that easy to reach either. Notice to kite manufacturers: Make depower easier to reach (Slingshot did it, right?)!

 

The best thing about the Bandit though was its lift. Holy crap! That thing boosts huge, won’t overfly you, and is just darn stable in the air. I don’t think I ever sent it at 100 percent, but I was still getting some of the biggest airs of my life. I definitely would like to fly that kite again. (Thanks again Vali!) I handed the kite back to Vali completely intact.

 

So I did get several hours of good to great kiting in. It was 4:30 and I was done for the day. Lon was out riding and looked like he was lit up. Not sure what size kite you were riding at that time.

 

When I got my gear to my car I realized I’d locked the keys in it (how much bad f-ing luck can you have in one frigging day?!?!).

 

I was so pissed off I just decided to take the quickest route and smash in a small window with a hatchet provided by Joe D. The glass wouldn’t break when I hit it pretty hard, and I was envisioning broken glass shattering in my face if I tried any harder, so aborted. Went to the canoe/kayak rental shop and one of the friendly ladies working there gave me a ride to the Ranger station (owe another good deed). They called the Rangers in the field who said they’d come jimmy my lock. I headed back to the car and they showed up 20 minutes later. Jimmied the lock in 5 minutes (it’s scary how easy it is to bust into a car if you have the proper tools). Plus, I owe them a good deed now too.

 

Driving out of the park, I was just waiting for a pony to jump out in front of me and get hit, such was my (bad) luck. Thankfully, I made it out of the accursed Assateague with no more incidents and got safely home 3 hours later.

 

I’m not sure I will ever go back.

 

Anyhow, was good to see Lon, Vali, Tomas, Ankur, Bill K, Joe D, Jim and others!

 

Vali, thanks again for the offer to spoon in your tent. I’m sorry I had to turn you down, but you know how Bruno gets jealous and violent, and I didn’t want to go through that again.

 

Vali took pics, so he’ll post them when he’s back from camping.

Wind graph below: