More training - Increased Distance this time

Tommorow the forecast is looking good for another trip down the coast, the Met Office is predicting 15-30 mph SW turning SSW later on. This makes the direction ideal to get from St Bees to the mouth of the Duddon Estuary. A distance of some 24 miles. Getting there will require a bit of tacking as the coast is not perfectly straight, back should be a bit of a broad reach so should be a bit . Four of us will be (weather permitting) tackling this journey which should hopefully result in a trip of around 65-70 miles. Not far from the 90 or so from Ireland to England. This trip is also ideal from a safety point of view because the wind is direct onshore so we need no boat support and even though some of the coast is fairly sparsley populated there are train stations at regular intervals. We'll also be travelling with GPS, VHF radios and mobile phones.

Update on Training

The training day last week did not happen due to some pretty bad weather. It was raining really heavily and the sea state was not ideal for the boat to get out so we had to postpone.

We had a really perfect day wind and weather wise on friday 21st so Fraser and I set off to Silecroft. It's 22 miles as the crow flies. The direction was SW so it involved some tacking to get beyond some of the points and scars along the coast. You can see the GPS track information in the images. We covered a total distance of nearly 40 miles. If we had the time we would have attempted to get back which would have been much easier and we'd have been heading more downwind. That would have been about 70 miles or so. Anyway 40 miles is the furthest we've done so far and it went almost without incident and this is the first time that anyone has kited all the way down this section of coast. Again, its cool to be the first people to ever do something! We tested the Aquapac dry bags and they worked well. The life preservers are not ideal as Frasers inflatated accidently, not good. I think buoyancy aids should suffice. As far as fitness goes this was not problem, we really need to be getting up towards 80 miles to see what the effects are. Personally I think we could have went further to the edge of the Duddon estuary with the time we had. This route is ideal for training in a South Westerly. Hopefully we'll get some more opportunities to do this route and complete it there and back. This was the first time I'd flew the Gin Nazca II 15m in anger and I have to say I was very impressed. Its fast turning and like the others has a very good wind range. When we got to Silecroft the Haverigg guys Patty and Kevin had been on 9m and 8m kites, they are lighter than me but still I was comfortable on the 15m. Its fast turning for its size also and I think this will be my kite of choice for the trip. Its nice to be well powered in the lulls to save having to work the kite.

Yet more wind is forecast for this week so more kiting to be done :-)

Training Session Today - Friday 14th August

We are having a training day today. We have the Solway Protector from Cumbria Fisheries Supporting us and they are doing a training day with us and we are going to ride out to sea for an hour or so and head back to St Bees. We are limited due to the tides. Sunday is looking a perfect direction to attempt to go from Silecroft to St Bees and back, however the wind is going to be really strong so it may not be ideal conditions to go that far. Particulary after our experiences last time! Stuart has access to all the historical wind speeds from the Pile Chimney anemometer and it was reading 49.1 mph about the time we got off the water at Sellafield. I was on my 12m and I was able to handle it, probably 40-45 mph on the beach. If it hadn't been so rocky and we'd have had more light I would have been able to carry on. The ablility of these kites (Gin Nazca II)to spill wind is really remarkable.

Here's a summary of our midweek (Wednesday 12th August) meeting.

Dates:We agreed that the two weekend window we set ourselves would be from 14/09/09 until 28/09/09, however Ed stated that if would be difficult to assemble a complete crew unless the crossing was Friday - Monday, however if conditions are perfect mid week in that time frame we'll just have to see what can be arranged.

Logistics:

Travel and Support - Fraser has a mini bus arranged and accommodation at Robs if we are prepared to sleep on the floor. The general agreement was that we should find a cheap B&B or hotel so that we can get a comfortable nights sleep even if we have to pay for it ourselves.

Boats - When we get the green light to go, the day before ventures west will sail across to Ireland. The riders will get the ferry from Stranraer to Belfast in the Minibus. We will need to find a driver and another body to come with us for launching, although the driver could do this. Cameramen and equipment will be needed if necessary, although I could take my HD camcorder and film us travelling in the bus if the camera crew need to take their own vehicle. (Ed - its a Panasonic HDC-SD100). We need further discussion to firm this up.

Action: Jonny/Ed/Fraser to decide on the arrangements for getting to Ireland and Film crew details

Action: Fraser to sort out some accommodation for us in Ireland.

These are the ferry times below. Therefore I would propose that there are two sailing times that we could aim to hit, depending on the day but my view would be that we get on one of the afternoon sailings so that we can get to Cloughy in time for a quick beach recce.

http://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferry/routes/belfast-stranraer/timetable/

Therefore the timeline will probably be something like this:

1) We decide that the weather is good. - Martin will provide this 72 hours prior.
2) Everyone is informed to begin mobilisation and preparation.
3) Someone books the ferry tickets.4) Someone books the accommodation.
5) The morning of the day before the crossing Ventures West cross the Irish Sea
6) The riders, Support Crew and Camera crew (including those who are going to get on the Ventures West Boat in Ireland) travel to Stranraer on the Minibus for the afternoon Ferry.
7) The riders do a beach recce and get a decent nights sleep without getting lashed on Guinness.
8) The riders arrive at the beach at say 8am get prep'd and set off. (We could decide more accurately based on tides/conditions etc)
9) Fisheries boat sets off from Whitehaven when the tide allows to meet us off the Northern Coast of the Isle of Man.
10) Arrive back in Cumbria super stoked and go on the lash!!

Action: Someone to volunteer to book the ferry and accommodation near the time

Action: Someone to review the tide times and provide us with the tides for the two week period mentioned above. (I can only get 1 month in advance)

The meeting discussed that we need to firm up on individuals to assist us on the trip. We need :-

One (maybe two) people to drive the minibus Stranraer and Back to Cumbria.

One experienced kiter to be present on each of the boats to help out on the way back.

Action: All - Find some people who can make the trip. These people will also be used as stand ins to complete the trip in the event of someone not being able to make it. (Patty from Whitehaven is out due to getting his ACL op date, Ade G can make it but only for limited times due to work).

Equipment:

We now have all our kites and boards. We need to collect the gin shorts from Pat and also get some knives. Martin agreed that he would do this.

Spares - There was a lengthy discussion about spare equipment. It was agreed that we should look at getting some spare equipment.

Action: Fraser/Martin/Stuart - Look into getting a couple of spare boards and a couple of spare kites (one 15 and one 12?)

Nutrition: There was a discussion about energy gels and drinks etc.

Action: Nick to get some Gels of Patty.

Flares and EPIRBS (SPOTS) were agreed as additional safety equipment. It was agreed that mobile phones would not be any good.

Action: Fraser/Martin to organise flares and hire of the SPOTS equipment.

Martin stated that the radios are on their way and should be here before the weekend.

Sponsors/Video/Website:

Banners are required for some of the sponsors for the website.

Action: Ed/Jonny/Lyndsey/Fraser/Stuart to provide logos for Fivefingers/Garmin/Wright Walker Productions

Action: Nick to add information about Ventures West, Maryport inshore lifeboat and Cumbrian Fisheries.

It was agree that a redit of the promo video should be done to give a more prominent view of Gin and North because it was shot before we had the sponsorship. It was also agreed that some of the better long distance shots where the kites are not recognisable anyway could stay in and that a total rework of the video was not required.

Ed stated that he needs the logos for all the sponsors and a sample of the helmet cam footage from the GoPro helmet cam.

Action: Nick/Fraser to send Ed/Jonny the logos and sample video and provide a list of the current sponsors.

The meeting agreed to get the riders together on Friday (14/08/09) afternoon to meet up with the fisheries boat and take some more footage.

Site update and Meetings

I've updated the site with more sponsor information. I've also updated the site with some of the rider profiles for Fraser, Martin and I. More will be added as time allows and I learn more efficient ways to update the site as I get to grips with concrete 5. Not a bad CMS but nowhere near as good as Joomla, I decided to use it to learn something new. That was a mistake, its nowhere near as configurable and the add-ons are extremely limited and your have to pay for most of them! Anyway I digress.....

We are having a meeting tommorow night (Wednesday 12th August) at the Howgate hotel. We are going to discuss detailed logistics, safety issues and equipment. We have some new radios coming and also potentially the new Go Pro HD helmet cam. I'm really looking forward to getting my hand on one of those 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 60fps. Will be excellent for slowmo shots once I figure out Adobe Premiere and After Effects.

We are also hoping to have another training day on Friday.

Forecast is good for tommorow and friday so some more riding is on the cards. Lets hope its nuclear, not had any really big sessions in a while :-)

More training - More equipment testing

We've been lucky enough to have more wind so we've been out training and testing more equipment. We've recieved our shipment of 15m Nazca II's from Gin and have had some light wind days to test them. I'm quite impressed with the performance for such a big kite, its faster turning that any 15m I've tried and like the others in the range has plenty of depower. I'm thinking that this will be my kite of choice for the trip unless the wind is forecast to get really strong. I'd prefer to be really powered for the trip to keep the speed up and also so I don't have to work the kite and thus expend unecessary energy. If the forecast is less than say 25mph then I'll be going on this, if it does drop then I'll have more power. I reckon it'll be safe up to in excess of 35mph for the 85-90kg riders (most of us!).

We been doing some flat water riding at a new location for a change and covered a fair few miles. 25m (1hr 30m) in one session and 15m in another (1hr). Its suprising how much distance you cover in a session. Maximum speed on the sessions was about 25mph, highest average speed 15mph. This means that in theory the crossing will take us 6 hours, probably closer to 8hrs. Its going to be tough, but if the wind is with us and the sea state is reasonable we should be able to do it quicker. Unfortuantely its going to be a bit of a lottery!

Bring it on.

Training and GPS testing.

We've been doing at lot of kitesurfing lately as the wind has been with us. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of days we've not been kitesurfing in the last month. We've also been testing the Garmin Foretrex GPS. It's a good piece of kit, great battery life and Garmin were kind enough to give us the cables and interface software to link it to the PC. The image to the left shows the GPS track from our latest training run from Silecroft to St Bees, however we didn't quite get there due to some problems on the way.

Martin and I set off on the train from St Bees to Silecroft and were met with Patty one of the kiters from Haverigg who took us to the beach. We set off in fairly light winds thinking it was possibly not going to be windy enough. How wrong we were. Patty blew one of his bindings so Beccy had to pick him up from Bootle and Martin and I had to stop at Sellafield and get picked up as we had a bit of a kitemare and by the time we got it sorted the wind was gusting up to 45mph and it was getting dark so we decided to call it a day. We'd covered 27 miles.

We'll be having another crack at the run when conditions allow. There are certainly some lessons to be learned from this one! We also had a session up at Anthorn where we covered 25 miles. Flat water was cool with some decent speeds, even though the wind was up and down.

Forecast is good for the rest of the week so more kiting to be had.