looked like a great outing Pete.Great blog you have there. Keep up the good work!

SaltySinus said..

Good on you Peter. Glad to see you had a good time and missed the stronger gusts (you seem blessed with good luck, but I dare say it's more experience than luck).

So silly question, but on these long downwinders do you ever find the wind drops and the kite crashes into the water? How many times does this happen on the average 2hr downwinder?

Cheers!

Salty,

Its all about the forecast. Yes, the wind sometimes drops. I pulled in a Ricketts in a lull and landed my kite, bailing out. I spoke to Cesar on the VHF radios (we carried one each) - he came in and brought the wind with him. I relaunched and carried on and was very glad we did.

The forecast was true and we had good wind with very few lulls. We could have coped with the gusts that came through later as we were well out to sea. These weren't forecast, but northerlies are often very variable as they come off the land.

I have run out of wind in a south westerly once and drifted in slowly for 15 minutes until the wind returned.

You need to prepared for total loss of wind and a long swim in - a daunting prospect half way between Ricketts and Frankston. You can start with more land-hugging trips such as Ricketts to Port Melbourne, or even Hampton to Brighton (easy walk back).

The key is a good wind forecast, and carrying adequate safety equipment (PFD, epirb, radio, strobe etc) in case you lose wind or have equipment failure, or you get injured.

A long downwinder compared to a local session is like ski touring (adventure) is to downhill skiing (recreation/entertainment).

Frontliner said..

Might of been you I seen out off carum around 3ish? 2 kiters prob about 3-5km from shore?

Yes, that would have been us. We passed a couple of fishing boats and waved at them.

We could see some kites in at Carrum in the distance. We were on a fairly straight route to Frankston "following the wind" as you can see from the GPS log, but Ricketts to Frankston direct does take you a fair way out. We are still eyeing off the next leg down to Rosebud, but need boat backup for that.

Gorgo said..

Why not cut in closer to the coast? You were 4-5k out. That's a bit far for self rescuing.

We did come back towards the coast a bit, but the wind direction was such that were getting ample wind where we were and there might have been less in closer to shore (as happened to me at Ricketts). We could see the wind around us and in front so we went for it.

But yes, it would have been a very long swim if it dropped out.

Peterc150 said..

...We did come back towards the coast a bit, but the wind direction was such that were getting ample wind where we were and there might have been less in closer to shore (as happened to me at Ricketts). We could see the wind around us and in front so we went for it.

But yes, it would have been a very long swim if it dropped out.

That's reasonable, sort of. You took a chance but it looked ok

cesarphysio said..

Also, at that point (in front of Aspendale, 4-5Kms out west from shore) a big sailing boat was in the vicinity so in case of big trouble that would have been our alternative. Worse case scenario, VHF would allow us to contact Coast Guard. IN the very worse case scenario we always carry EPIRBs.
Most important, training sessions like this allow us to understand the wind patterns.

Exercising the constant checking of the wind, no matter if you are going out or not, will allow you to be more confident in making the decision while in the water. Knowing that there were no fronts coming, checking at least 3 different websites (BOM, Baywinds and Seabreeze) help to organise your logistics (times, sections, equipment, etc).

....

That's just nuts. Doing something silly and expecting other people to come and rescue you is not a good plan. You're carrying the gear as your primary safety plan. You should only carry the rescue gear as a backup if your safety plans fail.

Proper planning is to plan your route so that if you have a failure of a critical resource, such as gear or weather or a minor injury, then you are in a position to rescue yourself. If things go unreasonably bad then it's fine to expect the cavalry to come and rescue you. ie. Rule 1 is to never go out further than you're prepared to swim.

It's deluded to think that because you've done it a few time before and got away with it that you understand the wind and weather. It can and will do anything it wants. The more experience you have the more you learn to have a bigger safety buffer.

It doesn't make sense to punt out into the middle of the bay and expect everything to be ok because you've got a radio and an epirb and a cut lunch. There's nothing to see there. It takes no great skill to do it. It is much safer and much more fun to run along the coast. The scenery is better. You have escape routes the whole way and people can see what you're doing. You don't need support boats or any expensive infrastructure or excess gear.


PS A couple of weekends ago I came across two Southern Right Whales during a session. I got to ride around and check them out for half an hour (obviously without getting too close). We were only 500m off the beach. You don't need to go punting off into the middle of the ocean to have amazing experiences.

I'm not getting involved!

Just to flag, as a 2nd season kiter (the second seasons has started, right?), I find the write ups of such downwinders an inspiration, and aspire to get involved with downwinders in due course (obviously building up to these via baby steps).

Hi Gorgo, thanks for your safety advice/recommendation.

Thanks for the advice PeterC.