I should title this adventures in kiteboarding, because we came here solely on the advice of the Lonely Planet guide book. Advertised as the cheapest place in the world to learn to kiteboard, Boracay is a kiting paradise… with consistent trade winds and a nice sandy bay that’s sheltered by an offshore reef. The first time that I had encountered this sport was about 6 years ago when Ana and I went to Tahiti on vacation. There, I saw a guy wakeboarding on the open ocean… but instead of a boat, he was being pulled by an enormous sail floating in the air! If that wasn’t cool enough, he was pulling mad aerial stunts 10 feet in the air: effortlessly floating through the breeze like he was parasailing! I had two questions at that moment: 1) what the hell is that called, and 2) where can a rent one? Unfortunately for me, no one one the island rented such equipment back then. I would have to try my hand at this “kiteboarding” sport some other day. And that other day just got scheduled in: A kiteboarding Christmas in the Philippines… Let’s do this.
Ana and I each signed up for 12 hour lessons: supposedly just enough to have you riding a kite in a straight line in either direction. On top of this we had a free 1/2 day of gear rental thrown in for signing up, so we had 4 days set up on the water for a crash coarse in kite control. The first day was fairly tame, with much of our time spent on the beach learning how to steer small (2-3 meter long) trainer kites. These things are quick and maneuverable, so they are easier to turn. As an added bonus, their surface area is quite small, so the danger of getting dragged along the beach is pretty small. At this size (I was using the 3 meter kite) the pull is small but still noticeable: I could see how one could get seriously injured with a larger kite. From here we moved on to a larger 7 meter kite which included a body attaching harness to pull you along (There would have been no hope trying to hold on to a kite this size with your arms). The goal of the exercise with the larger kite was “body dragging” which is as just as ungraceful and awkward as it sounds… The idea being to point the kite downwind to experience the pull on your body. This is supposed to help with practicing steering by flying a figure-8 pattern through the power zone in the wind window. Yea… easier said than done. My modulation was strictly binary. I could either crash the kite and not get any power, or accidentally hit the peak power spot and get pulled completely out of the water. Yikes! Did I mention that this is a fairly dangerous sport?
Day 2 saw us practicing more body dragging, except this time we were supposed to try and travel left or right of downwind by tightening our figure-8 loops to either the left or right of 12 o’clock of the wind window. Again, this was easier said than done. Pretty consistently I would get excited, thinking that I was mastering the art of steering… only to stop and discover that I had still gone completely straight. This was maddeningly difficult! By the middle of the morning I was getting pretty frustrated, and if that wasn’t enough I was paying so much attention to the kite overhead that I forgot to watch where I was going in the water. You see, it was low tide and not all of the beach has a nice sandy bottomed floor. Out of carelessness and inexperience, I had managed to body drag myself across some coral sitting about a foot from the water’s surface. Ouch! Time to take a break and find some bandages. I didn’t really need all that skin on my shin anyway… Later that day I braved bacterial infection to practice body dragging upwind: probably one of the most difficult skills to figure out. Aside from catching the wind (wind deflection) the kite can also act like a wing, producing lift at a normal angle away from the lines. If you park the kite sideways to the wind (2 or 10 o’clock), the kite will pull you perpendicular to the wind… at which point you can angle your body to tack against the wind direction. Super duper difficult. I think that I was able to do this maybe once or twice.
Day 3 actually got us on a board to try our hands at standing up and riding. Man… this was pretty comical. To all of you who have been wakeboarding with us in the early learning days, you might have some idea of how our day went: Butts dragging, water up the nose, kites crashing, face plants… lots of face plants. It was extra frustrating at first, as the wind seemed a bit weaker than the day before and the kite was difficult to keep up in the air. By mid day I had swapped out for a bigger kite (all the way up to 14 meters, gulp.) to try to compensate and finally was able to get up on the board… speeding uncontrollably downwind on my left heelside. It took me a while to figure out how to stop. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had lots of practice stopping during the morning: you simply face plant once again when you run out of rideable water! Ok, not really… you’re supposed to park your kite overhead and water start in the other direction. Again, easier said than done! Man this sport is hard. It’s frustrating and difficult… but getting up out of the water and hauling ass along the beach is a serious hoot. I definitely recommend giving this a try if you have a chance.
Day 4 was a bit of a disappointment as the supposedly consistent winds somehow died down to almost 5-6 knots: not even a big kite was going to pull us out of the water this day. We spent most of the time watching and waiting… and walking around and doing a little wind dance to change our fortunes. Alas it was not meant to be. We would have to hone our new skills some other day at some other beach.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Boracay
Map of Boracay: Click Here
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment