Day 97…..Kites

A breezy ride on the bikes, down the coast, to an endless sandy beach to the North West of Cape Town.

And then we lined up on the beach for kite surfing lessons.

And great fun they were. We started by mastering a 2.8 metre practice kite. It is surprisingly manouevrable and even this size generates good power when dropped into the power zone. If left simply to fly overhead there is little force generated.

3 hours later we progressed onto a 7.5m kite. An altogether different proposition and a very different feeling when one is tethered to this monster wing. We fortunately managed to handle it with some conservatism as if this had been taken into the power zone we would have been rounding the Cape before we knew it. Definitely a challenge for next summer. J