Kite boarding 202 July 4th 2019

16º 27.046s 145º 22.047w

Thu Jul 04 2019

Well happy 4th of July! Here in French Polynesia it’s just another day in paradise, although today in paradise it’s raining off and on, blowing up to 30+ knots and mostly gray with an occasional “Mr. Sunshine” cameo appearance. All told it’s just another great day to be alive! Apparently Isabel and I are a bit unusual in that we’re willing to set an alarm for 0520, get up and guzzle coffee and be ready for an 0700 – 0900 kite boarding lesson. We’ve done it the last few days and will again tomorrow before the wind dies off, and that will be 7 lessons we’ve taken together. It’s all going pretty well; I can tool along downwind until I get tired or bored or occasionally until I get careless and launch into a great big face plant. That happened twice today – the first time I lost both my board and my sunnies; the second only the board as my sunnies now live on the sea floor. Looks like this sport is going to either eat a bunch of cheap sunglasses, or we’re going to invest in some really buoyant straps for our specs.

Isabel is getting up and scooting along pretty well now, and I’m pretty sure she’s reached the point of no return. Kite surfing is something we’ll be able to enjoy together for many years. Initially one of us chasing the other with the dinghy, but in a few months if we work at it we should be out there funning around together. The gear is small enough to find a home for on the boat so that block is checked. It requires a pretty good level of physical fitness to enjoy kiting and it’s great low impact exercise so our knees, ankles, hips etc. should allow us to do this until we’re really creaky. Besides all that, it’s just really fun and a great celebration of being alive. So as Isabel’s dad Paul would say, “why not”?

Today I accidentally launched myself a few feet into the air and even though water is softer than rocks, the landing (another face plant like event) really rang my skull and aggravated an old skydiving injury. Years ago I did a lot of freefall photography using a heavy 35mm film camera (anyone remember those?) mounted on my hockey helmet. I had just purchased a new, very sporty parachute and it had a tendency towards the occasional “hard opening”. Packing technique and good body position can help with that problem, as well as getting the canopy broken in, and once I thought I had it all sorted out I went back to shooting pictures. It wasn’t long before one of those firecracker openings occurred and as I was looking up at the parachute observing the opening, I felt and heard a crunching sound in my neck and literally saw stars. Turns out that left me with a bit of a bone spur on one neck vertebrae, and when jarred just right it creates temporary numbness down my right arm.

Couple that with the remains of my ankles and heels which were employed as landing gear during a momentary lapse in judgement during a glider race back in 1993, and my orthopedic body museum doesn’t lend itself well to certain physical activities. Adrien and Aline joined us aboard for dinner last night, and he noted that the lack of flexibility in my ankles really wouldn’t create too many kite boarding challenges, unlike snow skiing and some other former pastimes.

Isabel doesn’t sport my various handicaps, but both of us are realizing that we need to do heaps of squats and other exercises to improve our level of fitness so that we can enjoy kiting for hours on end. With the big chop generated by the winds we’ve been having it’s quite a workout for the calves and thighs, and the abs are getting their share of abuse. It’s all good – we’ll grade ourselves on improvement and apply an age handicap based curve to the final scores.

It’s been blowing for several days now and our anchor is right where we set it. On the sea floor. Actually, we’ve seen up to about 40 knots, and our lovely Sarca Excel #5, a new generation anchor about mid-size for the weight of our boat, has dug in and is holding well. I dive it each day to verify nothing untoward is going on, and it couldn’t be performing any better. The float system recommended by experienced cruisers who have learned to cope with the bommies in these atolls is working extremely well. Not only do they keep the chain from wrapping bommies, but they also offer an excellent damping effect when the wind gusts hard and we begin to pull tight on the ground tackle. As the boat moves to tighten the chain, it straightens to the point that the floats are pulled beneath the ocean surface. The buoyancy of the floats really softens the snatch loads that would otherwise be applied to the anchor. I think this effect more than offsets the loss of catenary effect gained by a long length of chain lying on the sea floor.

There are almost 50 sailboats tucked in down here, about 25% of them catamarans. There’s also a 154’ superyacht with its sport fishing boat tender tied alongside just about 500 meters from us. Nobody gets a pass on bad weather, and we’ve been wondering how the crew are keeping the charter guests entertained, likely with great food, booze, sport fishing, movies, and who knows what else?

It’s a good day for a couple of boat projects. One electrical one today, as well as perhaps building a few dyneema soft shackles or other good fun; my idea of arts and crafts. One of these days it’ll be time to bust out my really groovy red plastic ukulele imported from Japan. Gotta scratch that musical itch! Wonder if any of the American boats will bust out fireworks tonight?