Well, it been a while again, my last trip after traveling North West to Bolton Le Sands was a complete wash out, and a complete waste of £70 worth of diesel, I felt like I was chomping at the bit to get out again, it must be about 6 weeks since my wheels touched the sand.
The wind forecast was 20-24mph Easterly and cloudy (no rain), perfect for Mablethorpe, low tide was 6.50pm so I arranged to be there about 2.00pm and follow the tide out. No sooner had I left home and it started to rain, I thought no way surely XC Weather cannot be so wrong twice on the trot. I had got about 5 miles from home when Denise rang and asked if I had realised the Grand Prix was on….it was raining, I love the Grand Prix, shall I just turn round and go home, save the diesel money.
I decided to carry on, the further I traveled towards the coast the harder the rain was getting, and the darker the clouds, the cars coming towards me had their lights on. I rang my friend Si, who should have been almost there by now, he confirmed it was still raining there, and the tide was still quite high, he asked if I was still carrying on, I was more than half way by this stage so decided I would at least get there now.
Ten minutes away Si rang again, he advised me to turn back, he said the wind had turned South (meaning a cross shore wind), Stay there, I said I’ll be there in ten minutes. It was great seeing Si again, it had been ages since our paths had crossed, we have had many happy buggying times together, Si confirmed it had been almost two years in fact.
The flags close by confirmed the Southerly wind, it was still drizzling with rain, we chatted a while, trying to decide what to do, I suggested walking up to the beach to see what it was like, so off we went. We didn’t even get to the beach when we saw a couple of kites over the dunes, without hesitation, we both said, lets get out gear, even the rain stopped.
Once on the beach we could see the wind was really SSE, meaning we could just about get up wind without tacking and down wind would also be possible….just.
There were five of us on the beach including Russ again someone I had not seen in ages, he was getting some speed on I noticed on the downwind legs, he was using a 3.5m Bullet. I put up the 3.4m Prodigy the smallest of the range, the sand was shifting across the beach, which normally means to me that the wind speed is at least 25mph, and once home a look on XC weather confirmed the wind was 25-28mph.
I found the Prodigy, being a race kite was easily cutting up wind much better than all the other kites there including Si on his Arc, downing wind on the other had was not so evident, still quicker but not by so much. We were all getting some great runs in, I just kept thinking to myself we almost nearly didn’t bother, but my God I am so glad we did.
Once I put my kite in the air at around 2.30pm, apart from lowering my kite to get different camera angles on the GoPro I never stopped until 5.00pm. There were times we had to do very long tacks to get back, that meant traveling over VERY soft sand, and obviously the bigfoots and BFL tyres had the edge on me, but only when I slowed down though, traveling fast over the soft sand with the 100mm Landsegler Beach wheels on made little difference, but obviously when I slowed down to tack back the narrow wheels would dig in, but they always made it through until we made it back on the drag run.
The beach had some undulations along the drag run and when hitting around 50mph the buggy many times would leave the ground, and a few times in the soft sand I was on two wheels, but luckily I never flipped or had any OBE’s, just a few hairy moments, to be expected in those wind with those wheels on, in that soft surface.
Russ had a great day and made it into the 50mph club with a 50.10mph and I ended the afternoon with a 50.60mph, all in all what seemed like a doomed session to start with turned out to be a blinder
Thank you to my sponsors https://www.powerkites.de/ and https://www.landsegler.de/