The games where held over three days in September, and the sun shone throughout. I arrived late on Thursday night to the sounds of the waves crashing, and the wind howling. When I awoke early on Friday a disappointing feeling was awaiting, a crucial factor namely the wind seemed to be missing. After a big breakfast it was time to hit the beach, and climb the pebble ridge and to see what lay ahead, the tide was starting to go out and the beach was drying off; and most importantly the wind seemed to be making a guest appearance.

Unfortunately that day the wind was not as strong as we would have liked, the majority of boarders were on 6M+ kites, the freestyle competition was due to be held, but due to the lack of wind it was postponed. All in all everything was good, a nice beach, plenty of space, and of course a lot of boarders and buggiers had turned out to have a good time.
As the day drew onwards the wind still wasn't being favourable, changing from one direction to the other, everyone was still out to get the best of the conditions, but many a people ended up with a walk of shame when the winds died, and they were stuck out far from base (that included me, when being over eager deciding to head right out towards the surf, and to ultimately get stuck in the soft sand, while the wind slowly died, and seeing all the other kites in the sky dropping like flies.

Friday was overall a chilled out day, due to the conditions, and slowly as the day grew on, more people arrived, and a good night was had in the beer tent due to the X-Ale+ flowing and the two bands Mortillo and Zamba; both were pretty darn good!

Now Saturday was meant to be a race and kite cross day, the KiteATB race was run, although the word that best seems to describe it is "carnage" basically the course was slightly too short, meaning the riders packed together. Also there was a bit of a wet patch of sand which in my case meant my hopes where dashed after seeming to land the kite upside down in wet stuff and in the process of reverse launching taking a nice chunk of the ho! beach with me!! Leading to a kite that wouldn't want to fly, but would love to fly straight into the floor and get wet.

The race results for that day were:

1. Glen Butcher
2. James Drake
3. Steve Livesey
4. Adrian Martin

The Kite Cross course looked excellent, though the course wasn't officially run, mainly I think due to the sand not being compact enough and also not strong enough wind. So that was another event that didn't go to plan, with the presentation of prizes running ever so behind schedule. Lets just say around 3 or 4 hours! Between another set of good bands (I must say that: Sour Mash were bloody good!)

Final day for events on Sunday, and the wind did blow a bit, though it was the same old story, wind drifting in direction, and also changing in strengths, when the KiteATB race was held on this day the lessons had been learnt from the previous days carnage, the course was much longer, which allowed the field of riders to spread out, and also the wind was better, and everyone had learnt from their mistakes and were much smoother going round the flags.

Overall results:
1. Steve Livesey - won Dirtsurfer (Munkey Distribution)
2. Glen Butcher - Ozone Goodie Bag (Ozone)
3. James Drake - X-Zone T-Shirt (X-Zone)

Once again The X-Zone have organised an excellent event and given up their time and effort to make the event possible so well done to them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Event Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.