Well i went for my first ever official night kite last night. I've done sessions before were i have started in the day and packed up in the twilight/night.

but this was rig up and flight in the dark.

Got to the beach at 8pm. There was a mist or fog lurking. 13 knots of on cross on wind. super king tide so the only bit of hard beach was right up at the high tide line.

man talk about threading the needle.

beacuase of the rain recently the beach was litered with drift wood. hell drift tree's. whole entire trees torn off at the roots and dumped in the beach.

So i'm flying having to weave in an out of massive drift wood logs. i can't see more than 30 meters as the lights/fog combo are causing a white out. i'm so high up the beach my kite is over flight the trees and surfclub buildings.

so zero room for error. then after an hour it started to rain. and that was my que to exit stage left. there wasn't enough room left on the beach to land so i walked up and over the dune and landed in the parking lot.

It was quite a fly by feel scenario. couldn't watch the kite as i need to look for drft wood. needed to watch the kite to make sure i din't hit any of the tree's i was over flying.couldn't see the surface didn't know if it was soft/hard.

Kind of like skiing down a hill in a white out.

So quite a cool experince. with no misshaps apart from a sneaky half submerged tyre that almost deraled me.

a bit of 24 hour moose practice me thinks. if you can do that a flat beach should be a doddle. i think if you AND pete are kiting some budget cycling lights attached front and rear of the vehicle is mandatory. once the run way is set up in the night time pete turns off his head lamp and you may do the same. still if the moon is showing, its a full one and should sort out the issue of a head on

yep.... got get that mid section strong as steel if i'm not make an attempt. also its unwise to role into such an activity without ever having night kited before.

I have a bunch of flashies from night mtbing. so that wont be a problem. i had a couple of them on the bridles of the kite so i could see the kite with my perifial vision.

As you say the moose is nice and wide not litered with junk so it will be a doodle and i'll be able to crank the speed.

last night i only managed max of 28kph. but that was fast enough when when i hand to dodge logs at a moments notice.

pss... surely someone else is willing to join in?

isnt it a buz, i remember one moosse where everyone was buggying all nite under the full moon,its was fantastic and everything but the sky was pitch black so u might think people would take it easy , not so ud b buzzin along and swish a buggy would fly past out of the blackness, kinda scary and exciting in the sane instant, kane hartnel was there that year doin the first 360 buggy aerials id eva seen and goin big too.i broke my collar bone that year ,yep tryin 360 aerials with a 8.5 c quad of a big 5mt + sand dune, i dont remember wat happened but tis on utube somwhere, we also did a midnite sesh at mission bay one friday nite after a few drinks at kiteworks, reveryone was keen but when we got to the beach all but 3 of us had sobered up ,so the 3 of us were out tearing around on the water in the dark, there was some light from the street lamps but it was v/dodgy 4sur, ud b roarin along a hit abit of seaweed ( at least thats wat i thought it was ) and bamm on the board, wat the , urggh. neva again, no way , unless ...

ps. portable lights ( tourchs ) had'nt been invented at that time lol, but wat a good idea they turnd out 2 b.

Identify the hazards, get your bearings and turn your lights off. Its way better without them.

Plummet I might be able to help you out with the night kiting setup. I have done more night kiting than most and did a lot of research before settling on the setup I have. From experience the turn the lights off approach only works if their is a full moon and no clouds.

I have 2 kick ass light from troutie ( troutie.com/?p=532 ). One is 1500 Lumens and the other is the 7 up (2000 Lumens) and really is pretty bright. It is almost as bright as a set of car lights in a small form factor. I have some 5500ma batteries which should drive those lights all night. If you are going to use lights you need backups on hand as stuff breaks at inopportune moments ! Happy yo help you out where I can. Drop me a mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

yakernz wrote:


Can you only ride when you can see well?
I far prefer it with out the lights even if it is a dark night.

hey the mighty yaker returns!!! What an epic brazil trip Qudos bro.

I should be good for lights. not as bright as yours tho. i have 2 sets with batterys 800 lumens each. which do around 4 hours each at full blast.

Charlie. trolling along in a buggy might be fine without lights. but probably abit dangerious on the board with out light. unless the beach is completly free of obstacles/soft bits etc.

but none the less the challenge has been laid up so i must try it!!

Little bit different between boarding an buggying Charlie! Since you're constantly compensating for terain using your balance and stance it is much harder to ride a board at anything faster than walking pace in the dark. Whereas you can easily cope with the same jossle in a buggy.

Whether it's water or sand it is just like snowboarding in a whiteout. I haven't mountainboarded in the dark but I've done plenty time on the water and on the snow. The loss of contrast also doesn't help, lights and shadows from a direct source other than overhead make terrain appear very different in the dark and can be very disorienting. The only time I had any luck on the water was either fullmoon or riding a spot like Mission bay by reflection of the city lights when it's not too choppy.

Trolling. I like that. Makes me sound like an angry old beardy with an attitude. Oh wait. Thats actually me.

Trolling in the dark. Looking for virgins and small goats. Thats a bit of me. Have to watch out for those big goats. I hear they are mean.

hhaahhahahhaahahhahah virgins and goats... i don't know why but the addition of a goat in a story always makes it funnier.

hmmm... water. well my lights are not sea water proof. but maybe some moonlite wave riding will be the go in the future? i've done night surfing before.


well on a positive note for me. i've been night riding the mountain bike every teusday night for 15 years. so i have an enormous amount or night time/lights experiences.Just not with a kite. So i'm all over the depth perception thing. Also my monster board can cope with a far wider range of surface conditions before i get chucked than your standard board.

so....charlie, youv been trolling eh!!! we wonderd where youd gone.

im up for a bit of trolling, ecept it wont be dark...not really..the moon will be out and youl be abel to see the whole of the moose..and it will be magnificent..hopefully

not like last time i was out, it was proper dark..its a big place out their. i got lost...even if you have lights it makes no difference if you dont know wich way is home, you just buggy around looking for virgins and goats!!!! i meant landmarks.

but you ride over bits you know but because you cant see em properly your stll lost.
skary.......and things loom in the dark, big gangly sanddunes with plants on top croop up on you and suprise you....
i also was probably drunk at the time...the bonus is thea when you doo get home thers a nice big fire and lots of people to tell your little story to and more beer.

i dont think its worth braking an ankle over on a landboard for mind...we will have plenty of bubuggys for you to steal to do some trolling with, like charlie

Kitesurfing at night in real surf is lots of fun but can be tremendously deceptive depending on the time of tide etc. You take for granted that you automatically adjust for currents and undertow on a wave during the day. Because you can't judge it at night you often get caught standing on a wave or getting sucked in on a badly planned landing... and then there's crashing and loosing your board. That is one thing land kiting has got going for it... the surface isn't moving all the time!

well as long as your looking for Virgins and goats and not virgin goats i'll be in on the trolling. after my 24 attempt.

yeah guster/..... i here you. night kiting waves would be a tad silly. maybe some moose lagoon to begin with?

well as long as your looking for Virgins and goats and not virgin goats i'll be in on the trolling. after my 24 attempt.

yeah guster/..... i here you. night kiting waves would be a tad silly. maybe some moose lagoon to begin with?

The goats are for the moose burgers as there are not many moose about.

Last year I stayed up all night checking on Gannet. Can you please find someone else to look after you during the graveyard shift. If Gannets 24 hr run had been planned a bit better we could have had a tent out on the beach with a coffee pot and a BBQ. He could have had nice hot refreshments and warmed his hands up on the hour. As it was he ate muesli bars, drank from a camel pack and got cold at about 2am. There was no constant vigil and if he had a big off it could have been a long time before we found him and raised the alarm. It all worked out well but I am hoping we have learned a little from it.

Please make sure someone is watching you and you have regular stops in the late hours.

well the call will be made on the day if i do it or not depending on the conditions. there maybe a crazy gannet on a kitebike? doing it with me.... if thats the case then we can look out for each other.

would be good to have some fog horns, one at the camp and more for whoever is out kiting...
lights on kites are an awsome idea, you can see them from ages away and if you cant see them from camp where you think they should be then you know you need to start looking harder..
and you also get to have bragging rights for the most lit up kite...im reconing a bright led on the inside of the kite will light the whole thing up pretty well
anybody got any old cb radios?

heres a thought. why don't you, not so clinically insane kiters, (sorry gannet but your a bit mad) do a teams 24hr? get 5 of ya and punch out 2 hour stints. thats means you can get some decent sleep and will only need to do one stint at some wierd time at night. Your there anyway. you might as well do it!

It would be rude not too!.

You could call yourselves "Trolling in the dark" team slogan "Looking for virgins and small goats"

hahaha man thats still making me laugh. funniest thing i've heard in a while...

maybe a north/south grudge match!
guster, charlie,Al,perrin,jimmy VS hansen,gurney and the south island crew?

now that would be a spectacle!!! i'd even offer a up a can of coke/chocolate fish
to the victorious team.

well, im keen...i love giving the southerners a good wooping...


im a bit of a softy tho, if its raining im not leaving the fire and if its not windy i cant fly anyway because i have no smoothness and my kites all drop out the sky.

ill do it for the chocolate fish.

Al you need to step up and claim some buggying world record! you have the skill. its only one night of the moose. you can sit back and relax under the fire on night number 2.

I can only imagine the grin on your face if you claimed a world record!!!

No wyou must plan around the fact that there is racinbg on Saturday afternoon starting at 2pm. Boards included.

thats alright charlie. its all kiting! i may just requested an 11am debrief so i don't have to stop... at 2. i'll just stride into the race and then carry on boarding when its finished. you could allways do a 100km race!!!! up the beach 10km and back 5 times?

im not a very good team player, id be happy with a word record if it was mine and i made it happen all by myself....the way gannet did the 24hour was epic, out of the blue true grit buggying, a team 24 hour isnt the same thing and it dosnt intrest me greatly, but im not going to try to beat gannets 24hour record either because its his and i think another country should claim is so we can claim it back off them again..
at the moment the thing that intrests me the most is racing/enduro racing mostly and just outright speed, but conditions need to be more than perfect to go over 100kph with my kites so im not that botherd by that either..

but if we do get a team togeather then im definently going to be part of it, and if it does happen ill take it very seriusly...

we have to beat 1050km for number one, and to do that their needs to be 3 of us and we need to average a good 50kph to beat it well, thats a pretty uptheir target and if we have the correct conditions we could rock up and down the flat, butif we have to traverse the moose to get a good wind angle to average 50 we are going to struggle and will be asking for trouble doing those speeds in the moose during the night...

Thats why they are world records bro. Its hard!!! hehe.
Come on give Gannet some competition he will relish it!
If you want to go fast. Its blowing 40 bastards all weekend.

www.windfinder.com/forecast/muriwai

yea man, i got goose bump when i heard about the storm onthe radio today....west coast gets it pretty hard...but alas i have a young padwan to teach, it will be her first storm kiting lesson this weekend and i think i am gonna have to hold on pretty tight so she dosnt get blown into the dunes...yes, i have convinced ange to kitesurf...but shes getting bored of static flying, i said she has to keep at it untill she has unuff wind to make her nervous i think this weekend should do the trick start as we meen to go on.
so probably wont get to buggy much but if i do ill be sure to put batteries in the gps...

im not expecting much beach mind, 7m swell and onshore!!

Big tidal wash... low tide washes right to the high tide mark at the entrance. Be careful where you park. Seen it fill in the parking where the MX guys unload at full tide.

thanks for the tip guster im going out to check out the swell on sat morning. that could have been awkward coming back to a swamped scud . it looks like one of those 50 foot swells on bells beach moments

oh yeah, never underestimate the Hansen and his locals

yea, iv seen it right up to the signpost...was a bit skary, will be quite intresting to see the beach afterwards....itl probably move around a bit..we may even get a bit of drift wood to use as a large flag, plumbtree stylee

well Al. once Ange can pilot the kite without crashing and understands the wind window then i think yourve taught her all you can on the fixed bridles and old arcs. Time to think about investing in some kitesurfing kit for Ang. And a lesson wouldn't go amiss probably. Probably be a cool idea to get her a lesson with one of the women instructors.
That aside when selecting a kite don't cheap out on an old arc or 2003 C kite. get her a 1 or 2 yeah old sle with heaps of depwoer maybe 8m size? not sure.

she'll need to understand the safeties and re-learn how to fly depower leis, a lot different to foils. Most important is learning self rescue and deep water pack down.

yes, the time has come to buy a bow kite....its just choosing the right one for her....

thanks to jonnienz we have a board cheers bro..
so its just a lesson and some more time on the kite, i tought her combined downloop turns the other day and by the end of it she was hooking the kite around right down the center of the window and skudding untill basickly she ran out of beach, so a good 50m, im pretty stoaked..shes decided to fully comit to it

your right, not much more i can teacher now tho, time for the instructors to take over.

i spoke to guster today Al, the water was about waist deep in the carpark by the pine trees before you even touch the sand on the 100m sand ramp ! so parking by the campers site might be the prefered option. evidently the lads parked in the car park out the back of the dunes there and returned later to find the car swamped after the session from the fresh water that was unable to escape out to sea with the high sea water levels !

ur wellcome al, didnt i say at ur bbq that id spend some time with ange , anytime bud. maybe the mosse eh, i spotd u at ptchev the other day, or ur van atleast, but u were drivin out n i couldnd get ur att, ive got the perfect storm kite, my 6mt code, this rag is touGH,fast,n pretty 2 in green n black.

plummet wrote:
[quote]heres a thought. why don't you, not so clinically insane kiters, (sorry gannet but your a bit mad) do a teams 24hr? [/quote}]
Hmmm, good to see that doing 24hrs lonely gets you the title of;

A BIT MAD

and I missed the bit about " virgin goats" Bugger me
or the goat

what title do I get if I go 24 hrs on the Kite Bike,
I seriously think it's doable.

just got back from the beach (walked with the dog)6am - 7.30 high tide, white / brown form and there was still room for a buggy with big foots, so the storm is over and it's buggy time, well maybe at 1pm at low tide the wind has droped
it's only about 25 knots now !
and coming in at WNW, good enough, fast for going south on

Tell me gannet how much it any slower do you go on the kite bike? Ballancing for 24hrs might be hard!!!! not much rest.

If you do it on the bike it might give me a chance to keep up for a while until the hard sand leaves.

kite bike , 24hrs enter ===if the awnser is nuts , wats the question.

nucking futs perhaps?
crazy as a shit house rat?
as mad as 1000 circus monkeys?

nah everyone else is just soft!

YUP, I ask for that

" nah everyone else is just soft! "

YUP,
everyone else asked for that too

I think the Kite Bike is about the same as a land board for speed and turns,
ask AL about Sunday and I think you'll find that ; " as mad as 1000 circus monkeys"
is about right

I was on the kitebike with the 3m Ozone Method ,
and Drifting in the green slim at 60 km/hr.

I see my GPS has a top speed of 72.6 km/hr (unsighted, that it was on zero before starting)
better luck next time
and the pit grew left the SD card at home so no HD vids , sorry ,
I only get a ;" shit house rat" for that.

going on those stats i recon the kite bike will have the edge.in theory it should with the reduced roling resistance of the big wheels. what are the extra ravages to the body? does the leaning and ballancing use some extra muscles?

well i'm looking foward to it. drifting the green slime. jumping earth bound buggiers roosting hundreds of km. kiting through the night.

have you jumped the kite bike yet gannet?

talking of jumping. how many virgins and goats can i jump? i recon at least 15 or 20. failing that we'll have to stack some sacrificial buggies end on and and jump those.

" extra ravages to the body "

Yeah, thats about right, I feel pumped after a hour or two,
and I still need to sort the seat harness as it rides up and pulls on my ribs
after 24hrs I'll end up with some new muscles in some odd places, like the front and sides of the stomach, Hmmm, abs .
but the biggest thing is the mental one and pain, it's no walk in the park, 24hrs is a long time, I seriously don't know if I would make it on the kitebike

I would call it more like skipping over bumps,
but I have left the seat a couple of times,
once I left the seat and dragged the bike with my foot
or was that the over powered 5m Method dragging me and the bike

"how many virgins and goats can i jump?"
Hmmm, if you don't make it, think of the mess and there are some sites on the net with pictures of that sort of thing

stack the virgins first then goats last. if i ditch it and mangle a few goats at the end no one will really care. chuck em on the the fire. more meat for the meat eaters!

What harness are you using? might want to look at the ozone xc harness. mine doesn't ride up. though i'm not sitting down.

why not hard wire? to risky?

"but the biggest thing is the mental one and pain, it's no walk in the park, 24hrs is a long time, I seriously don't know if I would make it on the kitebike"

Haha thats exactly how i feel! i say thats more the reason to do it!!! walk into the unknown and find out.

Prehaps a 24hr kitebike may need a slightly different strategy with abit frequent more rest? so the body will last the distance.

For me i've discovered that i can ride for hours slighty underpowered. But if i'm very powered or over powered the energy level drops off real fast. i couldn't do real powered 24hr.

The other problem i foresee is boredum. i'll have to try and mix it up to keep the interest levels going.

Then lastly and most importantly fatigue. both mental and physical. you start making mistakes when you are serverly fatigued and your mind plays silly tricks with you. not a good thing when your relieing on your balance to stop you fall off at 50+kph.....

Do you still ride with a seatbelt when you ride with a harness Gannet? The Ozone XC works for me too and it has straps on the back that keep the leg loops up and the waist belt down. I find you keep the leg loops real tight and the was a little looser it doesn't hurt you. Until you have to walk, then you let the leg loops off to save the boys.

plummet wrote:


I'm exactly the other way round... I find lightwind real hard work. Though by lightwind I mean squeezing every little ounce of power out of the kite just to keep rolling or planing. :O)

when i say powered i'm talking 18 knots plus on my 10 manta. 12-18 is easy peasy. sub 12 is hard work. if i rode the manta in 20 odd knots it would wear me dow fast. 30+ on the 6 access is also hard work.

" why not hard wire? to risky? "

For the kitebike, I'm still learning, so yes, + it's good training
for doing the 24hr harnessed buggy record, which is 477 km

I have a XB and a XC harness both are modify now and Perrin is having ago at the XC now for me. the XC is good but if it hurts a little bit after 5hrs, it,s going to kill you after 15 hrs


" fatigue. both mental and physical "

the physical fatigue is no problem just run the right kite so it not boring and not over powered and the body will just hum along

mental fatigue, hmmm, that is the hard bit, I was doing maths, working out how many more km to 500km from 473 km and by the time I did that, I was on 477 kms so what the answer now, and so on. that worked for a time