last friday, my girl and i woke up in windswept whananaki and met up with some friends who had invited us on a camping trip at a NE facing beach which i reasoned would be perfect for kiting given the forecast.

when we arrived, the campers were furiously de-rigging their tents and getting the hell out, despite many of them being kiters. and so on...

we brewed coffee, flew our stunt kite for a while in 30 knots +, then pulled the pin too and drove north to paihia, where i reasoned it would be good to catch up with my old mate russell carlyon - if not score a sesh or too, courtesy of cyclone ivy.

by process of elimination, we arrived at tokau bay, just as the first spits were arriving, to find the boys screaming along in the flat water behind the sandbar whooping and yeehahing like monkeys in charge of a banana boat. i enthusiatically joined in and scored my all-time session in northland and can now heartily recommend this spot as THE VERY BEST @ high tide in NE.

ex-windsurf hero and current citrus farmer scott fenton was getting himself hoisted on a 16m gaastra which i found to be a little bit of a mind-tweak considering i was going big on a 10m, and robyn tripster and another cat were on micro kites.

by now it was tipping down - absolutely pissing - washing paint off vehicles and such, and we reasoned we should get the hell out or surely be stuck forever, as there is a hell of a slippery slope to negotiate on the way out.

to add chaos to the madness, scott had locked tripper's keys in their car and they both had to pile in our beast fully wetsuited and take their chance on the lowered two-wheel-drive piece of shit's ability to climb fully laden uphill on red slime in a full strength tropical cyclone with a satiated kite-looper at the wheel.

remarkably, we made it to scott's pad at kerikeri and soaked in his spa for many a long hour, while him and tripster bitched at each other at whose fault the key saga was and what they were going to do about it. and so on...

that night we partied at russ the muss's new bar 'the beachhouse' in paihia. trippy played the tunes and bitched at scott between songs, russell played the host and we all woke up late and jaded to see the wind had clocked around to the north and was screaming straight into the bay. and so on...

i reasoned the rain wouldn't be far away and furiously rigged my 8m, only to find the rain was now here and the wind had abated slightly. eagerly i rigged my 13m and got my first taste of one of nz's ugliest cyclonic shorebreaks. never mind brampton's reef - the action was going to be getting into the water!

six foot walls of white were exploding right on the seaweed strewn beach then instantly sucking back to join the next monster. to get out, i literally had to ride along the beach about 200 metres timing my moments to gain another 1cm into the tide until suddenly i was out and free!

by now it was violently pissing horizontal needles and most of paihia's cars turned out to watch my attempt to make the most of an essentially unusable day. far more entertaining (at least for me) was russell's humbling 45 minute attempt to get off the beach.

i thought his relentless poundings were all hilariously funny until my kite drifted into the death zone a couple of metres off the water, got clipped by a wave, wouldn't relaunch on account of my surging forward in waves and so on... i was mercilessly dragged on to the beach, roughed up in the shorebreak for a while, grovelled out, then got dragged back in again by my kite, got that out, then got dragged back in by my lines wrapped around huge swathes of seaweed. and so on and so forth...

how was your weekend?

Friday arfo at the local...taka. winds a howling and got a little over cautious pumped up a 5m GTO going OK but abit of a work out so came in and pumped the 7m GTO...perfect. Good wave riding on the building swell and more than enough boost.
Saterday all day taka on the 7m gto maxed out in the rain squalls. great waves and a few boosts over the boat ramp.
Surfers were stoked and the windsurfers were tolerant, even friendly. Respect
GB