Dirk Hanel ::: Kiteboarding

Three days of extreme and very different weather where the second stop of the KTE tour in Nordwijk in the Netherlands. After being in Nordwijk one day in advance to test and try some new products i had already expierienced the crazyness of the NorthSea. When i arrived it was sunny and the wind was just breezing in. I put my gear together in the riders tent and 20 minutes later the seafog moved in with zero visibility, we still went on the water! Sometimes  your kite beeing 33m up was not even visible!

So first das was similar in the morning the fog came and brought weird and strange powerfull gusty wind. My equipment was not great prepared for that! So it was a battle with Bruno and Björn and Julien for the first three places and other then in the first race where i got 5th i could only watch it from behind. The next races the wind was getting slightly stronger but also the current in the water. It was not my day and finally in the evening with nice sunshine they started the freestyle.

Sunday was a day off as we had beautifull sunshine and no wind at all and with a forecast for good wind at 5 o clock in the morning the skippersmeeting for Monday was set at 5.00 o clock a historic moment in Kiteboard history!  But the wind did not come and so we started one last race at about 9.00 oclock having only 8 knots at the starting line and when i finished in 3rd position the wind had dropped down to 6 knots with a good water current of 2 to 3 knots with the wind! so an extreme light windrace!

Then the wind died and we had time to pack all our stuff and travel home!  See you all in Sylt for the europeans and lets hope for more and better wind also for the racing!

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