Saturday 7 May 2016

Weymouth Kite Festival

As has been the case for a number of years now, Weymouth was once again the opener of our festival season. Sunday saw sunshine and a wind that was all over the place (in other words, normal Weymouth KF wind), while Monday saw cloud cover turn to drizzle and then rain, and a wind that was, you guessed it, all over the place.

Weymouth saw the debut of our new 'Chariots of Fire' routine! First run on Sunday wasn't a success, as the lines of my kite got tangled in the line of a Trilobite lifter several times, and that doesn't really help if you fly a routine timed to music ... Subsequent runs went much better, but we're still not happy with the end sequence, so that needs some more tweaking prior to the next festival.


While flying the first of the two Adiemus routines on Monday, as we were getting in position for the double catch at the end of the routine, I slipped in the loose sand and fell on my back. I was fully determined to make sure the kite did not crash, and managed to steer it towards Irma's hands for a catch while half-sitting, half-lying. People said I had a very determined look on my face!

As last year, both Flame and Airheads were present again, flying several routines each on both days.










And with three dual-line pairs/teams on the beach, mega-teams were unavoidable! We flew four times, with between 8 and 10 kites in the air at any one time.



Not too many errors, despite the really challenging wind, but Barry's idea of an 8-man wrap didn't quite work out as planned ... (or maybe it did; he has a wicked sense of humour ...)

Alan Pinnock put together a really nice video, with footage of the mega-team between 5:20 and 6:21:


More pictures of the festival are here, but I want to pick out one picture for this blog post:


What happened was the following: we saw someone fly this large fish kite, and being Flying Fish, we walked over for a chat with the owner of the kite. To make a not-so-long story even shorter, after we'd walked back to our tent, he came after us and gave us the kite: a flying fish for Flying Fish! Just goes to show yet again what great people kite flyers are; thanks again, John!

Picture credit of Flying Fish and the mega-team: Helen/Stephen Jones (via Facebook)

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