Ozone Method 5m, Land Boarding At Maplethorpe.

An early start found Tony, an early riser, wide awake and outside my house at 06:04, he was 16 min's early, I just wanted to go back to bed.
The journey of 125 miles was fast, with hardly any traffic on the road, we arrived at about 11, on looking at the direction of the flags, Tony commented that the wind was in a poor direction; we dismounted and built the buggies, gathered all our kit together and then headed for the beach.
Buggies are great for loading all your kit on, we had 3 sets of kites, pop up tents, food and drinks and were set for the day.
The walk was about 15 to 20 min's under a new gate up a hill and then we were there !
The wind direction was SSW, not ideal as we would have to tack back and forth to get up the beach. Tony (an experienced Buggy Racer) had timed it right, the tide was going out, this gave us about 50 meters of beach depth to play with.
We walked about 70 meters and set up, the pop up tents Tony brought along were excellent, somewhere to put your kit and if you needed it: shelter from the Rain, Sun and Wind. A must have £20 investment, even for local flying, they will stop the dogs from marking their territory on your kites and clothes.
We measured the wind, Ave 14.8, low 12, high 16.8, and decided on our kites, Tony chose a 6m JOJO RS+ (Race Star Plus), Greg his PKD Buster 4.4m and I chose my Ozone 5m Method.
Kites laid out with sand on the trailing edge, we were ready.
Tony was first out of the gate, using a Trickbitz Tornado T3 on Grooved Eurotraxx, he was off, an amazing noise is made when traversing over dead Razor Clam Shells as you will hear. In a few minutes Tony was just a distant spot on the horizon, only noticeable by his distinctive Yellow and Red Kite.
Greg was next off trying out a Buggy in Coastal winds for the first time, it just clicked all the problems he had flying upwind in land were a distant memory.
I took my Land Board, a MBS Comp 95 with 9 inch wheels to some compacted sand and went to collect my Kite.
Apprehensive when launching I took it to the edge of the window and pulled, the kite soared into the air with ease and just sat there, solid at the Zenith. I walked to my board mounted and dived the Kite.
The sand gave some resistance before I moved, but I soon got the hang of it, as long as I kept moving it was easy to accelerate by diving the kite into the power zone. On reaching hard compact sand I could just park the kite and ride, in the softer patches and when travelling close to the wind I had to Sine the kite to keep up a steady speed.
After venturing into a puddle when the board sank, I kept well away from them, the only problems I found were: hitting soft patches at speed, the board slowed quickly (but no Superman's) also traversing over the rippled ridges of hard sand, the vibrations were quite disconcerting.
The wind built during the day with Tony changed down through 2 sizes of JOJO Kites, Greg managed well on his Soulfly and in the later stages he used a Panish Sprint 3.3m and I changed down to a 4m method.
Rain stopped play at about 4pm, with the kites becoming heavy and unresponsive.
I think my arms must have stretched by what felt like 3 inches, inland during gusts you can rest you arms, in constant winds they are always under strain.
We ended the day with a Beer and then some Fish and Chips in a very good Mablethorpe Chip Shop, The Clock. If you are in the area, you must try the food there, large portions and all cooked to a very high standard, I will definitely eat there again.
A memorable day at Mablethorpe, well worth the early start, I will definitely be visiting Coastal Flying areas again soon.
Thanks for the idea and lift Tony.