Holy windy batman!!

Seems I spoke too soon about the wind. Yesterday afternoon, I thought I was finally going to get out for a decent kite......forecast looked good, BOM observations looked good, so I raced home and headed down the beach. When I got there, it was averaging about 20kts, gusting to 26 or so. Ok, fine. Forecast was for 20/25kts, dropping to 15/20.

Unfortunately, as I was laying out my lines and pumping up my kite, the wind kept getting stronger and stronger. Eventually, it was averaging 25 and gusting to 30+kts! Even on my smallest kite, I'm still too light to hold down that much wind, so all I could do was stand there getting sandblasted, waiting for it to drop off (which it didn't do). I gave it 45 minutes and packed up.

One thing though.....at those wind speeds, the huge drifts of sand being blown across the beach and the sand flats out the back look just like moving water in a long exposure photo. It's very cool to watch actually.