Session 27 - Essaouira, Morocco

Wind – 18 to 28knots (yes that gusty)
Kite – Ozone C4 7m
Conditions – Gusty and waves (still about 1m)
Time on the water – 1 hour

Well well well, didn’t the wind come into today!! After yesterday where I was struggling with the old feeling of low wind kiting this was the complete opposite. The wind came in in good measure about 11am and got more and more and more! I braved the 7m (which if I am honest I don’t think I had pumped up enough) and got on the water. I think this was possibly the gustiest conditions I have yet to encounter and will make my return to Egypt so easy!! I have never found flying my 7m this hard. It is so responsive at the best of times so to fly in winds which were at least 10knots different in range was hard for me. After fighting my 10m for the previous 3 or 4 sessions my 7m felt so surprisingly light on the harness, I think in time this will be a great kite for me to do freestyle with as it is just so easy to fly, no so much on this occasion. I have progressively started to enjoy the waves more and more and have started enjoying getting good air from popping of them, but now I have started to jump when I get the pop, pulling the bar in and wow what a day to do it!!! I got spanked!! I pop, I pull the bar in thinking OK this is fun and a massive gust of wind comes over the headland and lofts me so much higher than I ever planned!! The most impressive part as even though I got lofted and then followed it with getting dropped like a sack of shit, I still landed it LOL. God I am getting better!
The rest of the session was fairly much the same, getting stupidly upwind due to holding my kite low and edging like fuck and then having to do a downwind jaunt because I was interrupting the surfers and then I was just in by the shore line, (shoreline on my left) and I am just about to turn and smack. A guy on a north gaygus comes and takes me clean out with his kite, straight into my left eye! Bastard. It hurt too. Then a gust comes and lofts me leaving my board about 45m behind me, trying hard to fight against waves / tide and get back to my board without being able to body drag, he was still there so I couldn’t move my kite at all. So I fight and fight and eventually the guilty German mans drops my board on the beach – so I suppose that was a cleared debt. I went back out for about 20 mins but my eye hurt too much and I needed some food as my energy had been completely drained.
I finished my session and joined the boys at the cafe for some wine (are you surprised = nope) and then Soufiane and myself went out that night to the medina. He took me to a lovely restaurant, fully Moroccan. I had lovely food and loads of giggling. The restaurant is owned by a French lady who has moved there many years ago, wow what a character!! Soufiane calls her big mamma and she is now on her 7th husband. I had something called a pastisse I think, which was spicy Moroccan chicken wrapped in a type of pastry, and baby squids for starters. It was gorgeous. Obviously the night was young so we headed to a bar for a few mohitos and then called it a day!!