Monday, June 20, 2011

HURRICANE SEASON IS HERE

We are now well through june and the hurricane season is upon us! .... So is the rain!! Spending this afternoon making a new rain-catcher to keep our tanks full of water.
For the past few weeks we have been getting some nice winds here in the north of St Lucia, but marred by an abundance of rainstorms. I have managed to get in a few sessions at our local Cas En Bas beach, hope to get out for some waves sessions this week at a newly discovered spot on the east coast.

We are going to have a change from our usual yearly routine of heading to South America during "hurricane season" and will be staying put in the Eastern Caribbean, keep a very close eye on the weather in the Atlantic! Hopefully all hurricanes this year will stay out in the atlantic ocean and just bring us grunty big swells to surf. ....

Anyone interested in some last mintue "hurricane swell surfaris" at excellent prices let us know via email to be informed of conditions and when to jump on plane and get down to the islands for some sick waves.

We will also be offering charters this summer around the grenadines .... come explore the islands with us .... wind isnt as great as winter time but still plenty to see and do, with up to 50% off our normal rates!!!!

If anyone is actually reading this .... stay tuned.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Kiting the Grenadines Video

Kiting Grenadines on CARLA

An awesome vid of kiting and adventure island style, from one of our trips in march.
Thanks Trey for all the hard work putting this together.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Surfing .....

My wife, Betty, got some footage of us surfing the other day, Enjoy .........

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Another fine week in the Grenadines .......

The Beach @ 2 ELEMENTS
Our last week down island was a great one, after kiting in the south of st lucia for 2 days (one day at THE REEF and the second day 2 Elements Kite Center at coconut bay resort) waiting for the guys to arrive on 2 different days we headed out into 20 plus knots of Easterly winds for the over night sail to Union Island.
While i am plugging peoples websites ..... dont forget mine .... CaribbeanKitesurfaris
Two Elements Kite Center, Sick flat water spot.

Over the next few days me, betty, victoria and a great crew from the U.S. proceeded to score some epic conditions at the best spots the grenadines has to offer. We got perfectly from flat Clifton Harbour to, headhigh, down the line  cross-shore waves at a new secret spot.
Trey putting the new Best Taboo through the paces by HAPPY ISLAND


Unfortunately one of the girls hurt her neck quite badly the first morning and next day i got her and her boyfriend organised to fly out of union to st lucia for an MRI, luckily xray showed nothing major and they we back the next day, with tales of great generosity from the locals in Vieux Fort, St lucia after struggling to find a hotel to stay in.


2 Highlights for me were, 1, a super-slick day at a certain butter pond jumping rocks and trees FULLY powered on my 12m Envy, then taking my 2 and 1/2 year daughter out for the first time with her holding onto my back and seeing her stoked as, yelling and screaming with excitement while throwing shaka's at the camera man and 2, Betty getting back out on a kite with some lessons with her good friend Linn in clifton harbour and having a blast.


Just one day of 7 we were unable to kite, I got a couple of guys off diving with Grenadines Dive, based in union island, while me and my mate Jeremy who is living in union island at the moment, hit the waves with surfboards and got few waves right in front of clifton harbour, watch this space for interesting developments to be happening in Union Island!!!!!!! should be awesome things over the next year or so for shorebased stuff.

Last day was looking like crap wind so we headed over to the Tobago Cays for some snorkeling with the turtles, victoria on her run of firsts' even donned a mask and snorkel and keep it on for 15 mins chasing turtles around the little bay.
The boys thought they would give kiting a go even with the mediocre wind and almost as soon as they kites were pumped the wind speed steadily picked until it was blowing a good 18 knots, enough for all to have a nice final session before the overnight sail to return to St Lucia......




So here i am now sitting in Martinique after a week of rain, and NO wind thinking of my 30 mile motor to st lucia tomorrow and praying to the wind goods for good wind for the 26th onwards for the next group of kiters.


MAKE SURE YOU CHECK THIS OUT ......... Good friend Olly from KiteSurfBeaches.com has just finished a little video edit of a trip up north in march .... check it out, plenty of other quality video on this site as well as info on the best kite spots worldwide  TODD'S LAW. NO WIND TOUR VIDEO HERE


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Humpback Whales in Barbuda! ..... 1st April trip is GO!


A short vid of the pod of whales near Barbuda on the last trip. No the greatest quality, my wife had the little pentax camera handy and passed it over.

We are now ready to leave the leave the marina and head down to Vieux Fort, St Lucia to pick up a group for our next trip. Forecast is looking sick for grenadines next week, with good trades on the horizon and maybe even a NW groundswell due to arrive midweek...... wahooooo.

Victoria gives next week's forecast a thumbs up!

My new LIQUIDFORCE INFLUENCE 140 has finally arrived on the island, so off to customs tomorrow morning to sort that out, hopefully followed by a session at cas en bas beach in the afternoon before setting off south.








Friday, March 25, 2011

North Caribbean to St Lucia ....

We have just returned from a 3 week sail/surf/kite trip from st lucia to st martin and back .... A great trip but  we got a bit of bad luck on the wind situation. Leaving St Lucia we sailed 40 hours straight to st martin in 20 to over 30knots of howling wind to pick up our new dinghy and motor. Along with great sailing we had  good luck on the fishing, catching 4 nice yellowfin tuna and a couple of tasty barracuda.

Almost as soon as we dropped anchor in simpson bay the wind turned off like someone had flicked a switch. ..... After a couple of days of spending money on the boat and a few late nights enjoying the party atmosphere out we headed up to tintamarre island on the hope of some kiting or at least some surfing, the latter we were able to do and we scored a nice peaky reefbreak for several hours to ourselves.

Wind never showed! after a few days at tintamarre we had to return to St Martin to pick up yve and zvika who were coming to join us from israel. With them onboard and a couple of days waiting for wind in St Martin we decided to sail down to beautiful barbuda, with a nice swell on the way and wind actually forecast we were thinking we were going to score big time (when you get barbuda with wind AND waves it's unforgetable) Unfortunately the wind never really showed as forecast (Zvika's OZONE ZEPHYR 17M  got alot of use though), i did one session in my 12 .... The swell bumped up as predicted and we got some very nice very hollow rights at a location that will remain nameless.




After several days enjoying Barbuda we headed for Antigua, 8 miles south of barbuda we recieved and amazing sight none of us had ever experienced before ..... a pod of humpback whales breaching right behind the boat!!! Amazing! we even saw another pod off St Johns as we arrived in antigua.
After refuel and re-supply we headed for the east coast of antigua and kited the north sound before moving off to green island .... Zvika and Toddy Kited along with us. Green Island is great fairly flat water spot with a cool little school setup (40 Knots Kiteboarding, Excellent place for sailors to learn because they will pick you up right from your boat in the anchorage)
We all had a nice session the next morning but then the wind went so light even Zvika couldnt kite on his 17m so we made the decision to flag kitesurfing for a couple of days and sail to dominica.
Dominca is one of my favourites to relax and take in the scenary. Our last day there we all visited the home of some friends Tim, Jessica and Skye. Words cannot really explain how awesome their property is so here's some pics.


After a delicous BBQ and some rums and freshly squeezed grapefruits from the garden we had to return to the boat for sail to st lucia so Yve and Zvika could catch flights in the morning, bit slow going due to the light wind but arrived in time for them to grab a taxi and race to the airport.............

Now we are back at home in Rodney Bay getting a few little jobs done before heading down to the grenadines for some more kite action on April 2nd.