Saturday, Sunday????

Yeah. Sunday (and Mon) looks good (on paper anyway).
S.A. is gonna nuke. Wish I could go and visit.

[bryanleighty]

ya.. and they've got all the new kites out for demo..

oh well..

My girlfriend is moving in this weekend.. gotta empty out her appt. Would consider going over just for Sunday but thats just too far of a drive considering we are looking at some great conditions ourselves..

besides... I personally am not a huge fan of coast kiting.. its a hell of a lot more brutal to the body and requires a ton more focus than what we get out on the Bay.

from the local forecast it might be 7m riding for some of Sunday and Monday..

yowza.

Sunday might be a great downwinder from Gandy to Skyway..!!

[shogun1204]

Thats funny, it's amazing how spoiled we can get ridding on Flat water!Scott and I where talking about the same thing not too long ago about how nice it is. Up in PC about 75% of the ridding is all Gulf Coast ridding. When the wind is blowing in the 20's the waves can be 4 to 8 feet up here on average. When I first got up here I was just getting creamed in the waves, and fighting to stay up wind. Now its pretty easy because I have gotten so used to it. Now I can use the excuse that my freestyle sucks because I am used to wave ridding!!! (Too bad it sucked before that)!

Yeah. To me the primary advantage to riding St. Pete is ease of use. Every wind direction is within 5 minutes of my house and none of the spots have any real current, so a down winder (although fun) is far from necessary to have fun.
I just got back from riding for a couple of hours.
It took me 5 minutes to get to the beach, a few to rig and BAM.... riding . Because the current is so weak here on most days (strong NWs on second day,excluded), I can ride by myself and have an awesome time holding ground (jumping at will) and coming back to where I started.

In St. Augustine, the current was strong enough that just holding ground could be a challenge on a lot of days along the beach. I personally like the waves much better than this flat/choppy stuff, and was really looking forward to riding waves in S.A.
BUT, if you weren't planning a D/W with a buddy, many times riding in the waves/current was sort of a drag cuz it wasn't always easy to come back from where you started, or at least, not jump at will.
That limited my ability to just "show and go" without planning the D/W, driving one guy's car upwind, etc. On days we did do downwinders, man... they just smoked what we do here, no comparison. Real waves

Matanzas allows for butter flat water on the inside, waves on the outside, and a "conveyor belt" to carry you upwind to ride the waves when the tide is nuking out. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it's pretty epic.