This weekend saw the New Zealand Kitesurfing Nationals, the main competition of the year for the NZ scene. With a little bit of hesitation, I thought I'd enter for a laugh as it's as much an opportunity to meet and party with fellow kiters as anything else.
So hoping the standard wasn't toooo high, I paid my money and went along.
Sadly the wind didn't really play ball, but we all still gave it a go! The wind was forecast to rise up early and die off as the day went on, so with a helpful morning current the heats were scheduled to start at 7am on both days!
So yes, I got up at 6am to go kiting. :oO

Sadly, only the first round was completed before the wind died completely, and even more sadly the wind never came through on the Sunday so there was no real competition. Luckily we made up for it by drinking lots of beer, eating lots of BBQ food and generally lazing around.

The real news is that somehow I blundered through my heat and came out on top! Yay for me!  I can now claim to be unbeaten in NZ competition ;o)



Warming up at 6:45am before the heats


Me competing at 8am!


Lots of kites but no wind :o(


1 boat, 1 rope, 1 board but 2 men! Competition was fierce to take part in the wakeboarding. ;o)

I went to the beach this weekend. So much for Jet lag  ;o)

In case anyone didn't know, I went to the UK for 2 weeks in order to catch up with friends and family. It was the first time I'd met my new nephew and he's lovely. Definitely takes after James' side of the family and looks exactly like James.
I'm surprised he hasn't been bought a bike yet!

Anyway, too much happened for me to really put down but it was a great trip and fantastic to see everyone!


The new addition to the clan!



Sarah in Salisbury


Lisa in sunny Manchester


Lloyd and Karen in the pub.

On Thursday night I thought I'd organise a Canyoning adventure with a slight difference, it's all in the dark! Well after another email around work, I only received 1 reply this time. Yep, I work with 119 people who can come up with a lame excuse to not have fun ;o)
Luckily for me, my housemate Jen found a few people to take along so we ended up with 8 people in total who were keen, and so off we went to Piha canyon for a bit of an adventure.

The idea of canyoning is to start at the top of a mountain and follow a river down to sea level, traversing caves, waterfalls and rocks on the way down. For this particular canyon, we had to abseil down a waterfall, climb through a cave network and take a running jump off a cliff into pitch blackness, hoping to land on the water below and miss the rocks.

Great fun!



Abseiling down the waterfall


Clambering through a cave

After saying that I'd never, ever go dragon boating again, the inevitable happened and once again I found myself in a dragon boat over the weekend. Due to a spate of injuries amongst the original crew, I was asked as to come in as a late replacement and, like a complete sucker, I agreed. Sadly this year the crew wasn't quite match up to the same standard as previous years and I arrived to a lot of debate about how to paddle, how to race and what we should do. Basically a typical bunch of nerds, one of which had actually written a computer program to work out how best to seat everyone according to their weight!

True to form, we came dead last in the corporates division, but salvaged some pride by beating the All Womens' Breast Cancer Survivors 4th team. (The other 3 Cancer survivor teams beat us!)

I'll say it again, never, ever, ever again.





Notice the wake of the other boat next to us, we only lost this race by 2 boat lengths!

This Saturday just gone, I organised a "Tree Adventure" ( http://www.tree-adventures.com/whoodhill/index.htm ) for my work. Sadly only 2 work collegues were up for the challenge out of 120 people! Blimey, you can take a horse to water........

The adventure is basically 8 courses around a wood, each course consists of various obstacles which need to be traversed, all at a height of at least 6 meters. There's flying foxes, cargo nets, monkey ropes, swings and even a suspended surfboard which all need to be traversed. Obviously there's a safety harness, but it's still hilarious and I was lucky to have a bunch of great people to go with.

Anyhoo, we arrived, had a briefing and there we were set loose. It took about 3 hours in total after which we drove to the beach and had a refreshing swim. Nice!

Here's the obligatory photos! Sorry for the late post but my camera's gone missing so I had to grab these from a friend.

We had 2 kitesurfing professionals over in NZ for the weekend, Shannon Best and Clinton Bolton, both representing Best Kiteboarding. As such, the local Best dealer put on a great kitesurfing weekend and most Auckland kiters turned up at some point to check out what was happening.
On Saturday, we kited at Whangaparaoa (say that when you've had a couple of beers) and there was a good 20-30 kiters out at a time, which is insanely crowded for Auckland. The day was pretty good although the wind was quite gusty, luckily there was plenty of people to have a chat with and generally hang out.
That night we all had a few beers and unfortunately I challenged Clinton Bolton, one of the pro's, to a trick contest the following morning. Damn that beer!
Luckily all had been forgotten by the following morning and we headed out to Muriwai to scope out some waves. I have to say this day was one of the best kitesurfing days I've ever had. Even Shannon and Clinton got very excited when they saw the conditions and they rushed out as quickly as they could. The waves were a nice 2-3 foot with a long period between, the wind was a good 20 knots and there was flat sections everywhere. A "perfect playground" to quote Shannon Best.

After a solid 4-5 hours of kiting, everyone decided their bones had taken enough punishment and everyone packed up, had a sausage sandwich in the carpark courtesy of a travel BBQ set and had a chat about the weekend. Shannon and Clinton both turned out to be really nice blokes and were genuinely happy with the welcome they'd received.

More pictures should be coming later, it'll be easy to spot me as I was generally the only one not on a Best kite!

Tony appeared for the weekend, he's over from Sydney on business and managed to wangle a weekend over here with me! Yay for Tony!

Well, the wind forecast wasn't looking that exciting for Auckland so we took a trip down to Raglan for the weekend where winds of 15+ knots were forecast. Raglan, though, is a magical spot where you can kite in sub 10 knots when the tide is flowing in the right direction and as such, I was sure we were going to get a kite in.

Luckily for us it came in 15+ knots on both days anyway, so we had several great sessions. On both days we were pretty much first in and last out, and Tony impressed me with his new found jumping ability and super smooth kiting skills.

We managed to salvage the car on Friday! Unfortunately there wasn't a lot left to pick up but it's a requirement to remove all wrecks from the beach so it had to be done. It was amazing how much damage the sea had done to it, but I guess it had been in the water for a good 4 days. If you're wondering where the bonnet is, it had gone through the windshield! It took me a while to find someone willing to pick up a car from the beach, because it's so risky, but I finally managed to get someone called Dave from Tatonka landscaping. His truck was awesome! It was originally designed as an offroad vehicle that could pick up large stone works and transport them around, but he's finding more and more business picking up wrecks from the beach.

I've been asked to upload some photos of the new pad and housemates, so here we are!


Evi working hard



Jen in the lounge


The balcony from the lounge


The deck


It's hard to get an impression of the house from a few photos, so I'll just have to describe is as a lovely, airy house surrounded by trees but very close by the city.