Hi All,
I wrote last week about an outing on KitetiK that was….less than encouraging. This past weekend’s outing was better.
With a couple of false starts launching the kite, which were easily recovered with the 5th line, we eventually got an 11m LEI up. There was quite a bang at one point – but it wasn’t the sound barrier being broken! Progress was …modest… we only did about 5knots in 15knots of breeze. But the objectives were to get a kite in the air, get moving, test steering/control and be on the water. Pleasingly, we sailed for some periods with both rudders (fore and aft) raised and held a few courses (see video), albeit within a reasonably narrow range, by trimming the kite tow point relative to the daggerboard.
Manoeuvring in tight quarters remains a considerable challenge. But there were no collisions and KitetiK is back at her (temporary) pontoon. We’re pondering various improvements including jet thrusters…but Jay hasn’t made one yet … Manoeuvrability was not improved by the fact that, of a nearly 5 hour outing, 2 hours were spent pulling the recoil starter of 2 different 2 stroke outboards for the tender that was supposed to function as a bow thruster. Ggggrrrr – IC outboards!
Short (16 seconds) video here.
Best regards,
Trevor