Union Island - A Kitesurf Paradise

On our various trips to Brazil over the last 6 years we keep running into Ocean Rodeo team riders / promotional gurus Jeremie Tronet and Linn Svendsen. The lovely French-Caribbean / Norwegian couple have now set up their own kite centre with school in the Grenadines, mainly serving the passing yacht trade. See: www.kitesurfgrenadines.com

So knowing that this pair wouldn't settle somewhere with anything less than amazing kite conditions, we thought we might go and check it out. We shot a bit of video of Sarah kiting which you can watch below. This gives you a good idea of how good the conditions were :)

After a very good autumn/winter season in the UK the long range forecast all of a sudden looked very bleak, so we booked a cheap flight to Barbados with Mr Beardy Branson Airways, organised the transfer hop flight with Mustique Airways (thanks Keisha) who offer an excellent range of reliable winged caravans.

From above (Pic stolen from Hannah Darling)

So after some Twin Otter hi-jinx, some confused but amusing conversations at customs about what was in the huge kite bags, and the arduous hotel transfer (30 second ride on a golf buggy), in what seemed like no time at all with the time difference, we had travelled from a freezing and drizzly Gatwick to sunshine, palm trees and clear blue water. We stayed at the Anchorage Yacht Club, which mainly acts as a transfer point for luxury tourists travelling over towards the Palm Island resort. The hotel is about 100m from the kite spot and is extremely convenient. The staff are very helpful and friendly as well, and the Wifi runs as smoothly as the supply of Pina Coladas.

Not too shabby view in front of the rooms at the hotel

The wind over the duration of the trip was excellent, with 10 out of 12 days kiteable and really it was more like 11 out of 12 but one morning we were particularly hungover. The wind follows a daily pattern. It kicks in at about 8 in the morning and is at its strongest (18 - 20 knots) until around 1pm. It then has the courtesy to mellow out a bit over lunch time (although it's still rideable) to allow you to have a leisurely lunch. By 3pm it's back up to speed again, and gradually gets stronger until sunset. We quickly settled into a routine, and found an early start and a long lunch, possibly with short snooze afterwards, let you have 2 or three hours in the morning riding quite hard, and then a more relaxed sunset session before cocktail hour. As you can tell it was pretty tough over there, but we coped.

The main spot set up is very good as well, with a large lagoon protected by a reef. It's shallow and flat, and great for training, the bottom is a mixture of old coral and sand, so nothing much to bump into. You need to be confident upwind to ride here, and stay away from the airport end which is marked by some buoys. The tides are tiny, so not much to worry about there.

Wang Ping

There are very few kite spots with in-water bar/BBQ services. Happy Island was built by an enterprising local who kept dumping conch shells on the inside of the reef until there was enough reclaimed land to build a bar on. All the yacht tenders moor up there for a stunning sunset and Jeremie sometimes puts on a big air show much to the delight of the punters.

Happy Island Sunset

From a beginners point of view the best bet is to head off downwind to Frigate with the school and enjoy the huge amount of space, and boat support. If the wind switches a little more easterly (away from the normal north east) the potential for freestyle down here is spectacular. It looks like a few years ago they started building a huge dock for more boats, and they must have run out of cash and work stopped, leaving a man-made spit creating some rather tasty flat water. Running downwind to here from the centre is worth the ride just for the experience of hopping in and out of the reefs. Half way down is an enormous turquoise bottomed lagoon which is worth hanging around in for some time. Frigate island itself looks like somewhere a Bond villain might have his lair. It's extremely spectacular.

Frigate from above

Jeremie and Linn can further amuse you by organising day tours to the other islands close by. We went up to Mayreaux for a quick kite on a little reef break, and to the Tobago Cays, and stopped somewhere they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean, where a month or so back, part of a Russian space rocket washed up rather bizarrely. This was a great addition to the trip. Everyone likes messing around on boats. We finished up the day with a sunset downwinder in light wind back to Union with the boat following.

Russian space rocket anyone?

Every full moon they are running a beach party at the centre, where the whole Island comes out to enjoy some dancing, rum and night kiting. It's an eclectic mix of locals, yacht dwellers and kiters, and made for some amusing moments.

Check the moon.

Food wise, high recommendations need to be given to:

Big Citi - the local canteen diner above a yellow building in the square. This is very reasonably priced, the food is tasty Caribbean dishes like conch stew, BBQ chicken and a sandwich called the 'mumbler' which was absolutely off the chart if you are into chicken.

Captain Gourmet - Just off the square towards Ashton, this is run by local French folks, and as you would expect provides great breakfasts, bread, croissants and most importantly coffee. They also import luxury goods from France and all over the place, so if you need some champagne or confit de canard in a hurry, this is the place to come. Watch out for the chocolate muffins.

Marie's Pizza Place - Located opposite the ferry dock, Marie became our temporary mother for 12 days. Initially she wooed us with amazing seafood pizza and pasta, and then let us order what we would like the next night the day before and she would source it. This meant every night we had delicious home cooked food with a French twist. This was great compared to other small island experiences we had like in Cape Verde where the food was generally terrible.

So all in all it was an amazing trip, and very do-able for a two week holiday. A huge thanks go to Jeremie and Linn for showing us a great time and sharing their spot with us. I think we would definitely be back, the potential for waves is also very good in the right conditions, and we didn't really touch on that on this visit.

2010 JN PD3 5m for sale - £250

Amazing condition freestyle kite for mental winds. Really excels in the waves. Ultra stable in the gusty conditions you experience with this kind of kite size. Trees and houses will start falling over before you reach it's top end. Ideal for a Cape Town season.

Price includes delivery.

* SOLD *

Cape Town, South Africa 2009

Well we got to Cape Town safe and sound with a minimum of fuss. Virgin provided a damn good in-flight meal and on-demand episodes of Blackadder at rock bottom prices, even though they did try and weigh our hand luggage. We have vowed never to fly BA again.

Cape town is amazing. Visually, it’s an incredible place. The city centre is set in a bowl surrounded by the mountains, and then the city spreads north along the coast and into the cape flats. The climate is fantastic. Not too hot, not too cold and it varies a little to keep you on your toes. The contrast between rich and poor here is extremely apparent. You see people from the townships begging at the traffic lights, trying to sell coat hangers to people in a Porsche Cayenne. It’s definitely a city of opposites. From a personal safety point of view, we both feel more comfortable here than in Brazil.

So after arrival, and initial wow factor we needed to complete all three sides of the job, house, car triangle.

We have had 3 different flats. We started in Rondebosch on the side of the mountain, then we were with friends in Milnerton (thanks Tricky and Sonia) on the coast close to the city centre and now we have finally settled for the next couple of months at Big Bay. It's fantastic to be able to wake up, and look out the window at Table Mountain, and then decide what to do with the day.

Job-wise we spoke to a few schools and settled working for Cyclone kiteboarding at Big Bay. It was by far the best location to teach and the guys that run the shop are super friendly. Cyclone is owned by Gavin Spowart from Durban, who was big in surfing and now shapes his own range of kiteboards, surfboards and SUP boards. It was all settled over a beer at Doodles, the local kitesurfing hangout at Table View.

Finding decent transport was a difficult one. There are a lot of very broken second hand cars on the market. In the end we settled for a Mitsubishi Pick up or ‘bakkie’ 4x4. Just to get the thing insured we had to get alarm, immobiliser, central locking and anti-hijack fitted as well as a gear stick lock and a hidden panic button (This cost about £80!). It’s a great truck, we named it the ‘Imperial Chariot’. Nice to have all the kit in the back and the ability to offroad.

We plan to do a lot of overland driving when the season ends here at the end of March. Durban, Lesotho and Mozambique are ideas we have been throwing around.

So since settling into the new flat we have been teaching, kiting and spending time with Sarah’s numerous Capetonian relatives.

The food here is incredible. The meat is great, the fish is great (specially kingklip) and the curries are out of this world. We had an amazing Cape Malay meal on the hill overlooking the business district just the other day. Crayfish curry rocks.

The kite conditions are really great, but a rude awakening after Brazil. The waves can be so perfect with amazing powerful left handers. We bought a small 5”3 surf board which is perfect for the nuking conditions, and big fast waves.

The wind is really dense here as it comes from the south (Antarctica), which means your jumps are twice as high and floaty as usual and your loops are crazy. You can easily get 50-100m of downwind travel on a big kite loop.

The wind seems to follow no particular pattern on Bloubergstrand. You just have to be opportunistic. If it’s blowing South easterly, you can normally guarantee that it will kick in around lunch time and then just build and build until sunset. You can pump every kite from 11m to 6m in an afternoon. Big Bay is one of the nicer spots as it’s protected by two large sets of rocks and you have massive kickers and flat water sections. Freestylers stay on the inside in the flats, and the wave riders go downwind a bit for the point break that comes out just a little north. This separates the two disciplines nicely. We have had some of the waves of our lives out here. Really long, large predictable wave riding. After all the crowded lagoons and body destroying freestyle in Brazil, this is exactly what we needed. It’s the sort of variable conditions that keep you interested, keep you on your toes and bring the passion back into your kitesurfing.

Everyone who thinks of Cape Town, thinks of those big hungry fish with teeth. Wildlife wise, we have seen some seals surfing with us, which is always a complete joy. They love the waves as much as we do! There has been the occasional dolphin and a lot of very smelly penguins and other assorted seabirds who sit on the rocks at Big Bay. Every now and then you get freaked out by a bit of kelp which is floating about but so far, so good.

Other JN folk are out here. Leander is living just out the back of our house, it’s nice to see the cheeky young Belgian fellow and we plan to do some trips with him. Mike Schitzhofer is here with his family and is absolutely ripping at the moment. Making the two of us feel very old and inadequate! We went to visit Hannah Whiteley and co in Langebaan and she has also come on loads.

So the plan is to carry on doing much the same for the next couple of months and then go on some adventures. We have been taking some video and will put something together at the end of the trip.