Desert Kite Buggying Diary

Yesterday, then weather forecast promised good winds all day and Giorgio was chomping at the bit to get his buggy fix. Unfortunately, the workshop messed up his metal bits for the Shamal (Composite buggy), so that wasn’t ready. Still, he could use my DB-I (Death Buggy Mk I).
Meeting under the Ghaf tree as usual we debated what kite to use. This is a common scenario that goes something like this:
“What kite are you putting on?” says I.
“Dunno yet, what are you putting on?”
“Either 4m Blade or the 5m Blur but wind seems like it’s dropping, so might use the 4.9 Blade”.
“In that case I’ll use my 4.5 Fury”
“As wind forecast promises to pick up during the day finally I think I’ll use 5.0m Blur.”

We decide to run around the sabkah for a bit but then the dunes looked too inviting,
My Blur has 25m lines, which aren’t the best for the dunes, so headed back to the Ghaf to put on some 40m lines.
During my line changing exercise, Giorgio came back quite elated telling me he’d achieved a new personal best of 64.9 kph. “Crazy Italian”, crossed my mind as I said, “Well done Giorgio, I’ll photograph your GPS to get that registered on Popeyethewelder’s Flexi sticky”.























GIORGIO’s PB
Now I wasn’t decided if I should do the Half Pipe or The Dragon Run but winds looked more favourable to do the Dragon.
I was buggying about a kilometer from the Ghaf when I saw Angelo’s car kicking up the dust headed for the Ghaf. I will run down these dunes and tell Angelo that we will do the Dragon Run as soon as he is ready. As this thought was passing through my mind , ‘Ping’ as a right hand brake line appeared to break during a particular hard pull up a soft dune coupled with a sudden nasty gust.
Examination showed that the Blur had blown apart & will need professional fixing.
Brig driving her Razor picked up my 4m Blade from the car. I could then carry on back to the ghaf where Angelo was about ready.
We ran around the sabkah a while for Angelo to warm up and then I said are you both game to try the Dragon Run?
No hesitation from either of them and as I was the only person who’d ever done this run led out across the sabkah watching Giorgio going like a mad thing as the buggy spent a lot of time quite unplanned on two wheels. “ Crazy Italian” crossed my mind again.

Heading south towards the Dragon’s teeth sat at the bottom of the dunes, we easily mounted the first high dunes. It was then a series of climbing big dunes & dropping down the steep leeward sides. The strong South Westerly we’d had about a week ago had deposited a lot of soft sand on the now windward side of the dunes making it very difficult close to the dune ridges at the buggies sunk deep into this soft stuff.

Posted by FluffyWOO at 21:57 |