Oman is one of the best places to kitesurf
in the world, finds Nicola Shipway
We are sitting on folding chairs eating scrambled eggs when the wind drops. The non-kitesurfers among us don’t notice – it is only a momentary lull, a few seconds of silence in an otherwise windswept morning so blowy that the cooking pans are coated with sand and the eggs taste gritty despite our efforts to shield them. But Jamie Selway, a kite-surfing aficionado, halts mid-conversation.
“Listen,” he says. “The wind has stopped.” And we all go quiet and listen to the silence, and look at the sea, which is suddenly flat. And then the breeze picks up again from a different direction, whistling through the scrub, over the dunes and into our ears, and the sea heaves, and sand scurries round the parked cars to invade our camp from another direction.
Kitesurfers are obsessed with the wind – with good reason, for without it there is no sport. Desk-bound kitesurfers pining for their weekend fix will log on to www.windfinder.com. Oman is among the best places on the planet to kitesurf – the summer season, from May to September, is world class, says Jamie. “The wind is consistent and on average 20 knots plus every day from Ras al Hadd south.” Masirah is popular with both kiters and windsurfers, and although the connecting ferry is currently old and slow, a faster ferry terminal (with roll-on/roll-off catamarans) is rumoured to be in construction.
We have driven south of Ras al Hadd to Aseela, which Jamie says has a good point break with fairly consistent wind, and a nice calm area tucked in the corner. Another kiter, Heiko Hillgartner, adds that it gets the edge of the monsoon winds. Some four hours from the capital, Aseela is close enough for weekend trips – even from Dubai – and is cooler than Muscat, thanks to the windchill factor.
Kitesurfing has been around for a while but has started to grow quickly in the last five years. It uses the wind as the propelling force: kiters stand on a board and steer the airborne kite, or ‘carve up the wind’, to drive them across the water. A traditional kite is C-shaped when inflated, but kite design is changing rapidly. For the last few years bow kites and hybrids have been popular, and next year will see further progression in terms of kite design. Kites have an inflated leading edge and struts that give them shape – Jamie explains that as well as making them rigid, this ensures the kites float if they come down in the sea.
As we approached the beach across a sandy track the previous day, we spied seven or eight kites fluttering in the sky like colourful crescent moons. The kiters were darting and swooping across the waves, sometimes launching into the air in mighty jumps. In fact, there are several different styles of riding: wakestyle, for example, involves powered moves taken from wakeboarding, says Jamie.
This is Jamie’s third summer kiting. He loves it. He and a friend, Will Stringer, taught themselves together – there are no tutors in Oman. Like Sami Razek, another kiter friend, Jamie learnt after he had mastered wakeboarding, which involves riding a twin-tip board that is towed behind a motorboat. The problem with wakeboarding, he and Sami agree, is that you get fed up of waiting for someone to drive the boat; kitesurfing doesn’t need anyone else but the kiter. Heiko also notes that many windsurfers switch to kitesurfing because kiting requires less wind and less kit. He estimates that Oman has around ten to 15 people who kitesurf; there are another ten to 15 in Abu Dhabi and about 60 active kiters in Dubai.
“Dubai is one of the cheapest places in the world to buy
kitesurfing equipment,” reveals Jamie. It needn’t be a prohibitively expensive hobby either: with RO200 you can pretty much set
yourself up with second-hand gear. This gear includes a board and harness, and a kite, which varies in size, from around six to 21 metres, depending on the build of the kiter and the strength of wind. You can wear as much safety equipment as you like, adds Jamie, who claims that, despite its image as a hardcore, adrenalin-fuelled activity, kitesurfing is a safe sport if you are careful. Obviously a kite that is out of control can be hazardous – kites generate
enormous amounts of power. There are basic safety precautions
that must be respected by kitesurfers, some of which are couched in esoteric terminology that can be perplexing to the uninitiated. For instance, ‘never ride overpowered’ means don’t use a kite that is too large either for you or for the wind conditions.
As we sit finishing our breakfast, Jamie and Sami talk about local kiter Miguel Willis, who was brought up in Oman and who last year was rated ninth-best kitesurfer in the world. They discuss kiting on Azaiba beach: often it is busy in winter, when the prevailing north-easterlies bring in a steady 12 to 16 knots. “It has very easy, gentle learning conditions with a long beach to be blown back on to if you ditch your kite and can’t re-launch,” says Jamie, adding that plenty of kiters are willing to give advice. Apparently it’s easy to progress from beginner to intermediate, but harder to become advanced as some of the moves require a lot of confidence and skill, which you have to build up slowly.
Later, after they have exhausted themselves diving and darting across the sea, they will deflate and roll up their kites, and head home, where Jamie will plan another trip and fantasise about a snow-kiting holiday just across the Gulf in Iran.
“I love the sport because when you finish work you can just head to the beach, pump up the kite and away you go,” he says. “On the water I forget all my work stress and get a good workout, plus I get a big buzz from launching myself off the clear blue water.”
Kitesurfing: the facts
Using a kite to enhance speed is nothing new – in the 13th century in China, canoeists used kites to harness the wind and propel their craft across water
In the 19th century, British inventor and kite enthusiast George Pocock used large kites to ‘sail’ carriages across land. His aim was to establish kite power as an alternative to horsepower, thereby enabling him to avoid the so-called ‘horse tax’ – tolls levied on horse-drawn carriages that were calculated according to the number of horses
The development in the 1970s of controllable kites made kite traction feasible; some 20 years later, kites were being used to power buggies
Kite design advanced in the 1980s under French brothers Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux, who invented the first inflatable kite. The ‘Wipika’ design, launched in the 1990s, had preformed inflatable tubes and a simple bridle system – both of which aided re-launching in water
The craze for kitesurfing took off on the east coast of the US during the late 1990s, following the invention of the patented ‘KiteSki’ system (kite-powered water skiing) by aerodynamicist Bill Roeseler and his water-skier son, Corey. The skies evolved into a single board
Like other water-related and extreme sports, kitesurfing can be dangerous if not practised with care
Kitesurfing has its own extensive (and, to the layman, cryptic) terminology – expressions such as ‘airtime’, ‘wind window’, ‘chicken loop’ and ‘bladder’ are all part of the lexicon
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