Does That Make Me Crazy?

Yesterday, forecasters were calling for light tradewinds, along with low pressure and instability, and even some scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. But when I got to Kahana around 2, it was still sunny and perfect.

Sure, there was a huge and menacing dark foggy shadow filling the back of Kahana Valley. But I wasn't planning on flying back there anyway! The wind was a bit brisker and a bit more easterly than I prefer. So much for the forecast of light trades. But at least the texture on the bay was nice and consistent, with no cats paws. The radar showed some rain in town, but nothing coming our way.

Thom raced out to join me and we hiked up, launched from low launch, and benched up quickly. Observing the big black shadow expanding in our direction, we got to cloudbase at about two grand over the front, turned and pointed our trusty steeds towards the sunny vista downrange. It was a bit stronger than I prefer for XC flying, but the whitecaps didn't look too bad, and our penetration was still okay.

We benched up to two grand again at Punaluu, well out front, and then turned again for Hauula. We heard Duck on the radio and he said he'd follow and pick us up. Thom opted for the safest high wind landing spot, Hauula Beach Park.

But I had a crazy idea. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take advantage of a really brisk and really easterly day, to just rocket downrange with a massive tailwind? The landing might be a bit sketchy, but man, think of the glide ratio you'd achieve! I figured if I could get to two grand over Hauula, I could just scream straight to Kahuku Golf Course from there! I was only able to get to about 1,700 feet, but what the heck, that's about where the cloud ceiling was by then anyway.

I headed out towards the ocean as far as I could, while still maintaining my height, and then I turned towards the golf course. As I zoomed over Pounders I checked my GPS and I was moving at a brisk 45 mph, but I only had about 1,400 feet of ground clearance now. It soon became apparent that the strength and angle of the wind were really too cross to give me the boost I needed to make it much past Laie Point. In fact, I think I cleared that peninsula lower than I've ever skated over, and I was using almost full bar just to keep from blowing back over town.

I saw the Hokulea sailing vessel parked in Laie Bay, and I zoomed over it and parked myself into the howling breeze, backing my way down onto a stretch of beach just past Hukilau Beach Park. I was able to stand and kite for a moment, with zero brake input, but then I got lifted off my feet by a gust and had to kill the wing, as it dragged me over the dune and into the woods. Whew! A bit sketchy but super fun. Does that make me crazy? Probably.

Thanks to Thom for supporting my craziness. And thanks to Duck for the retrieve and the refreshments! Driving back with Duck, we could see that the black fog had completely swallowed Kahana. It turned out to be a thick foggy haze, but no actual rain ever fell there. When we got back to the LZ, LarryMc showed up, and said he'd got drenched as he was kiting at Kualoa.

As we finished our refreshments in the parking lot, we could hear several long low rumblings of thunder from somewhere over the center of the island, and a few flashes illuminated the blackness. A quick check of the radar showed red and orange conflagrations of thunderstorm activity over three corners of the island. But our little corner was still magically dry. I heard Scrappy saw funnel clouds over town. And Pete lost power in Kaneohe for a while. Crazy!