A Vast Playground

HDH. Dillingham. Kaena Point. Kuaokala Ridge. Whatever we want to call it, the northwestern tip of the island is a vast playground for airsports of every flavor. Nowhere on the island do we have a chance to mix it up with so many other aviators in such a variety of conditions. Over the last two days, an adventurous couple of crews made their way out there to seek their fortunes, and many of us were rewarded for our strenuous efforts with long high flights over that spectacular peninsula.

On Sunday, seven of us braved the countless switchbacks of the Kealia trail, and five of us launched to soar for hours in a sweet moderate onshore breeze. The airflow on launch was quite challenging, a bit cross from the north and not flowing cleanly. As the airflow increased over the course of the day, it got even more challenging to pull a wing up into the airflow that was arcing over launch (and sometimes flowing back out). Sandy and Johnimo were last on launch and couldn't quite make it happen, but the rest of us managed to get ourselves plucked out of there with various degrees of sketchiness. Once up and away, the lift was abundant and we found we could venture anywhere, from the far end of the point past the headland, to the drop zone or further inland. The sailplanes were staying up easily as well, and they seemed to really enjoy flying around us and buzzing close. It is such a blast to fly with those speed demons! Roll call: Flystrong, Divot, Scrappy, Berndt, me, Sandy, Johnimo.



On Monday, three of us headed out there to find the clouds streaming over the back of Kaala in the lee of a strong sea breeze. Completely different from the previous day where the clouds were all drifting onshore from the north. Kealia and Meadows seemed likely to be too leeside to be pleasant if they would even work. But since we had Joey's awesome 4WD assault vehicle, we followed a hunch and explored launch options at the very tip of the peninsula. We found a decent grassy spot about three hundred feet above the albatross nesting area gate, and took off into the sea breeze flow that was wrapping around from the north. It was one of the sketchiest bushwhack launches I've used, but probably not the very worst. It was about as low as you could take off and hope to get up, and Woody and I managed to squeak our way around and into some decent thermic lift. Joey hit a flush cycle and couldn't quite bench back up. Conditions turned out to be super light and thermic, a bit leeside, but not horrible like the last time we tried flying those conditions out there. (On that day the thermals were downright mean and nasty, but today's thermals were merely a bit grumpy.) There were a few thermals that stood out for their buoyant cheer, however, and we rode them up high above the meadow to points between two and three grand. Woody got the highest, drifting back above Yokohama Bay before returning. We flew to Kealia to verify that the air in that direction was way more leeside and nasty, before retreating back down the point where things were more organized. A great day of research! Roll call: Woody, Joey, me. Thanks to Joey for the sweet ride out to the point in the Hummer!