Alef Arendsen

A few weeks ago I was in San Francisco visiting my friend Lars. I still had some frequent flyer miles left after the insane amount of traveling I did the last three to four years and gratefully used these to get myself to San Francisco on a business class flight.

The first few days I went kiteboarding a bit. There’s this great place in Half Moon Bay, right in the harbor. It’s a crazy spot with people kiting right in the middle of the boats in the harbor. There’s a small launch zone there and it’s all quite tacky, but once you’re on the water it’s great; it’s butter flat to plenty of room for tricks!

The second day of kiteboarding I went to Bodega Bay up North. Normally, the people kite in the little pond on the North side of the little stretch of land, but the winds this time were coming from a Southerly direction, so I opted for going out on the ocean side. Winds ranging from 20 to 30 knots made this quite a fun experience. Lars also dropped by later that day, but then, the winds had already died down a lot. Too bad for him, but I still had a great day! Later that night we had dinner in Nick’s Cove in Tomales. Great place, definitely something I’ll have to return to some day!

The week I spent working and meeting with people. I met up with Rod Johnson (the guy I founded SpringSource with some 5 years ago) and with Warner Philips, one of the partners from Tendris, who’s currently living in Merin City.

Saturday, on Lars’ birthday, we went for a sailing trip on the Bay.

First, Vidya and me toured San Francisco to find some original herring (as described in a blog entry from a few years back) at a shop called Lehr. Then we took some champagne and the next morning, we went to Sausalito to pick up the boat.

The trip was awesome. The bay is a great place to do sailing and obviously with the scenery including Alcatraz, the SF skyline, the Bay Bridge and not to forget the Golden Gate Bridge, it was simply *great*!

We drank the champagne on the boat (since I was the skipper, I couldn’t drink too much obviously ) and tasted the herring. This was not as good as the original Dutch herring, but then again, we were at the other side of the globe, eating this Dutch delicacy, with freshly sliced onions. (more pictures on Picasa).

On the last day before I went home, we went to Sherman Island to do some kiteboarding. Normally, the thermal really blows there (ranging from 20 to 35 knots), but since it was already the middle of October, the chances of winds being above 15 knots were quite slim. After about 4 hours of waiting, almost having given up already, the wind picked up however and we had a great session of about 2 hours, just before dusk.

Ruben Lenten has been here a few times too. Once in 2006 when he even got in a fight with some locals (have a look at around 5m00).

I was checking out the wind this morning. It is promising to be a great week. Although I typically don’t like easterly winds (it forces me to kiteboard out on the lakes instead of the sea, and I don’t like that), but then again, it usually offers some nice room for tricks. Anyway, I was checking out the winds and came across this actual:

A bit weird huh, to have gusts that are lower than the actual wind .

I typically use a few sites for forecasting. For the long and mid-term forecasts, I typically use Windfinder.com, offering a 7-day forecast that roughly gives you an outlook where the wind is going to be. They also offer a 3-day Super Forecast, which is a lot more accurate than the 7-day forecast. Last season the Super Forecast was really accurate, but somehow this season that has changed a bit. With winds from the Westerly direction (NW-W-SW), the forecast is quite accurate, although a bit on the low side, but when winds are from the East, the forecasts gets worse.

I double check things sometimes with Windguru, another world-wide wind forecast site. Forecasts are typically quite accurate here as well and they offer quite a variety of forecast using different techniques and models.

For the Dutch sailors / kiteboarders / windsurfers there’s Vliegerweer.nl which offers a nice Google map with a layover… Quite a nice site too, although I don’t use it a lot.

For the intra-day forecast, I use the KNMI (Dutch Weather Institute) forecast for the small aviation (KNMI Weerulletin Kleine Luchtvaart). This forecast is really accurate and also offer an insight into which weather systems are passing through. It’s quite important o know about those, as was proven last weekend, with a big system passing through, with unexpected gusts of more than 50 knots. During these gusts, a guy died at Strand Horst.

Last but not least, I use a site called Actuelewaterdata for actuals on the same day. They only have actuals for a few places out on the North Sea (wind speed, direction), but this is good enough.

Combining all of the above offers me enough data to see whether or not I should go out and where… So far I haven’t had a lot of days that I went in vain…

If you have more sites that provide good info, please leave a comment!

Traffic killed me the past seven days. I though taking planes, trains, taxis and subways was terrible, and would have hoped that since I’m back in Holland I could occasionally take the car again, but I’ve been cured already, in just little over a month.

Last Friday the winds were on near the beach. The direction was north-east, meaning it’s almost off shore. I still took my chances and it worked out just fine. It took me about 2 hours to get to Wijk aan Zee though, due to very heavy taffic (on a Friday afternoon!!). Normally it takes only 1 hour…

Saturday my buddy Marc called me and suggested we go to Strand Horst, which is close to my parents’ place. We got some real good kiting done there too. Wouter was also present and showed us his new Genetrix Hydra 12sqm kite. It’s a pretty unknown brand, but what a beauty. Too bad Wouter had his toming wrong, so couldn’t really generate enough power to take off… I used my 12sqm and my 10sqm and had a lot of fun and some big airs. Too bad I tore my 10sqm a bit, so I’m going to have to get that one repaired.

On Monday, I didn’t expect anything spectacular, but around 6.30, Marc called me to say he was going to get a session done at Stichtse Brug, which is about 15 minutes from my place. I immediately took the car and tried to get there. Too bad traffic got after me again(!). This time is was road works that prevented me from taking the highway… It took me 30 minutes and with the sun going down and the wind picking up it was pretty annoying to see time go by while in traffic… In the end still got a good session done. It ended with me doing a pretty big air with some (unplanned) 720 in there, after which my kite inverted and I had to swim back to shore. Oh well, it’s all in the game

On Monday the world also saw the news of Oracle acquiring Sun. I did a short blog entry about that over at the JTeam blog about my personal opinions on that. Pretty exciting news!

On Tuesday I figured that if I would ever have to give up kiting, I would try taking on the stuff Danny Mac does. The movie below is really cool!

The remainder of the week traffic continued to kill me. I had to drive back and forth to the convention center in Utrecht today and that took me about 45 minutes each way, while it’s only 15 minutes by foot

A while ago I blogged about Wouter and me going to Cabo Verde for a week’s worth of kiteboarding. Well, actually last week, and I can tell you: it was awesome.

We took the train to Schiphol airport late in the afternoon. Our flight was leaving at about 7pm. On the way to Cabo Verde we didn’t have any problems with the almost 50kg of luggage we had. I also had hand luggage that amounted to about 15kg, but before we checked it, we’d stashed our hand luggage in a locker first so that they check-in lady wouldn’t see it. This worked. We arrived Friday late at night at the international airport of Sal, one of the islands in the region a
and quickly took a taxi to hotel Odjo d’Agua.

We quickly went to bed, because the day after, the fun would start. Wind predictions were good and we didn’t want to waste any minute on the water. What followed were 7 very boring days if you first look at it, but to us it was total paradise. Pretty much every day (starting Saturday) we got up about about 8am, had a big breakfast (consisting of eggs, bread yoghurt, lots of fruits, lots of tea and juice and more bread). Next, we got a taxi at about 10am to arrive at kite beach usually at 10.10am. We kited every day until about 5.30 and went home to take a shower. Afterwards, we’d go out for dinner followed by bed at about 9.30pm.

Obviously the fun of the day was between 10.10am and 5.30pm. Every minute on the water was great. Saturday we started with about 15 – 18 knots of wind, which was quite okay. Sunday and Monday were a bit stronger with about 17 – 20 knots of wind. Usually in the afternoon the winds would die down a knot or two, but that wasn’t a big deal, because both Wouter and me had brought big kites as well. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were awesome. The winds were constantly between 25 and 30 knots these days and the swell was awesome (although kite beach is basically on the wrong part of the island to get really big swells). We pretty much kited like maniacs in these winds; to such an extent that on Wednesday night I actually felt pretty sick. Feeling sick or not, it didn’t really matter, because the next morning, it was the same routine: breakfast, taxi, rigging up and heading out… Adrenaline would start flowing as soon as we hit the water and then all pain would be gone again.

A few random thoughts about Sal and this trip:

• Never forget to put on sun screen if you’re that close to the equator. I forgot to do it the first day and it almost ruined my entire holiday
• Don’t forget to bring sun screen. We bought one bottle (because we ran out) and it cost us €40,=!
• Don’t expect anything of the island except for wind, sand and sun. There’s simply nothing else!
• Don’t rent a car, you don’t need it, taking a taxi to and from kite beach is quick enough

More pictures from this trip on Picasa.

In winter, kite boarding in the Netherlands is not a lot of fun. That’s why a lot of people in addition to for example a skiing holiday, also go on a kite boarding holiday to some kind of a windy location with nice white sandy beaches and warm water. A while ago, I came across the Best Offshort Odysseys, an expedition around the world by catamaran sponsored by Best Kiteboarding. An awesome initiative I definitely wanted to join.

Because in the end I didn’t get enough time to do this, I had to find a replacement trip and when Wouter told me he also wanted to go on a kite boarding trip, we quickly set a date (end of Feb, beginning of March) and started looking for a location.

Kiteforum.com has this forum thread (scroll about half-way down) where all the kite boarding locations are categorized by month. This provided a good number of candidates. Cumbuco (Brazil), one of the ABC islands, or Vietnam proved to be too far of a flight (we didn’t want to spend 36 hours of a one-week holiday on a plane or otherwise being transported to our holiday destination), so in the end we settled for Sal, which is a small island (it’s a rock really) part of the Cabo Verde group of islands.

A ticket was quickly settled upon; we’re flying out on February 27th with Air Portugal (TAP) with a short transfer in Lisbon. Hopefully we’ll get there by midnight.

When going out kiteboarding, luggage is a totally different thing. Air Portugal makes you put all your kite gear in one (kite) bag with a maximum weight of only 23kg. The thing is with kiteboarding: if something breaks, there’s usually no shop nearby to get it repaired easily, so that’s why you have to take some spares of some important things.

Here’s the list of things I’m taking:

• 2 boards (Naish Haze 133 and North Jaime Pro 132)
• 3 kites (8sqm and 10sqm Gaastra Jekyll and 12sqm Cabrinha Switchblade)
• Three handle bars (two for the Gaastras, one for the Cabrinha)
• Harnass
• Shorty (the water is warm enough for only a shorty) + shoes
• Spare fins and screws
• Tube repair kit

I’m splitting the luggage over two bags, one to take with me on the plane. This bag is probably a little bit bigger than what’s allowed on the plane, but then again, I’m good enough at fooling the airline people lately to get it on board. The other bag is a big kiteboarding bag. The hand luggage contains one kite, my clothes, shoes, flipflops and a few other necessities. The kiteboarding bag contains the rest.

Like I said, Sal really is only a rock. The tour guide on Sal says the following:

The arrival at Sal on an international flight is one of the most deliciously depressing descents. For hours the traveller has scanned the Atlanctic from the aeroplane window, searching for the lost islands of Cape Verde with an increasing sense of their isolation. Then Sal appears: relentlessly brown and featureless, etched with dry cracks through which rain occasionally flows. As the descent begins one feels like the Mars Pathfinder as it fell towards the Red Planet – except that Mars is believed by some to be capable of sustaining life.

Disembarking from the aircraft to cross the heat of the runway you will gaze at the rocky plains in puzzlement, trying to remember why you decided to come. There are two possible reasons: either you are going to the white sands and windy waters that lie on the island’s south coast – be assure that they are there and they are beautiful or you are passing through to other islands of much greater interest

Nope, we’re not going to pass through to islands of much greater interest, we’ll be staying there, on the little featureless rock. There is going to wind though! For now, the forecasts look pretty good with 17 to 19 knots on Saturday and 20 – 22 on Sunday through to Tuesday. Enough for me to either put my 10 or my 8 on and have some great fun!

Well, enough for now; I’m going to prepare my luggage a little bit more. We’re flying out on Friday (the day after tomorrow) with an evening flight and will be flying back on the 8th of March, arriving back in Holland on Sunday morning. I’ll keep you posted!

Great footage and editing from a trip by a few guys to Chile and Argentina.

“Passionnément Volcans”, ski, snowkite et speedflying sur les volcans des Andes from Cybercimes.TV on Vimeo.

Last Sunday I had my first session of the year (well, if you don’t count that silly ice kiting experiment early January–don’t ever try that, it’s uncontrollable).

The winds were supposed to very good (around 20 knots), but in the end the predictions were way off and we only had about 10 – 14 knots. I only brought my 12sqm unfortunately, so things weren’t all that good.

Well, at least, the season got started. Let’s hope many good session will follow. Next Friday evening, I’m actually heading out to Cabo Verde to spend a week kiteboarding in the warm seas of the island called Sal. Pray with me for some good winds please !!

I’ve got about two of the four (at least I know about four) board sports nailed right now: kiteboarding and snowboarding. Whenever I look at a little movie of a wakeboarding session, I always feel I should try that out once too… I don’t like wake-style tricks too much, I much more like the high jumps and other more old-school kiteboarding tricks. Wakeboarding looks a bit… too… agressive I think… but then again, this could a nice no-wind alternative. Too bad the wakeboarding parks are closed in winter too and in all this cold, I really don’t feel like going out kiteboarding too…

Ah, about that other board sport, I don’t think I’ll ever take on skateboarding… Too much injuries with that one…

I was flying home today the amount of turbulence I had confirmed what I already knew: it was a very windy Friday. Now obviously, Fay and other storms in the South-East part of the United States and the Caribbean can get much stronger, but this storm had gusts reaching 75 knots (which is 135 km/h). When I finally got home (first I had a delay in Copenhagen, then my umbrella was lost and I had to file report for that and last but not least my train was also delayed), I immediately checked out hanglos.nl and found this picture by JePe. I clearly shows there were some guys that had a lot of fun today!

I hope to be going to Horst tomorrow to do a short session. The winds are going to die down a little bit, but it’s still going to around 30 to 35 knots out at sea. Horst is a place at one of the lakes in Holland so the winds will definitely be less there… Disadvantage of a lake is that it’s much colder than the sea, so I don’t think I’ll hold out very long… If it’s too much for me, I’ll also bring the camera; there are for sure going to be some cracks out there tomorrow.

Windy weekend here we come!!!

No, those are not the essential things in life… It’s what kept me busy today though.

I started out today by doing lots of stuff in front the computer, from reviewing documents, to setting up training material, to preparing presentations and more stuff like that. At 4.30 I kind of was a bit tired of it and went out for a while. I figured I should get some books. I’m starting a world tour in a few days (well, that’s maybe exaggerating it a little bit, but I will be traveling quite a bit the next few weeks) so there was a definite need for some reading material. I got myself the following books:

• The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole – by Sue Townsend
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz
• Gentlemen of the Road – Michael Chabon
• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Doyne
• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

Then as I walked home, I decided to take a different route and came across a new take-out place creatively called the Food Shop. It’s on the Oude Gracht opposite the Rembrandt Cinema. I’m eating the food they prepared for me as we speak (still busy reviewing some documents) and it’s quite good. There was some potato gratin, beef stew with onions and tomotoes and some mixed grilled veggies and a salad. Pretty edible

Last but not least in about an hour, I’m heading towards Laren, to have one of my kites repaired. Tomorrow the winds are blowing again (about 20 knots) and although I won’t be able to use my 8sqm I guess, I still have to have it repaired after I ripped it a bit… The place I’m heading is called Kitereparatie.nl. It’s just a guy who’s good at fixing kites…

In the meantime, Boards of Canada started playing, which reminds me of the last few songs I heard on Last.FM. I subscribed to Last.FM by the way. It doesn’t bring you a whole lot, apart from your loves songs now being a radio station you can listen to, but well, I think the service is really useful, so I’ll gladly pay up.

Tonight I’m not going to do a whole lot. I’m going to have a few beers with Jack (a friend of mine). Tomorrow it’s kiting day. I’ll also drop by at my parents. They just got back from a holiday and then I’ll be going to Amsterdam to have a few drinks there… On Sunday, I’ll probably do some kiting again and later in the day, I’ll fly to Copenhagen. Denmark and Sweden, that’s what it’s going to be this week.

• Electric President – Hum
• Piana – Winter Sleep

– cool Japanese ambient music

• John Afterglow – Raw Like Sushi

– some really cool Swedish electro!