So, what do you do if you're in a superb kiteboarding location? You go kiteboarding! Duh! OK, what if you're in a superb kiteboarding location AND there's a full moon? You go kiteboarding! Double Duh!
We found ourselves in such a situation last week, once again in the company of my brother Mark and "Uncle" Winston from medical school, as well as a friend of Mark's and our long-suffering wives. Several years ago Paula found an affordable beachfront house in Turks and Caicos at the premier kite location. Yes, I know, "affordable beachfront" and "Turks and Caicos" are rarely found in the same sentence.
If you'd like to rent the house, complete with it's own beach and buckets of wind, it's name is, uh, lemme see, uh, Pacific Northwest Dangerous Creature House With Homicidal Neighbors, complete with rats, mosquitos, loud parties and outdoor plumbing. And Paula has it rented through 2055 so fuggetaboutit!
And also, just to warn you, this place has ugly water,
unattractive sunrises,
and other disadvantages too numerous to mention, so just move along citizens, nothing to see here.
Back to the moonlight thing. On our first trip to Turks and Caicos six years ago, we tried moonlight kiting, and although I didn't have much success, my brother and a friend had a great time and raved about the experience. However, they did comment, (Spoiler Alert!) that it was a bit hazardous owing to the fact that you couldn't see the other guy kiting. I guess that's because of the whole "in-the-dark" thing.
This year, there was to be a full moon several nights before ending the trip to this place that you don't want to visit, and the wind turned out to be perfect.
Luckily, the shallow, wide bay in front of the (undesirable!) house is without any obstructions. Also, as far as we could tell, there are no official marine regulations in Turks and Caicos against moonlight kiteboarding, and we decided to ignore the more universal common-sense suggestions against it. Note: it's likely that humans haven't had time to evolve common sense about kiting at night since they've only been kiting at all for a couple of decades. It may take some time to get that into the gene pool.
Or perhaps our judgment might have been affected by our diet during the trip. As busy as we were on the water, we only found time to consume six gallons of ice cream, two dozen dozen cookies, a giant birthday cake, a half-dozen pizzas and some other well-known brain foods.
Having checked the lunar phases (see above) we wisely reasoned that the full moon would be at night, so we prepared carefully; after all, our safety is priceless. We went on Amazon and found the cheapest LED's that promised to be waterproof, knowing that whatever they promise on that site has got to be true. Right?
On the appointed night, with a beautiful full moon rising in an almost cloudless sky, we carried our gear down to the beach and set up.
There was a brief but heated discussion about which side of a kitesurfing kite was port (red light) and starboard (green light), but soon all was ready. I got to be the guinea pig.
It was simply other-worldly zooming along out over the dark water. The actual kiting mechanics were just like during the day, but the scene...WOW! "Ethereal" doesn't even come close. Pretty soon, my turn was up, and I handed my kite off to my brother.
He and the other two common-sense-deficient friends sailed the bay for the next hour or so. The lights on the boards and kites were exactly the ticket; to us back on the beach it looked like an infestation of large, mutant fireflies out on the bay.
Maybe seventy years hasn't been long enough to develop that common-sense thing, but the moonlight kiting session was the outstanding ending of an otherwise cool trip. It was just plain great laughing and sharing such a unique experience with good friends.
We hope that you also continue to do some dumb stuff that stamps your timeline with the occasional exclamation point. Just remember to stock up on the LED lights early - the threatened tariffs may jack up the price!
Dave & Paula
