Seal Bay Kite Festival

Following our flying at the jubilee celebration in Croughton earlier this month, we had our first kite festival last weekend! Some time ago, we were asked if we were interested in flying at the inaugural kite festival at the Seal Bay Resort in Selsey. Is the sky blue? We went there earlier this year to try out the field and for some promotional photos and videos, and it's great to see a new festival come on the calendar, given how many we lost over the last number of years. 

Seal Bay Resort provided static caravans to invited flyers, and with Flying Fish's caravan and Twisted Bridle's caravan being across the road from each other, ....

... sticking for the L-katz routines took place Friday evening, lubricated by some fermented grape juice. 

Saturday morning, it was a case of putting up tent and banners, and deciding which kites to use. The weather turned out to be cloudy all weekend, with some rain or drizzle and winds varying a lot, especially on Sunday. 

The festival was split over two sites within the resort: a large field with an arena mostly for pair and team flying, and the pebble beach for large inflatables. I'll say a bit more about Flying Fish's and L-katz' performances later in this post, but who else was performing in the arena?

First of all our sister pair, Twisted Bridle. Due to several reasons, they had hardly flown together for quite a while, so it was great to see them back in action again!

Then there was Fracture, flying as a pair this weekend. Excellent routines, as you would expect from the reigning UK champions. 

The DDoGs added quad-flying to the schedule, and flew their usual calm relaxed routines. 

Simon Franks added multi-kite flying to the weekend, with some of his routines featuring tails. 

And then Flying Fish. We flew Airdynamics T5 kites for our pair routines, which included our 2022 technical routine flown with music, and our latest competition ballet. On the Sunday morning, due to the fast-dropping wind, we had to switch from standards to ultralights, and then again to Cubans, before we could actually complete our ballet; third time lucky .... We really nailed our final ballet of the festival, though!

With our L-katz team (Flying Fish + Twisted Bridle), we used KiteTech Impulse kites, and flew our technical routine with music, and our old ballet (for several reasons, our new ballet is still far from being finished). Our last performance of the weekend was hampered by kite problems developing during the routine (mostly bridle-related), so we had to finish as a pair; the show must go on!

Saturday's evening programme on the beach added illuminated kites to the festival. Sadly, due to the strong wind, the searchlight-flying (in which we would have participated) was cancelled, but at least we were present on the giant screen at the entrance to the beach!

And of course, both the Saturday and Sunday schedule included mega-team flying! Flying Fish joined with Twisted Bridle, Fracture and Simon Franks (plus, briefly, the DDoGs on Saturday) for some fast and furious flying to AC/DC.

More pictures of the festival weekend, including some from the illuminated kite flying, are here.

Picture credits: Alan Pinnock (Flying Fish and L-katz), David Caulfield (mega-team)