Portsmouth Kite Festival

The kite festival scene is gradually emerging from the covid era. From no festivals for us in 2020, and one festival for us (Portsmouth) last year, we are lined up for three this year (Brighton and Streatham were sadly cancelled recently): the inaugural Seal Bay Kite Festival in June, Portsmouth last weekend, and Bognor Regis at the end of this month.

Weather over the weekend was generally cloudy (with most of the sun on Saturday). Wind came over the water and was 'standard' on Saturday (mostly 7-13mph) but much stronger (up to 22mph) on Sunday. And no rain!

As always in these festival blog posts, I focus on the pair/team-flying, but of course a lot more happened, from art kites to large inflatables (and a gorgeous dragon, which I'll briefly mention at the end of this post). 

Fracture was present, flying both 2-line and 4-line routines, with Fury and Fulcrum kites, respectively. 

Carl Wright (Team Spectrum) flew his usual 2-kite and 3-kite routines.

Switching to 4-line kites, the Dunstable Downs Old Gents (aka DDoGs) performed in the arena. 

And, of course, Portsmouth wouldn't be Portsmouth without The Decorators!

And then Flying Fish, of course! Using T5 kites (standards on Saturday; V2s on Sunday), we flew our 'Rise Like a Phoenix' and 'Carmina' routines in each of our slots (the 'Carmina' routine is basically our current technical routine to music).

On Sunday, when a few of the scheduled slots couldn't happen due to the wind being too strong for the focus kites, we flew two extra routines: we joined Fracture for a 4-strong off-the-cuff routine as 'Fractured Fish' on Sunday morning ...

... and 'Fractured Fish' was further joined by Alan Poxon and Dave Morley for a 6-strong mini-mega-team ('Foolish Fractured Fish Symphony') in the afternoon.

Of course, there was also a proper 4-line mega-team, comprising The Decorators, DDoGs and several others.

More pictures of the festival are here. As I mentioned above, a gorgeous Balinese Dragon was flown on both days, and we helped launch it and bring it back down again.

Picture credits of us flying: Carl Wright, Helen Ribchester