Portsmouth Kite Festival

Portsmouth Kite Festival often signals the end of our festival season, and this was once again the case this past weekend. The weather was pretty decent: some cloud cover most of the weekend (heavy on Sunday), but basically dry (only a few drops of rain on Sunday). The wind started off 7-11mph on both days; on Saturday it gradually increased up to about 20mph, whereas on Sunday it gradually dropped down to around 5mph. The wind was always from across the water, so pretty good wind conditions!

After a sunny pilot's meeting Saturday morning, the festival was on its way. As always in my festival reports in this blog, I will focus on the sport kite displays; there were lots of these this year!

Let's start with quad pairs this time.

Fracture was present as a pair (Josh and Harry), flying Fulcrums ...

... and also flying Fulcrums was Evolver, consisting of James and Carl (who is the designer of the Fulcrum, so they were obviously flying these kites).

Switching to Revolution kites, The Flying Squad flew as a pair (Stephen and Dan Hoath).

Even though I've seen their current pair routine many times now, it remains a brilliant quad pair routine, full of typical 'Hoath elements'. Always a joy to watch it, no matter how often I've seen it.

On to teams, but staying with quad kites: The Quad Mob (Josh, Harry, Chris and Simon).

The Flying Squad came back in the arena, first as a 6-strong quad team (Stephen, Dan, Ryan, Simon, Susan and, new to the team, Pat) ...

... and, subsequently, as a 3-strong dual-line team (Stephen, Dan and Ryan).

This was my favourite pair/team routine of the festival, again with typical 'Hoath' touches, but done in a very different way, given how differently dual-line and quad-line kites fly.

Bridging the gap between pair/team-flying and individual flying: Carl Wright!

As always, he flew routines with two kites ...

... and with three kites. 

From Carl, seamlessly on to individual sport kite displays. And that's because Alexander, his 7-year old son, flew a sport kite routine in the arena for the first time!

He did really well, and I wonder how long it will take before there is yet again a Team Spectrum father-son display ...

Staying with individual sport kite displays, we had appearances from Jesse Kapsten, over from the US, ...

... Chris Goff (who needs no further introduction), ...

... and Carl Robertshaw. His routine to Sinead O'Connor's "Troy" was by far my favourite individual routine. Because of his amazing control of the Fulcrum, he captured both the slow and the angry parts of the song perfectly.

And then of course us: Flying Fish (last, but not least, I hope ...). We flew a total of 10 routines over the weekend, and, similar to Dorchester Kite Festival, we also did a 'how to fly a sport kite' demonstration ahead of our second slot on both days. As to our routines, we're definitely pleased with how we flew at Portsmouth. Overall, this was our best festival this year, especially our Sunday routines (we really nailed "Rise Like a Phoenix" (it's not a choreographed routine, we follow the music), with a solid two-point landing of both kites exactly on the music.

We also flew a special routine, in memory of Jerney Kaagman. We only tried it out once before, and it didn't have a written choreography; it was flown totally driven by the music ("Hazy Paradise"). Prior to flying it, I briefly explained on the PA that Jerney was the lead singer of Earth and Fire, that their music has been with me for more than 50 years, and that when the news broke of her passing about a month and a half ago, I wanted to fly a tribute to her. 

I will admit that I felt a bit emotional at times while flying it, as this was much more of a personal routine than any other we've ever flown at a festival. We decided to keep this routine as a unique one-event tribute to Jerney, with Portsmouth being the first festival we attended after her passing, and so not fly it again in coming years.

Enough of my reminiscences for now and back to some other displays. Of course, Portsmouth had a quad-line mega-team (it wouldn't be Portsmouth without one)!

16 quad kites formed the number '100', in celebration of Portsmouth's 100th year anniversary as city. 

On Sunday, the programme finished with a Serpent Mass Launch, which is always a 'Kodak moment' (as Paul Reynolds on the PA rightly said).

Lots more pictures (including single liners, from art kites to large inflatables) are here and here. But I do want to briefly highlight one single-liner. Portsmouth customarily has an arena slot to fly Spirits, in memory of people lost. During the Spirit Fly on Saturday, I had the opportunity to very briefly fly this 'Flame Spirit', and did so in memory of Jerney ....

Picture credits: Alan Pinnock (pilot's meeting); Carl Wright (Flying Fish in action)