Archive for the 'Environment' Category

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Blue Kites are Faster than Green ones

 Blue Kites are Faster than Green ones

Today I had a really nice long chilled kiting session with a friend. It was flat water for a change. Usually I’m too lazy to venture into flat water as the beach is closer to where I live most of the time. When I got there I was so lazy I didn’t even feel like going out. But the conditions with the tide and wind were close to perfect – nice and gusty, on and off with quite a fair bit of chop. Unfortunately there was no current and only one or two poles and hidden hazards. Last time I kited there I hit a submerged bridge at low speed as the wind was dying and I was negotiating a route in near a messed up fence with lots of trash around it. Today I managed to avoid this dark corner and it looked cleaner. Or maybe that’s because I was looking more at the sky and the horizon.

My main goal for the session was to relax. But I also experimented with going as slow and as fast as possible. Slow is definitely harder. I usually use a green kite but my kite buddy had a blue one in the same style that was partially rigged already. He wasn’t using it so I just went with that. I try not to look much at the kite or even think about it but the blue against the sky has a very different feel. And it’s definitely the fastest I’ve ever been so it has to be the colour. I only really need one kite so I’m thinking of getting a few different colours in the same style. Or maybe I’ll just paint mine when if I get sick of it.

Tidal Power

Tidal Power

It’s good to see tidal power coming of age in the UK. Here’s an interesting article.

Turning Reality into Dreams

Kite Power

Kite Power

Wow! This is awesome! Kites for power generation. Well at least to part-power a ship. Looking at the video, it’s a foil kite. It looks very much like a paraglider. The kite is 160 sq metres and flies 100-300 metres above the ship. It achieves a 30% reduction in shipping fuel for a cargo liner. Impressive stuff. I saw something online a few years back about using kites for power generation. It appeared to be at quite an early concept stage but I reckon the idea is feasible. There’s so much power in wind and waves and it’s great to see more of it being tapped into.