Porto Pollo (or Porto Puddu) on the northern coast of sardinia is a sick little spot - It's got a real mellow beach-bum/water sports vibe, and it's basically two almost fully enclosed bays seperated by a sandspit that's been reinfored to be just wide enough to drive across that reaches out to an island about the size of the F&P building, with a massive camp ground on it. There's about four windsurf schools scattered round the sandspit area and one main kitesurf school/rental shop attached to the biggest (and coolest, clearly) windsurf crew. The layout is perfect in that you get typical cross/on shore winds with a big sandy spit jutting out, so there's small chop on the up wind side, and glass on the other. The down side for us kiters - it's seperated into zones, and we get only the upwind side, and even then we have to stay at least a few hundy meters from the spit. ok, I can understand it, but it's a bit torturous to have to walk past that glassy water to go to the launch spot... especially when it's full of damn learner windsurfers... ;-)
I didn't get the best luck with wind - when i arrived there was a good 18-20kts and i watched a solid late arvo of kiting, waiting out for the next day so i could hire gear. The next morning - not a breath! Made for a nice relaxing day on the beach though... The next day thankfully, it was back up to 12-15kts, and I took out a 14m '07 torch with one of these naish barn door boards...
I didn't get the best luck with wind - when i arrived there was a good 18-20kts and i watched a solid late arvo of kiting, waiting out for the next day so i could hire gear. The next morning - not a breath! Made for a nice relaxing day on the beach though... The next day thankfully, it was back up to 12-15kts, and I took out a 14m '07 torch with one of these naish barn door boards...
It's a pretty decent light wind board (you can guess how easily it gets up planing), and it's real light for it's size, though i have to say - not noticably better up wind than our light wind beast Hamish... And it doesn't really add any extra pop and felt a bit skatey on landings, probably due to it's flat door-like simplicity...
I then had another, fully lit session later on with the same board and an '06 16m boxer, with a couple more kts... took a bit of getting used to after the waroo, big five line c-kite styles and all, but wicked to be out on the water... Especially as I basically had the place to myself - not something I would have got in 20+ kts, or any closer to summer. Jen got a bucket of photos so i'll get some up when I can...
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