Hi Everyone! Sorry its been a few days since we’ve updated the site but we’re down in San Francisco right now at the Big Air Wind Jam at Crissy Field. We left Seattle late on Thursday night and drove for 17 hours to get down here. It took us two and a half hours just to get from Seattle to Tacoma! We got to Portland around 2:30 am, picked up our friend Gregg “Tekko” Gnecco (NW Liquid Force Rep), and hit the road.

Waiting for the wind to pick up in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

On Friday afternoon when we arrived at Crissy Field, they were just starting the US National Kiteboarding Course Racing Championships. What a mouthful! The whole thing was extremely well organized and they even had rescue jet skis on site in case your kite went down or you lost your board. They had a big awards ceremony last night at the St. Francis Yacht Club who have supported the event. We were really impressed with the Course Racing part of the event.

Davey Blair stoked to fly his brand new 08 14m Liquid Force Havoc.

Davey with a sand start.

Yesterday was the qualifiers for the big air event. The crowning moment of the whole day was Jesse Richman snagging the world record for total hangtime on his Cabrinha Switchblade 2. I’ll have to find out exactly what his set-up was but the overall record was 22 seconds in the air. Just as he was coming down to land, he caught a thermal/gust and shot back up another 10 feet. He had 7 kiteloops during that one jump, it was unreal! It’s pretty cool that such a young guy can really hold his own out there. His big bro Sean Richman was on the beach shouting out tips to him too. Now that’s brotherly love!

Jason Slezak giving the run-down on the Big Air Jam.

The fog down here burns off by about noon and then the wind picks up. The best wind is in the middle of the channel. We saw a lot of pros drop their kites just as they stepped in the water since it was so light on the inside. Most of them tended to stay more towards the middle which made it a little hard to see everything going on. Huge crowds turned out to watch too. There were probably 300 people hanging out on the beach throughout the day and tons of photographers in and out of the water. Kim Kern in particular was super hardcore. She was treading water in the middle of the channel trying to catch the best shot while fighting the current. Even though we’ve had blue skies, its still pretty cold down here! Makes us appreciate summers in Seattle.

Jason pumping up his Wind-X 10m for a session under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Moe Goold catching some z’s before competing.

Davey with his monster kiteloop during the competition.

Today we’re headed out to Sherman Island with Tekko and the Liquid Force crew, Jason Slezak, Davey Blair, Moehau Goold, Brian Lake and Zack Young (aka Z-Money) to shoot some footage for the boys next video. We’re really looking forward to riding flatwater in boardshorts. Its so nice that you can drive 15 miles out of downtown San Fran and the weather is sunny and 25 degrees warmer, no joke.

We’ll write more later and let you know what went down at the Big Air Event and we’ll post some pics too. We even saw some familiar faces down here, Jay and Gwen Carlson!