Last weekend I went out on a kite boat in the North Bay with Saul Griffith of Squid Labs and Tim Anderson and other friends.

Kite

It’s like kite surfing except with a sailboat. The kite boat goes faster than a standard katamaran and you get very wet. It’s totally awesome. We used a 21 meter kite that Saul designed for his sister’s company Monkey Kites.

We bought two beat-up Hoby Cat hulls from Craigslist and Tim, Nick Papadakis and Saul put the first boat together on Saturday in the Squid Labs garage. Tim wrote a kite boat how-to on Instructables using the photos Ulla and I took. Tim also does other unconventional sailing. He wrote an incredible story on how he tried to sail to Cuba.

On Sunday I went out on the kite boat with Saul and Patrick another Squid Labs friend. The wind was stronger and after some wrestling shoulder-deep in the water we got the kite fastened to the boat. As soon as we climbed aboard the boat shot off like a bullet. We jigged for a while before the rudder snapped and Saul and Patrick had to manouver the boat back to the beach.

In_the_water

Saul fixed the rudder with some wood and inner tubes and soon they were off again.

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