The very first lesson with Kristiin took place at Stroomi beach, which is located in northern Tallinn and is also the home beach for Kristiin’s Surftown Surfschool.
As agreed before the first session the main goal was to get an overview of our current skills. As already said before – we didn’t think highly of ourselves! The weather, however, was hectic that day. The wind was really strong and gusty, so we took our smallest kites – 9m2 and 10m2 kites. In addition, there was heavy traffic as it was Sunday.
Nevertheless, we set our gear up and headed to the sea. What is good about Stroomi and a lot of other beaches in Estonia – the coastline is sufficiently wide, so your safe to launch your kite and you can set up really quickly and get on water. Another thing which was good on that day was the deepness of the water. Due to the extraordinary good and warm weather the sea level had been dropped a lot, so the level of the water was quite shallow and it didn’t get deep too quickly. Meaning that Kristiin was able to stand in knee-deep water and we were able to ride around her giving her a good and safe position to evaluate and take notes about our skills. We have to admit, at first, it was pretty daunting to have her closely watching us do our thing. It was something like being back in school and you haven’t prepared for your class and you cross your fingers and hope to pass anyway.
First thing what Kristiin brought out for both of us was that our style of riding is quite good. For us it was a huge compliment and maybe it was even the very first time when we actually acknowledged our skills and felt confident about our kiting. We had always been riding with our friends compared to who we were basically nothing. It seems so silly but we always have felt that even after riding for many years there are so many things that we need to learn and improve in our status quo. So to receive a positive feedback from a professional kiter who has participated Freestyle tournaments worldwide and has kiting experience as a rider for more than 10 years, gives you a pretty damn good feeling. Don’t get us wrong of course we both received few guidelines to have a better control on the kite i.e. hands position on the bar and body posture while slide turning but these were all, as Kristiin liked to put, “little style improvements.” Overall she rated us as strong intermediate kiters and was really excited to get started with us. Again we have to say that having her being so thrilled about the idea what we want to achieve is such a strong motivator for us.
After our initial skillcheck Kristiin also wanted us to go through self-rescue and self-landing. The latter was something new to us as well – we knew the theory, but never felt that we were ready to try. But as the water was so shallow and beach strip wide, we had enough room to try it out. The strong wind made it a bit complicated, but we did it. Not sure we would choose self-landing ourselves with such a gusty wind, but still…we did it 🙂
After this session we had some time to chill at Surftown terrace and discuss our next steps. Kristiin listed a ton of fundamental skills which she wants us to try out next time (toeside, turning toeside, jibe). Funny thing is that as we are not so familiar with all the kitesurf terminology, we had to google jibe 🙂 In addition as we sat on the terrace and reflected on the day, we felt again how right all of this is. The beach vibe has always called us and there is nothing more satisfying than after surf chill and tiredness.
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