Want To Discover A New Holiday Location? What About Tarifa?

Travel as far South as you could in Spain and you would find yourself at Tarifa. Well known within Spain for its enormous beaches, spectacular scenery and quaint Moorish old town and fort, and of course the wind. Hailed as the kitesurfing capital of Europe, it is a reputation well deserved as this town is battered, year round by the best wind the continent has to offer.

To test their skills against the force of mother nature, hundreds of kitesurfers make the pilgrimage every year. For those of you not interested in water sports, you'll find plenty to keep you entertained. With easy access to the Alcornocales National Park, (the name means cork trees) and the low mountains of the area, the scenery is rugged and beautiful. For the active amongst you there are a range of sports to keep you busy from surfing to scuba diving, climbing to horse riding, for those of you who prefer just to relax how about sipping mojito's in one of the many beach bars, watching the sun going down over the Atlantic. The Moors ruled most of the Iberian peninsula from around 700 - 1400 ad. Their influence is still clearly visible in the local architecture. Tarifa takes its name from its once Moorish ruler, and with Morocco only 30 mins away by ferry the N African influence still heavily pervades the architecture and the people of this region. Tarifa's climate is as close to perfect as you can get, with the summers warm but not ridiculously so and it stays warm in the winter as well, with sunbathing not unusual in January! With 3 major airports, Malaga, Jerez, and Gibraltar all within 3 hours drive, and many major carriers flying in and out, Ryanair, Easyjet, Jet2, Monarch getting here is simple. In the summer Tarifa goes crazy as the whole of Spain moves to the coast to escape the heat of the interior. This is where people come to chill...or to party.

As a fusion of culture, sport, relaxation, history and the usual sea, sun and sand Tarifa is pretty much unbeatable. Just make sure you don't forget the most important word in Spain...manana!

Kitesurf - Kite Line Length and the Effect on the Performance of the Kite.

25m lines are the average length of kitesurf lines but some people ride on 20 or even 15m lines…Why?

Whilst kitesurfing you may well find that you fly kites on a variety of different lengths of lines. Kitesurf lines can vary from 5m to 25m although people usually tend to ride lines from 20 - 25m in length, shorter lines being used mainly for teaching purposes.

As the lines on a kite get longer the power of a kitesurf kite increases, this is due to 2 different reasons. The first of these is gradient wind, as the wind gets further away from the earth the turbulence caused by objects on the earths surface gets less and so the wind speed increases. In all honesty however the difference in the gradient wind over 25m is generally negligible and this is unlikely to have a huge effect on the power in the kite…notice I say generally, sometimes it can have a marked effect say if there a line of short trees just upwind of where you are flying your kite.

To discover the main reason that a kitesurf kite with longer lines will generate more power we have to delve slightly into the mechanics of the wind:

Imagine you are sitting in a stationary car sticking your head out of the window and the wind is coming from an angle 90º to the front of the car (the wind is hitting the car side on) you feel the wind on your face in the exact same direction the wind is traveling…obviously! This wind is called the true wind. Now the car starts to move slowly, as the car cuts through the air it generates wind over the body of the car (and your face) in the opposite direction to the direction of travel. This wind is the induced wind. The problem here is that the wind cannot come from two different places at the same time so a third wind, the apparent wind is the actual wind you feel on your face, this will be somewhere in-between the induced wind and the true wind. As the car moves faster so the apparent wind will veer to an angle closer to the induced wind (the front of the car) and as the car slows down the apparent wind will veer around towards the true wind (as the airflow over the car becomes less). If this is unclear let me know and i'll try to rephrase it or include a picture or two.

A kitesurf kite flies on apparent wind so as it moves it generates airflow over the surfaces of the kite thus generating lift…or power. So the faster, and further a kite can move the more potential it has to generate lift. A kite on longer lines has a larger area to move through and thus can move faster and further than a kite on shorter lines and thus can generate more power. Or put in another way longer lines give a larger power zone which means quite clearly more power!

Shorter lines mean less transmission time from the bar to the kite, also any movement of the bar, due to the principles of leverage has a greater effect on the kite (as the bar is a greater percentage of the total length of the lines). So a kite on shorter lines will turn much more quickly than a kite on long lines.

For these reasons kitesurf kites with shorter lines tend to be favored by wave riders and people who need to turn the kite quickly and often whereas longer lines would be more common in speed sailing or racing.