Kitesurfing 2019
Happy New Year and may 2020 comes with your wishes and lots of good wind days.
I promised earlier to keep track of my kitesurfing days in Kuwait to collect some data that hopefully be useful for other kitesurfers when considering the sport in Kuwait.
During 2019 I spent 275 days in Kuwait during which I went out kitesurfing on 68 days. I have probably went on the water every windy day I was in Kuwait. I might have missed few days of very light wind or very short sessions. But all in all, I was speculating that there could be 100 days or more of kitesurfing in Kuwait, but unfortunately it didn’t , look like it in 2019. Even when I was traveling, probably I missed about 10 to 15 days of kiting in Kuwait, which still keeps the total kiting days below 100 days per year. Meanwhile, personally I did over 125 days of Kitesuring in 2019 between Kuwait, Egypt, Spain, and Oman.
Winds
The wind direction through out the year comes either from South East or North West and North North West directions. And over all there more days of North West and North North West winds than South East winds. During summer times the temperature get warmer with the northern winds, while during the winter time it gets colder with northern winds. Key characters of the North West winds are its dryness, and it’s common to carry dust with it, sometime serious dust storms. While the South East winds are known to carry more clouds and humidity in the air, and frequently brings rain from fall through sprin seasons.
Tempretures
During the summer time tempretures rise really high, and stay well above 45 degrees Celsius through out the season. A Lycra and shade on the beach are very neccessary for kiting during the summer times. While the rest of the year the weather is relatively mild, during January and February it get really cold. I usually use 3.2 wetsuit for this period, but now I’m considering to invest in 4.5 westsuit as the cold in January with the North West winds is quite unbearable.
Kites
During the good windy days in Kuwait, the 12m kite was the most used kite. I used the 12m kite over 50 times, some days I get switch between 15 m and 12 m and others between 10m and 12m. But overall, the 12m kite is the dominant kite, which means most of the days the wind blows between 12 to 16 knots. However, there have been 23 sessions where I used either 10m kite or smaller, which translates to 18 knots or more. I used the 15m kite on 10 sessions, and usually the wind on these days is betwee 10-12 knots.
Spots
Out of the 68 days of kitesurfing in Kuwait during 2019, the most frequent spots I used were Bnaider and Dubaiya. I prefer these spots generally on all wind directions because of the clarity and quality of the water, though with the North West winds the come side-off shore and it gets too gusty near the shore. On some days the Subiya spot gets more wind than rest of Kuwait, the preference is to go there on the North North West windy days. Kuwait City spots are good for the North West wind direction, however the quality of the water, the smell, and the pollution, makes always hesitate to kite there, yet I found myself kiting 18 days on the different spots in Kuwait City.
Into 2020
Last year we got decent number of kitesurfing days during January and February. I hope we get more this year. I will continue logging the kitesurfing days in 2020 and I’m going to try to register more data on the sessions and spots. I hope that I can manage to get more data from other kitesurfers to compare and come with more meaningful information about the conditions and the sport. I will also work on getting all spots in Kuwait covered in the blog and start covering more spots out side Kuwait.
Photos from 2019
