Power Kiting in the UAE

Monday, 18 August 2008 | Written by Sand-Yeti

This is a first-part article about kiting in the United Arab Emerites. David Lees (Sand-Yeti) has been a long time power kiter in the UAE and starts by sharing with us how power kiting in the UAE started, a bit of an introductory history lesson and the progression of power kites in the UAE. Follow on this series of articles where David goes on to share more experiences with us and some of the challenges of buggying in a climate where most of us wouldn't dare venture outside our air-conditioned apartments. This is power kiting at its harshest and its best!

Part 1: History of Power Kiting in the UAE

The Father of power kiting in the UAE is without a doubt Angelo Manesero.

He started about 10 years ago here in the UAE with Flexi Sky Tigers & a standard PL buggy. Soon afterwards, kite surfing also in its infancy took off. Angelo was very keen to promote all forms of power kiting & opened a shop to support the small band of kiters & wannabe kiters.

His shop, Fatima Sport was a clever political move as his wife’s name is Fatima and gave him some leverage for spending more time on kiting than on home affairs. This shop along with kiting was his hobby as he works full time as a civil engineer in Dubai.

Located close to the sea he spent a lot of his time teaching aspirants to kite surf. As the local beach started to fill with kite surfers, the Dubai municipality became concerned about safety, Angelo formed the Dubai Kite Club that required all members to have insurance. Rules on safety were introduced and working with the Dubai Municipality managed to secure a section of the beach that can be used at certain time. Without this, there would be no kite surfing permitted today on any of the Dubai beaches.

Although Angelo spent much of his time with the kite surfers, he was and still is a keen kite buggier. It was through one of his kite buggying mates, a New Zealander called Glenn, that I was introduced to power kiting over 7 years ago. We used to do a lot of off-roading in the early days & I organized a long trip with other very experienced 4X4 drivers through the Empty Quarter, which is the largest sand desert in the world.
When we struck camp for the first night in the desert, Glenn produced the first power kite I’d ever seen. It was late in the afternoon when Glenn leapt off the top of a dune & floated down, followed by being dragged a huge distance across the sands. He came back with his shins all bleeding and I thought, ‘That looks great, I have to try it’.

I was invited to join him on a piece of desert close to where we lived at that time that we called Al Barsha. I was lent a Hi 40 Sky Tiger but found it tame & ordered a Hi60. Little did I realize at the time that wind speed is what makes these things move . However, my first flight with my own kite was wild face plant as I was dragged through the sand.

We used to set up our kites against the side of our 4X4’s in those days.

Al Barsha is no longer available for buggying as there is a huge shopping mall and an indoor ski slope with real snow plus other building and roads that have grown out of the sand.

I ordered my PL buggy that took 6 weeks to arrive. While waiting for it, I spent all my free time learning to fly my kite. I figured I was pretty good kiter until I sat in the buggy. I was a beginner again having plenty of OBE’s but just kept on trying. After about 6 months I figured I was a pretty good buggier but this had all been on the flat piece of ground at Barsha.

After 6 months of buggying around Al Barsha & other flat areas, I figured I was pretty good and could try & could buggy in the sand dunes. Wrong!, the dunes were a rude awakening and I was a beginner again. I would OBE in the most unusual of places.

I spent all my free time kite buggying and getting better all the time.

A team of 7 of us went to Australia for our first overseas international meet. This was the Birdsville Buggy Bash from Marree to Birdville.

This turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected, what with one of our party breaking his coccyx from a serious OBE. We were all expecting to be fixing our buggies on the way but they held up very well. We spent more time fixing the 4X4’s & trailers.

We had some fun in Birdsville doing a couple of laps in our buggies around the famous horse race-track.

Back home, the Buggying never stopped & we would meet at a place we now call the Buggydrome. This is a nice wide sabkha (flat plain) with sand dunes all around with the highest one at the end going about 200 feet from our floor.

We then decided to organize our own international meet and this was done in grand style in the desert palace grounds owned by the brother of one of the Buggiers – Sheikh Ahmed whose cousin is the ruler of the UAE.

Early in the morning, Glenn & I would plan the day’s route dependent on wind speeds & direction. Every buggier’s GPS would be loaded with the same data with the plan to see who arrived first at a point we had pre-determined. We had support vehicles and sometimes they needed our support to extricate them from undesirable parking places.

A great time was had by all except for one poor German participant who broke his arm in a nasty OBE.

The summer heat is probably as bad if not worse than that in Australia. The Buggydrome had no trees or any kind of shade. The kite buggying continued, so we used to meet at an old disused camel pen that was later pulled down. We started looking for a bit more comfort on those windless days when we sat under the blazing sun.

These days we meet under a large ghaf tree.

Today our regular buggying group consists of 7 regular buggiers with another 3 who turn up very occasionally. Once we had 16 people at the tree but they weren’t all kiters.

As our winds predominantly pour in after 3 p.m., we usually only buggy for around 2 to 3 hours. In general we are fairly content to buggy on the sabkhas & dunes within about a 12 km radius of the Ghaf tree.

When the winds look like they will be spending the day with us, we tend to make long trips. I have made many trips that have gone over 100 kms from my starting point. Some of these trips are real adventures and will share with you some of these experiences but for now, I hope the above gives an insight of how it all started and how we have progressed in our brief but exciting history.

Sand-Yeti
August 2008