Blue skies, clear water, NE sea breezes....

Despite mother nature throwing some of the biggest storms of this season at the Gold Coast this weekend, it hasn’t put a dampner on the Kite Jam Australia at all!

With 3 days of steady North Easterly wind, and one still to go, the Kite Jam Australia has been a success already. Tipped as the next big Mambo style event for QLD’ers, the expression session style competition has brought kite teams from every beach (and every shop) within several hundred k’s together at Main Beach on the Gold Coast.

Teams of kiteboarders compete every day for not only their team, but for themselves in either freestyle or surfing disciplines (there’s some stand up paddling going on too) to win the title, and the cash! Thanks to Cabrinha and JP Australia, there’s some decent prize money on offer every day for the best kite team, and then some amazing prizes for the winner of the whole event.

So far in the competition, we’ve seen some incredible talent from riders as young as 12 years old. Every shop from the area has entered at least one team of riders, who are all working together for the daily prize of $500, but what’s really great to see is the new friendships being made with the teams from different shops on the beach. Good on the local businesses for getting behind the event too, we’ve been waiting for too long on the QLD coast for some competition, so will this be the start of something big?

Thanks to the (this year anyway) reliable seabreezes each afternoon. The Coast has been pumping 15-25 knots in every afternoon. Riders have been launching around 12pm each day and riding well into the afternoon before the classic South East QLD storms roll over and quite literally rain on the parade. Riders don’t mind though, with several hours of riding each day they’re more than happy to pack up their gear and head to the BBQ and parties.

The final day of competition is being held today, if the storms stay away, and the wind comes to the party, there’s going to be some very hard fought battles in both the freestyle and wave divisions! Check back on Monday to see the list of results and reports from the presentations!