Anyone kited Bintan Island ?

Bintan is the watersports playground for Singapore's outdoors enthusiasts. Just 45 minutes away by luxury high-speed ferry, the island offers wide open spaces, pristine beaches, jungles and sleepy fishing villages. Bintan is also host to one of the region's premier windsurfing events and in February 2005 Red Bull kitesurfing event, qualifier for the more famous event in Hawaii.

With an ideal position to catch the full force of the northeast monsoon, December till April, these seasonal winds are born of weather systems in the frozen plains of Mongolia and Siberia that head out to the warm waters of the Pacific and are deflected southwest by trade winds.

By the time they reach the warm climes of Southeast Asia they are steady and consistent.

Now Kitesurfers went the extra mile and explored the rest of the island and found a few new areas of beaches on the east coast, this side get both the northeast as well as the southwest during the summer months July to September.

During the northeast monsoon, most kitesurfer congregate on the north coast of Bintan in the Nirwana Gardens bay. Mana Mana Beach Club offers lessons and have a large range of watersports activities. The bay boasts a 2 km long beach with a reef which acts as a wave break offering flat water on the inside and some waves on the reef. One can kite this location from mid to high tide on spring tides and pretty much all day on neaps. Wind here is pretty onshore so be careful when launching and landing as many trees come into play.

If it is super low at Nirwana, one can launch at the Mana Mana beach Club but do ask at the water sports centre for the best way to do this as it gets pretty busy especially on weekends.

The Mana Mana Beach Club fronts on to a white sandy, palm-fringed beach inside a horseshoe-shaped bay and the wind is cross-onshore. There is a range of sailing conditions from flat water to steep chop, rolling swells and smooth faces of up to one meter. Wind speeds generally range from 12-20 knots (though winds have clocked 50 knots!).

Instead the east coast is totally desert and during the northeast monsoon offer very different water condition depending on the beach that you choose, the most famous is called Trikora 4 about 1 hour from Mana Mana, this bay is half protected by reef and half have nice waves rolling into the beach. The wind is not strong as the North but is excellent for more waves action.

This area in the summer is not good as the wind is off shore but more south (see our map) in front of a small island is a real paradise for kiters..... The wind is perfect side shore with shallow and flat water all the way to the island.