gday heading to fiji coral coast in august for a few days anyone kited there is it worth it>?
I'm heading there end of July and start of August and going to bring my kites and board just in case it's windy. There's a lot of older posts talking about Fiji on seabreeze that might be worth looking at. Not sure if it's going to be windy but it's like an extra $50 to bring a board up so why not.
Depends where you will be along there and what you are after - waves or flat water? Was over there July last year and got 3 out of 7 days. Biggest issue is finding a spot to launch and land and missing coral heads. Get on to google earth and have a good look at where you will be staying and you should get an idea of whether you will have somewhere to launch and how much water you will have to play with.
Looks like I have a bit of beach to launch from but I don't know if it's worth bringing my surfboard as well as a tt or just stick with the tt? Doesn't look like there any waves around Denarau island and I don't really want to knock out a fin in coral.
My understanding is this. Theres trade winds that blow from SE in a 7-10 day cycle. It starts off light then blows harder and harder over the days until it shuts off then there's a few days of calm. Still hard blowing days are 10m winds. So its light to medium winds most of the time.
I stayed in Mana Island and Denarau last year early Sept. In that time wind was coming from N!.... so opposite to the tradewinds.....
I got a couple of boring sessions at Mana basically riding chop just staying upwind on my 13m edge in front of the resort.
Denarau was pointless the few days I was there.
I came to the conclusion that you would not book a kiting holiday to Fiji months in advance if you actually want to kite awesome conditions. It would be best to watch forecasts and grab a seat at the last minute to ride the awesome conditions when they are occuring. Otherwise your kite trip could end up being a sit on the beach getting sunburnt trip.
Look at the forecasts the days before you go and select your kit accordingly. Also Namotu island and cloud break are supposedly world class when the conditions are right. So taking a day trip out there if conditions are good would be well worthwhile. When I was fiji conditions were not good... So I missed out on the cloud break experience.
Denarau Island isn't really the coral coast. I was around near Namaqumaqua which is more open to the trades and on the coral coast. Sigatoka is an option along there as well both for surfing and kiting. From Denarau i suspect you will need to get on a boat and head offshore as Plummet suggests.
I've heard that a good rule of thumb for wind is a week on then a week off give or take , so if you book only 1 week you could miss out completely. Also you should try to book you holiday to time with high tide during the middle of the day, many of the lagoons are unkiteable at low tide. Apparently Sigatoka is an option
