Mitch Andrews after the ride
- Chris Summers after the ride
Bacliff crossing…kind of
We (Mitch, Chris and me) met at Bacliff Tuesday morning to do a crossing to Smith Point on the other side of the bay, where we would be rewarded with island jumping and waist-deep butter flat water. When I say Bacliff I mean the Bacliff spillway park, which can be seen in more detail on the riding area section of this site. The spillway is a great spot to ride on a westerly wind and also a great spot to access the shortest distance for a mid-bay crossing (Eagle Point to Smith Point). From the Spillway park to the other side of the bay at Smith Point is about 10mi in a straight line one way. The crossing track that we proposed to take heads across the bay at an easterly direction passing to the north side of Red Fish Island before crossing the shipping channel on the way to the other side.
We met at the park at around 11am to rain and lightning, the winds were 20mph or so out of the NNE. The day was off to a great start as I packed my 13m kite instead of my 11m, meaning I would have use this for the ride across the bay. It was between my 9m and 13m so I chose my 13m and took the smaller 133cm board. Mitch Andrews was on his 14m RPM and his 135 Len10 Lunacy board, he almost went with his 10m but decided on the 14m incase the wind dropped. Chris Summers was on his 10m RPM with his 5’4” Celeritus surfboard as this is his go to board for all crossings…ask him about his first endurance race and he’ll tell you why. We got our stuff pumped up before the heaviest rain started and waited for the storm and rain to pass. The wind clocked a full 180 degrees as the front that the storms preceded passed and finally blew decidedly out of the original NNE direction. The crossing to Smith Point needed a solid north wind or there would be a lot of upwind and downwind riding, so we knew we may already need to scrap the long run for the day.
We suited up appropriately for the crossing in case we were reading the wind incorrectly or the wind shifted while we were out there. I launched my 13m first (super over powered), Mitch second, and Chris self launched (since he had the smallest kite). We walked across the parking lot and down the boat ramp into the spillway. The spillway is fed by a “river” that used to bring cooling water to the NRG power plant that ceased operation years ago so the spillway is actually a shallow silt filled strip of water about 1ft deep. The wind was blowing directly down the spillway so we slowly edged our way up wind until we could get around the metal and concrete bulkhead that extends about 100 yards out into the water to protect the spillway entrance. Chris and I got impatient and jumped the bulkhead downwind to start our run south to see if we could make a line in the direction of point Smith. We quickly learned that we could due to the easterly north wind. We did however have a pretty good line to Red Fish Island so we headed for that. Mitch and I were overpowered so we couldn’t make upwind progress as well as Chris so he led the way, we needed to make 5-7 tacks before we could make it to the inside of Red Fish island.
If you’re not familiar with Red Fish Island, it isn’t much of an island. More like a crescent shaped pile of rocks with the open side of the crescent facing Eagle point. This means that this pile of rocks kept a large section of water in the interior butter flat with a northern or easterly wind direction. The Island is very close to the ship channel maybe .25mi or so, making it a good destination for tanker wave surfing. The northern side of the island is no good for surfing but if you head to the south side it is an excellent spot to ride some swell. While Mitch and I enjoyed the flat water riding and offshore jumps Chris took his surfboard to the southern end of the ship channel and rode the wake of the multiple tankers that kept passing. There had to have been at least 3 really big tankers and probably 5 or so smaller ones while we were out there so he had plenty of action. I saw him head to the upwind side of the channel to stay out of the tanker wind shadow.
The jumps in the Red Fish island flats were phenomenal! Because of the offshore winds inside the island you can jump very close to the beach and the wind will pull you back out to deeper water. This means you can load up on the pond-flat water very near the beach. Another great thing of riding in offshore winds like this are jump starts off the beach and board taps up onto the beach. Smooth water also helps you hold your edge when loading up against a overpowered kite so the jumps were very big. Overall, I think all of our riding out there was pretty conservative because of the prospect of the long self-rescue of 10mi or so down wind to the Levee if something were to go wrong. After Chris came back we headed down-wind to our starting point at Bacliff landed our kites and packed up. The entire trip was around 13-15mi of riding and we were out there for about 2.5 hours or so. Great day on the water!
Phil Midler
XLKITES Houston