The spot guide

It was an unusual day in Finland yesterday. It was sunny, very warm and on top of it all, it was windy. Kiteboarders were enjoying the wind all over Finland. After a windy daytime session I took my kite to another spin at sunset.  I had started the day on one spot and after the wind shifted, I had to change to another spot. After I had enjoyed the windy sunset, it resulted in one of the best days this summer.

When living in an area that does not have constant winds nor constant wind direction, it is always the game of weather forecasts and the actual weather. When weather forecast is speculated enough, the next thing is the fact which beach is most suitable for  the wind direction. It is usual that wind direction changes by 20-45 degrees within hours due to the moving low pressure area that creates the wind. That kind of change may make another spot work better and others to be unsuitably gusty and may cause long kitewalks after dropping a kite in offshore wind.

Even though Finland is a land of a thousand lakes, there are still a limited number of kiteable spots where you can launch from the beach. Mostly trees are limiting the launch area. In addition, most of the waterfronts are conserved areas that people cannot freely modify or cut down the trees.  Many of the bigger lakes have a lot of islands which block the wind and make the usable wind sector smaller. Personally I am not too worried though, there are about ten beaches that work in different wind directions within a 30 minute drive by car. That's not too bad even though the launch areas may be far from perfect.

At seaside we have four major places with big sandy beaches. Hanko, Yyteri at Pori, Lohtaja and Kalajoki. Especially the latter three are very nice with sand dunes and shallow waters. If we were in the constant wind area, these would be world class places.

As elsewhere in the world, there are beaches that have certain rules that need to be obeyed. Some may have launch zone restrictions or some may have restricted times. Moreover, it is up to us to give room to other beach users as our sport is still relatively new in Finland and some people may see kiteboarding for the first time. If you plan to kite at any new beach, contact the local kiteboarders and ask about spots.

To find a spot in Finland, there is a great service from a kiteboarding enthusiast. He created the tool just for us to list the known places and help others to find them. The tool is called Navakka, meaning strongish wind, and can be found from http://www.navakka.com/. The tool shows the places on a map and gives some basic information and weather forecasts on the spot. You can also leave messages to other users through the tool.  It is great that kiteaboarding encourages people to do these kind of cool things and people use their free time to help other kiteboarders.