Ferry story

Two windless weeks after I came back from Thai climbing which I spend with more climbing and writing about climbing, I felt that I desperately needed some kite action. With finishing project and closeout documentation which I have to manage, the days were busy and a single thought about splashing water under the board wanted me to escape.

Unfortunately the monsoon kite season in Oman is almost over and in Dubai is also nothing special. But I wasn’t the only one person feeling desperate so me and Marcin, after a tough decision because of the forecast not being very positive, we took a risk a decided to try our luck in 900 km far Masirah island in Oman. The place where is super strong wind…at least in the high season ;)

So we met on Thursday 10.9. after work at petrol station after Abu Dhabi and drove to Al Ain Omani border where we left Marcin’s car and continued with my blue lightning to the south. We took the inland route, where there are only few stretches watched by cameras and drove easy 160km/h most of the time though silent night desert with a village every 100km. Time flew quickly and around 2:30am we parked in a ferry port to Masirah with only one speeding fine!! Last time I got four, so there was an improvement ;) There was around 20 knots, so we hid behind the car, covered the gap under it with boards and kite bags and fell asleep on soft sand with hope that tomorrow could be the same as now.

We woke up at 7am when the first ferry from the island came and when Omani fishermen parked next to us and started to watch some fools sleeping in the dirt on the ground. The wind wasn’t that strong anymore, but it was still ok. We saw a ferry standing at the pier so we drove in. “When do we go?” we asked the captain. “We go when we are full or when another ferry from the other side comes” boringly replied the Pakistani guy. “It will take at least one hour” I said when looking on the deck where we stood almost alone. Wind kept dropping so we actually weren’t in hurry. We had a breakfast hidden behind the pier because of Ramadan and then watched a movie on my computer.

At 9:30 finally came a ferry from the other side so left. Maybe they were saving petrol when we weren’t completely full, but we rode quite slow so it took another 1.5 hour to get to the island. On Masirah island there is only one village, military base and few fishermen’s shacks spread along the coast…and desert, small dry hills and rocky shore with small sandy beaches…and wind. If you are lucky!!! We weren’t so we had to drive around the island a bit trying to find some windier spot. At 1pm we parked at the spot Marcin knew from before, sat down and were sadly looking on the flat sea.

But we didn’t that unlucky and with first stronger blows about an hour later we immediately revived, pumped our 12m kites and jumped in. The wind was quite gusty with long strong gusts and long gusts of low wind which was quite annoying, because these weak gusts were not enough for 12 meters we had. The most annoying, for Marcin, was that he ripped a strut of his 12 after one hour of riding and was left only with 8, which was way too small for the wind. Fortunately I had also my 14 so Marcin wasn’t left on the beach. It was funny to watch Marcin riding for a first time something that big, slow and different than his F-One J Nice riding until the dark.

After going back to the village for a shawarma dinner we put our sleeping bags behind a wind barrier on the beach made by windsurfers and went to sleep with a wish for stronger wind. 17 knots is ok, but 25 is much more fun. And you don’t want to drive 2000km for two evenings of Dubai like wind!!

But our apprehensions came true when the next day the peak wind was 15 knots for half an hour, which is almost not enough for my 12, so I spend the afternoon riding the 14 and Marcin was reading some papers for the office. Sad!!

And even for me was weird. Before I thought that I my new second hand 12m RRD is bad and useless, but after riding it the day before I realized that it is the 14m Slingshot I have to replace. Its slow speed, heavy bar pressure, nothing special upwind riding and tendency to fly only straight downwind and not up when in the air were in big contrast with the 12m RRD. So when we packed up at 4pm and were driving back to port, I was really thinking about how I solve my equipment J

We came to the pier and saw a ferry on the horizon which left 30 minutes ago. There were three another ferries docked, but empty. “When do you go mainland?” Marcin asked one guy on the boat. “We are done for today. Ask the next one”. “No more ferries today. 3am tomorrow I go” was the other captain’s response. “I need 10 cars and I go” said the last one. And then we were fucked!!

There were a lot of cars coming to the pier, but those were only Omanis doing Dar-Dar. Dar-Dar is an expression for a favorite activity performed by the locals and it consists just driving extremely slowly around the city without any destination and just wasting the time. And combined with another quality of Arabic people to talk about something that they have no clue of, like that they knew everything. So we ended up standing next to our car, foolishly hoping for somebody coming to share a ferry, because we didn’t want to pay for ten cars, and talking to locals driving by. “No worries..at 6pm a ferry goes. I am taking it every day” or “After Iftar (big dinner after sunset during Ramadan when all fasting Muslims can finally eat and drink) people will come. Now they will be eating. I will call me friend. He knows…” were some guaranteed information we had been given. So after our Iftar shawarma dinner we returned around 7pm to the port just to see ferry crews leaving to the village. “That is so funny J” we smiled and drove behind the village and slept covered by boards and kites in the dirt one more night.

Surprisingly at 3:30am the ferry was already full and going so at 5am we started our time pursuit drive back to UAE. “I hope that there are enough petrol stations on the way” I said and floored the throttle!! On completely straight and flat desert roads we almost didn’t feel that we were driving 200km/h and kilometers were flying fast. We even by coincidence discovered the fastest way through Oman by missing one turn and heading deeper to the desert making use of even more abandoned desert roads and zero cameras J We did 800km to the border in less than 6 hours and at 12:30am I was sitting in the office, nicely showered, in clean shirt and thinking that, when we go next year again for Masirah kiting we will “accidentally” miss the ferry againJ But for now…monsoon season is over so we stay in Dubai. And what will happen until the next season…who knows J