Kalenji Keymaze 700 - first run on the water

Do you remember the Kalenji Keymaze 700 I bough last year? Well yesterday  finally rembered to bring it with me for a kite session in Laredo.

I'm pretty satisfied with this portable GPS system. I mainly use it during my mountain bike runs, and I have to say that is quite precise. It also has an heart rate monitor which is extremely useful for training.

The picture above has been elaborated by endomondo  importing the GPS data I recorded during the session. Although this online service is quite good if you only want to keep track of your training activities and share it amongst your friends, it gives you very few analysis tools. Maximum and average speeds are reported as well as distance, but nothing more that that.

There are some good tools out there to better analise your sailing performance. The one I used in the past is gpsactionreplay , written in Java and thus available for all platforms. There are two version: the oldest one is free, the newest which is called GPSarPro is shareware and the license cost around 30€, but it offers some additional feature like google map superpose and calibration. I personally don't want to spend money for a tool that I seldom use, so I must say that the freeware version is ok for my needs. Below you'll find a screenshot from GPSactionreplay of yesterday's kite session. I discovered, for example, that my upwind skills suck - well, not a surprise at all. At least I can see jibes... I still have to improve but at least my average "jiii-splash" ratio has decreased a lot.

Talking about yesterday I once again started sailing with the 7m North rebel. I thought the wind was going to blow stronger during the afternoon but I was wrong. So I find myself pumping like mad to keep kiting. Still, the North Rebel generate as said a lot of power, but it could be annoying do all that up-down-up with the kite all the time. When I finally decided to switch for the 10m (Rebel again) the wind was even less. Not good... I should remember that old refrain (coming from my windsurfer experience): better sailing over than under canvassed.

Holy truth no matter it's windsurfing or kiting.