Day 176 - Kite Surfing Crashes, Biscoff Msemens and Turning 40 in Morocco

Another easy start to the day. Coffees, breakfast, and then everyone sort of settled into their own thing. The kids got stuck into games while I spent most of the morning making the final tweaks to Kia’s website before she sends it live properly. There were still little wording changes, layout adjustments, bits and pieces like that, so it kept me pretty busy. I checked a few work emails in between and followed up on a couple of things, but overall it was a pretty cruisy morning.

That really carried me through until early afternoon because my next kite surfing lesson wasn’t until 2pm. Kia was doing research and preparing emails for the launch of her kinesiology website, the kids were entertaining themselves, and we were all just quietly busy in our own ways.

Around 1:30 I packed up and headed out for the lesson. I grabbed a quick snack on the way because I hadn’t really had lunch yet. Kia and the kids stayed back initially to do some schoolwork and then planned to head down to the beach later to watch and maybe go for a surf or swim. But as soon as I got down to the beachfront, I realised the surf was tiny. Basically flat. There was consistent wind though, which meant perfect kite surfing conditions, just not great surfing conditions. I messaged Kia and told her not to bother bringing the surfboards and she said they’d just come down to watch instead.

I had Hamza again as my instructor, along with Nick who was doing lessons too. We grabbed wetsuits, life jackets, helmets, harnesses, kites and bars and headed down the beach. Hamza still helped me set everything up properly. You’ve got to unroll the kite, pump it up, lay out all the lines carefully so nothing tangles, connect the bar correctly and make sure all the safety systems are attached right. There’s a lot more setup involved in kite surfing than I originally expected.

Once we got into the water, the lesson shifted into board work. First was learning how to carry the board while controlling the kite at the same time, then how to walk through the water with the kite stable overhead. After that, we practised positioning the board and getting your feet in while floating in the water.

The next exercise was basically body dragging with directional control. I had to fly the kite while lying in the water and steer myself in a zigzag pattern down the beach using the power of the kite. The idea is to learn how to recover your board if you lose it out in the water. You generate pull by steering the kite through the power zone of the wind window, then redirect it the opposite way to change direction. It sounds simple until you actually try doing it while waves, wind and lines are all moving at once.

I ended up going way further down the beach than they expected. Someone was supposed to meet me down there and help grab the kite so I could reset and do another run, but nobody came. I stood there for a bit looking around before eventually just carrying the whole setup back myself. Hamza said I’d done it really well though, so instead of repeating it, we moved straight into standing starts on the board.

That’s where things got hard.

To get up on the board, you’ve got to coordinate everything perfectly. You need enough power in the kite to pull you out of the water, but not so much that it rips you forward uncontrollably. The kite has to move in figure eights through the sky to generate power, while your hands hold the control bar in this sweet spot where it’s powered but not overpowered. Pull the bar in too far and the kite stalls. Let it out too much and you lose power completely. While all that’s happening, you’ve also got to point the board correctly, keep tension in your legs and try to stand up at exactly the right moment.

The first few attempts were rough. Lots of crashes. Lots of getting yanked sideways or losing balance instantly. But then right near the end, I finally started to feel it click. On my last run, I powered the kite through a figure eight, got pulled up, fell back, recovered, powered it again and then actually got up properly for a moment and started moving.

Then bang.

Two of the lines suddenly let go from the kite and everything exploded into a mess of cords and tangled lines. The kite lost tension instantly and I got launched awkwardly into the water while the whole setup wrapped itself into a giant knot. I still don’t really know what failed, but it completely ended the session. Someone eventually came out to help untangle everything and drag it all back to shore.

Bit of a disappointing way to finish because I was right on the edge of getting it, but also pretty exciting because for a second there, it actually worked. Feels like I’m getting close now.

After the lesson I got changed and met back up with Kia, Emmett and Maddie. We started walking down the beach looking for a late lunch or early dinner. Kia needed to duck into the Medina for something, so the kids and I went to our favourite pasta place while she disappeared off on her mission.

While we were eating, we realised I’d forgotten to grab the room key from Kia, so after dinner we had no choice but to just hang around the Esplanade waiting for her to come back. They were setting up for some big hip hop festival happening here over the 15th, 16th and 17th of May, and we thought it was supposed to start around 6:30. The kids were excited, but nothing was really happening yet.

Eventually Kia came back and we started heading home. She still hadn’t eaten, so she grabbed takeaway pasta while the kids and I stopped for some mesmins. We’d bought some Biscoff spread earlier and I’d been talking to the guy cooking the msemens about how good Biscoff would taste on them. I showed him the jar and asked if he wanted to try it. He had a spoonful and instantly went, “Oh wow.” Then he heated up the mesmins and spread Biscoff all through them for us.

Honestly, they were ridiculously good.

He told me he was going to buy some himself later because he reckoned people would love it. So there’s potentially now a Biscoff msemen entering the local menu in Essaouira thanks to us.

We headed back to the accommodation after that. The kids watched half a movie while I jumped back onto Kia’s website to make a few more wording changes she wanted. She sat there reading through the site on her laptop while I adjusted things. Then we got the kids organised for bed and called it a night.

And tomorrow, somehow, I wake up 40. Epic days.