Camber Sands Buggy Enduro

Sunday 4th February 2001

Location: Camber Sands, nr Hastings / Rye, Kent.
Organised by: Sky Kites, a sponsored event in aid of Dungeness Lifeboat Station.

The day of the first organised kite buggy event of 2001 dawned, and it was raining! Not the best start...

Arriving at Camber Sands at 10:30am, we found the car park already half full of mad people willing to get out onto the beach and buggy, despite the weather! The wind was blowing 25+mph from the sea, which made for an exciting (and fast) day's buggying.

A pilot's meeting was held at 12:00 and the course was explained to the participants. They then had until the race started at 12:30pm to get all the kit together and assemble by the start gate. The wind was blowing so hard that some people had difficulty getting their kites in the air; there were line breakages, tuning problems and of course the driving rain and wet beach to contend with.

Peter Mirkovic of Sky Kites was at the event and gave an exclusive preview of his two new prototypes - a Predator buggy (only finished yesterday!) and a new design Predator kite (as yet un-named). Mark Kingshott was giving this kit a good bit of testing at Camber, the only mishap was when they had forgotten that the wheel nuts were only hand-tightened, and after 9 laps one wheel fell off...!

The rain continued throughout the day, and by 2.30pm quite a few people had packed up. The event finished around 3pm with people gradually making their way off the beach and into the relative warmth and dryness of their cars. In all, a successful event, shame about the rain!

The race winners were:

1st: Alistair Press
2nd: Ade McCreery
3rd: Andy Paine (aka. Andy the fisherman)
4th: GaRRy Box

Paul Martin won the trophy for most money raised on the day (over £500).

Wet car park.	"What are you lot doing here?.."	"..It's much drier round this side!"
Setting up.	Prototype Predator kite & Predator buggy
Race Preparations.
Buggy Aquaplaning

Note: The local council has restricted access at Camber Sands and kite buggying is not allowed on the beach from May to September.