Five of us plan to kitesurf from North Devon to South Wales across the Bristol Channel. This is a distance of 33 miles across a stretch of water with one of the biggest tidal ranges in the world. There is no record of this being done before. To put this into context, the English Channel (Dover-Calais) is 21 miles.
This event has the following objectives
1. To promote the MEng/BEng Extreme Sports Engineering Courses at The University of Wales: Trinity St. Davids (UWTSD). In order to do this, the crossing will be completed on boards designed & manufactured by UWTSD, & kites designed & manufactured by a company started by a graduate of UWTSD.
2. To promote the Automotive courses at UWTSD. To do this the Automotive students will race the kitesurfers in an electric hybrid vehicle
3. To raise money for charity
Real time GPS locations of the kitesurfers & car will be uploaded to the internet so that progress can be monitored
The five people carrying out this challange are Kelvin Lake, Ross Head, Marc Rowley, Sarah Rowley and Oli Thorman.
Kelvin is a Lecturer at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD). He is a keen amateur kitesurfer & course director for the Extreme Sports Engineering courses at UWTSD.
Ross is Kelvins kitesurfing partner and works with Kelvin at the university for Cerebra.
Marc runs Blast kitesurfing in Porthcawl & is 2 times & current British (senior) waveriding [kitesurfing] champion. As soon as Kelvin mentioned the project to Marc he was keen to get involved.
Oli is an ex-student of UWTSD & is the co-founder of Mutiny Kites. Ever since Oli was a student at Swansea he has wanted to do this crossing. As soon as Kelvin mentioned this project to him he also wanted to join us.
Sarah has been kitesurfing since 2003 and has competed in several UK contests & recently came third in the British Kitesurfing Association wave event.
For further details see
www.facebook.com/thebristolchannelkitesurfcrossing
