Wandergliding: Paragliding at Ocean Beach

December 21^st, 2019

Braden hooked me up with a local pilot Irwin, originally from Holland. He stopped by Braden’s place to pick up a radio charger and we planned to meet up in a small town called Featherston, about an hour from Wellington. Irwin was going to pick up another pilot Felix on his way out. In Featherston, I hopped into Irwin’s car and we drove another 40 kilometres to Ocean Beach. Braden told me about this place the night before and said it can be epic. It starts with a 200’ ridge by the ocean and if you’re paragliding and the conditions are right, you can pretty much start by walking or kiting your wing 30-50’ up a sandy ridge from the beach, start flying back and forth and work your way up to the top of the ridge. But that’s not the end of it, not only can you fly 3-4 kilometres down the ridge towards a lake, if you go the other way you can bench up across a couple of spurs and possibly hook onto a mountainside that climbs to 3000 feet! Wow.

There were a number of hang gliders in the air when we first arrived...that's what that smudge is in the middle.

Felix was a relatively new pilot, only 60 some flights although he used to be a commercial pilot on smaller planes including in Canada flying out of Abbotsford. He had a change of heart and realized that he was becoming a glorified bus driver who was contributing big time to global warming, so he went back to school to obtain a degree in environmental studies. Good on ya. We both let Irwin show us the ropes of how to kite up the sand at the base of the ridge, take off just 5-10 feet off of the ground, make multiple small passes along the ridge and climb your way out. It took Irwin a couple of tries but sure enough he was up and away. Pretty cool to start 50 feet up and then make your way up above the 200 foot ridgeline and beyond.

You can see the small ridge on the right, then the big boys on the left.

I kited my glider up the sand and made 3-4 attempts to launch but each time I just hovered a few feet above the ground and then promptly landed. The wind was no longer coming straight in to the cliff but from the right so on my last attempt I was in the top left hand corner and flew maybe 100-150 meters along the ridge into the wind but did not gain any height to climb out. Eventually Felix and I decided to hike up to the launch as at this point, Irwin had been enjoying the air for over an hour.

Tough to make out, but there is a hang glider at the launch, just to the right of the lowest point of the sky in the picture. The sand in the foreground is where we are going to attempt to take off from.

The launch was not for the faint hearted. It was a plateau with a grassy field where I assume sheep or cattle often grazed. As we arrived there Irwin came in to top land and the last 20-30 feet the air was not kind to him, he was obviously in some rough turbulence but he managed it well. A fence ran along the ridge, just 10 feet back from the edge, but there was an open gate which was the launch point. Anywhere back from the edge though, the wind was blowing out to sea, the wrong direction (thanks to what we call rotor, like an eddy in a river). I wished I had a hang glider handy as it would have been an easy launch with a hang glider. But instead I had to lay my paraglider out just outside the fence and stand 15 feet lower down on a steep and uncompromising slope, facing uphill with only about 5 more feet of terrain below me before it dropped away. A couple of guys, including Irwin, held my wing up and it was basically an inflate, turn around and fly away type launch…not for the faint of heart.

This was on the walk up to take off after Felix and I gave up on the beach launching. There's a hang glider right in the middle of the picture.

But it was all so worth it. What a lovely ridge. I cruised up and down the main ridge by launch and watched as the guys helped Felix to launch. He did well with such little paragliding experience. After a while I crossed a 100 meter gap to hop onto another part of the ridge heading towards the lake. There was a collection of identical holiday looking homes, obviously some kind of resort, set back from the cliff. Large parts of the clifftop was farmland with sheep munching away on the grass. I did have one funny interaction with one sheep watching me intently as I flew by right at ridge height.

The plateau on top. Launch is just right of center. Sorry, I was pretty rubbish on taking pics this day. I didn't have a camera for in-flight and I was more preoccupied with flying than trying to take photos.

Three or four times I crossed over to the ridgeline that wasn’t a flat plateau, but instead had some higher peaks and a gentler, tree covered slope below. This is where you attempted to get higher and higher and eventually connect on to yet another higher mountain ridge. The wind was still a bit cross so it didn’t provide great lift but it sure was a fun challenge. Cruising back and forth about 100 meters, I would occasionally gain 10-20 meters but then quickly lose it again. I never was able to climb up and away but I didn’t see anyone else do it at this point of the day, about mid to late afternoon thanks to this cross wind.

Felix pushed his luck trying the same thing and ended up sinking down too low and landed on the beach. The winds were lightening up and I’d had my fill so I flew back and landed near Irwin’s car and he landed there a few minutes later. We packed up our wings and Felix arrived having walked along the beach about a kilometre. I flew for close to two hours and could see why Bradon was raving about this place…what a site.

Driving back to Featherston (side note: seems like almost every “town” had the ending “ton” in its name around here: the capital Wellington, Carterton, Masterton…), Irwin mentioned that the forecast for the next day was wind from the north, not good for Ocean Beach but good for another site nearby. I decided to camp at a lake near Featherston and meet up with Irwin in the morning. Unfortunately, it was too windy that day but it looked like Ocean Beach could be on again the following day so I stayed by the lake again…but in vain. It was super windy the next day. Oh well, I did get a little taste of the good stuff.

Betty 2.0 at the lake: