We chat with Dan Charlish the man behind the biggest kiteboarding event in the UK, the Kitesurfing Armada. Find out all you need to know about this year’s festival right here!

The Kitesurfing Armada is without doubt the biggest and best kitesurfing event in the UK, the brainchild of Dan Charlish and Lewis Crathern, it started out as a rag tag bunch of friends blasting downwind. Over the years it has grown to become a huge festival that celebrates everything kitesurfing has to offer! Make sure you head down to Halying Island, the event is on from the 22nd to the 24th with so much going on it is hard to put into words!

See what Dan Charlish has to say about this year’s event in our interview!

How many years has the festival been running now Dan?

This year will be the 6th year, although it feels like yesterday we were kicking off the first event in 2013, with just one small registration tent and a bunch of keen kitesurfers and volunteers. 

It’s grown a lot over the last few years, what can people expect over the weekend in 2018?

We "sort of" fell into running this festival, to be honest, and so each year we are pretty surprised and delighted to see the growth in numbers. We try to add new features to keep it fresh and exciting so that if the wind isn’t perfect, people will still have a fantastic time. This year we have more live bands than ever before, a new BMX display team feature, and a new parkour zone. Plus a new talk show called Sofa Surfing that Jim Gaunt and Lewis are presenting, Graham Norton style (although Jim prefers a Terry Wogan comparison) and even a late night Silent Disco which I think will be hilarious. 

Virgin are no longer a title sponsor, has this been a blow and is there an opportunity for someone else to come along and support the event?

It was great to work with Virgin and Richard Branson, and there is no doubt they gave us a platform and exposure we could not have got without them. However, it was a five-year agreement, and we are happy to now have the chance to find a new partner for the future. It would be great to link up with a new company who are a good fit for the event and who could help us take the festival to the next level, so if you are out there get in touch!

It’s easily the biggest and best event in the UK, perhaps in Northern Europe, what makes it so unique?

Wow, thanks for that question, very kind! All I know is that if I could go to a festival where my day could involve kitesurfing at an epic spot for a few hours. Catching up with loads of kitesurfing friends over a few beers, watching some live music and some extreme BMX or parkour displays. Nipping back to the beach to watch Lew and the pros put on an impressive show and then ending up dancing into the small hours before bumping into Nick Jacobsen in the queue for a late night burger, I would be going to sleep in my camper van with a smile on my face. 

There is a big focus this year on sustainability; can you tell us a little about that?

We want to try and do our bit, it’s been really interesting, and I’m happy with how far we have come with putting new environmental ideas in place across the festival. My favourites though are the reusable branded cups we are going to be serving all drinks in instead of single-use plastic ones and the new event rash vest made from 100% recycled ocean waste. Everyone who signs up gets one!

How long does the event take to organise and how long does it take to build the event site?

The six months before get relatively full on now, but planning is pretty much all year round, there isn’t a time when we are not thinking in some way about improving or growing the festival. Getting sponsorship for the following year starts at the event itself, and we have to book in the land and deal with the council a year in advance too, and on it goes from there. It’s great fun though, but we really should get some help!  Jules and I arrive on site at 7 am on the Monday before the festival with our Portakabin, kindly supplied by our friend Andy Pope, and we are living on location in the car park until the following Tuesday after the festival. We love it though! When it all comes together, it’s a huge buzz.

For anyone reading this who is sitting on the fence about coming can you convince them?

Don’t wait on the wind! That is the usual reason why people sit on the fence, and there is so much going on now on land you are going to have an epic time regardless. Support the festival, support the charities, support your sport and get down to Hayling!

What’s the goal with the Armada record this year in terms of numbers?

We still hold the World Record that we set in 2016 for 423 kitesurfers down a mile course. But I think it’s clear to everyone the festival has grown and moved away from this focus on the world record. Last year we had fantastic conditions, and everyone was having such a great session, we didn’t want to get everyone off the water to sit on the beach waiting to complete a mile – and we had around 400 kitesurfers on the day so wouldn’t have broken the record anyway.

We said on the website that this year if we get the numbers in advance (i.e. 423 plus) we will attempt the Record on Saturday afternoon. And we always seem to get a late rush on tickets so let’s see how many sign up! But to be 100% clear – the festival is about celebrating everything that kitesurfing has to offer. The activities going on over the weekend reflect this with freestyle, foiling, boardercross, KiteSUPRun, racing, pro demo’s and taster sessions, the BKC championships and more. The world record is just one of many possible kitesurfing features we can run over the weekend if we get the wind.

There is always a focus on getting the kids involved, what’s happening this year for the younger riders and indeed young people who might not be kiters yet?

We have a schools day on Friday which 250 local kids attend to learn about wind energy, sustainability, the environment and of course kitesurfing. Lewis leads on this and is great with the kids. Then we have free power kite taster sessions run by the BKSA all weekend for kids to have a go. If they are keen, there are loads of people on site to inspire them and point them in the right direction.

We also sponsored some of our young people to attend the Olympic qualifiers, which was an excellent experience for them and they will all be coming along. On top of all that, we sponsor the Kite and SUP Youth Tour which gets 100’s of kids involved in our sports each year – and we promote this at the festival so people can book a tour stop for the following year.

In five words can you sum up the Kitesurfing Armada and you can’t say stressful 😉

Haha ok, I guess that rules out exhausting too! Let’s go for: Fun, unique, community, windy and beers!

Thanks for taking the time to chat to us Dan, see you and hopefully everyone reading this at the Kitesurfing Armada on the 22nd of June at Hayling Beach!

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By Rou Chater
Rou has been kiting since the sports inception and has been working as an editor and tester for magazines since 2004. He started IKSURFMAG with his brother in 2006 and has tested hundreds of different kites and travelled all over the world to kitesurf. He's a walking encyclopedia of all things kite and is just as passionate about the sport today as he was when he first started!

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