last edit: March 2021
From a kitesurfing point of view, the quality of the wind could be defined by its steadiness: the steadier the wind, the better your session will be. Inversely, the gustier the wind, the more difficult your session will be.
Overall, we can say that the wind coming from the sea is steadier because before hitting the shore it didn’t meet any significant obstacles: the onshore wind basically just travelled across the flat surface of the sea and it arrives to the spot very regular and perfect for kitesurfing.
In Dublin, that would be wind coming from the East.
On the other hand, wind coming from the land is way gustier because before hitting the spots, it had met numerous obstacles such as hills, forests, or buildings.
In Dublin, that would be wind coming from the West.
Below is an example of Windguru statistics at Dollymount: easterly wind on the top, westerly on the bottom.
As you can see, when easterly the wind speed and the wind gusts are close (max 5 knots difference), while when westerly the speed and gusts are significantly different (up to 17 knots difference), making you think you might even need to use two kite sizes in a same session.
On top of that, wind coming from the sea will push you to the shore, making it much safer than an offshore wind. More info on that: how to read wind direction.
For all those reasons Dublin kitesurfers came up with the little song praising easterly wind:
The day In Dublin
Where she blows easterly
You shall forget everything
Wife work or even rugbyThe beast from the East,
Is welcomed by kiters at least,
For it brings us a feast,
And helps us rise like yeast.The Sunday wind came from the east.
It drew kiters galore for a feast.
7, 10, 9
We all had a fine time
And the Stoke it was duly unleashed!Couldn’t get 4 lines and I getting old,
guess it’s a symptom of getting old.
Anyway I needed to pump my kite,
coz I wanna get out and take flight!The beast from the East
Several Dublin Kitesurfers, during the beginning of 2021
Promised a feast
So notwithstanding the cold
Kiters were made bold
For one joyous day at least
Finally, I wanted to share the best resource I came across on this topic: the video below from the YouTube channel Kite-Surf-College.
See you at the beach!
Kitesurfing Spots in Dublin 
Well done on the site and the info contained. Brilliant stuff. Poolbeg amazing, so much so Colin torpey and I looking into how we could map the tide lines in poolbeg as the variations in conditions depending on tide height are savage. .
You may have missed the best of all, sandymount on an easterly, And full tide of course. The poem above was over a few days when everyone raved about conditions in sandymount. Multiple sand bars creating streets of blue to navigate. Would in a lot of peoples opinion the best of the best!, worth considering a section on. Keep up the good work
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hey Andrew, thanks a lot!
Yes I was actually thinking of adding a section on Sandymount, so i think i m gonna do that 🙂 I never kited there though so I would have to ask for info. Also, don’t you think it is very similar as kiting in Seapoint? Cause I wrote an article about that: https://kitesurfdublin.com/seapoint/. I am just thinking Sandymount and Seapoint could be a quite similar experience, don’t you think so? cheers
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