Blog › 9 July 2026
London Kitesurfers app v1.6 — from forecast to trip companion
Thursday 9 July 2026 — London Kitesurfers — by Alan Jay
For the last three years LKSA has been the “should I bother driving down to the coast tomorrow?” app. In v1.6 it grows up: now it plans the day with you, keeps an eye on the wind while you’re on the way, and closes the loop with a session log when you get back.
A trip is now a first-class thing
Open Beach Trips, tap New Trip, and line up one to three candidate spots for a target day. LKSA looks at the wind on the day and auto-picks the best one — and if the wind shifts and #1 stops working, it quietly bumps you to #2 or #3. The trip form previews the day’s wind, direction, verdict, and tide for the primary candidate so you can sense-check before saving.
Your Lock Screen watches the wind for you
Once the trip is inside its lead window (defaults to 2 hours before your leave-home time), a Live Activity lands on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. It shows the chosen spot, wind speed, verdict, and next tide event. For trips more than a day out, that same tile becomes a “days till you leave home” countdown so it doesn’t feel dead. Tap it and you’re back on the trip’s spot page.
A pre-drive reminder, and a calendar that gets it
A local notification pings you 15 minutes (configurable) before you’re due to leave. Opt into Calendar integration and every trip also writes a single event covering the whole out-and-back window: drive → setup → water → packup → drive home. Cancel a trip and the event goes with it, with a “Cancelled: …” title update so shared calendars stay honest.
“I’m back” closes the loop
When you get off the water, one tap ends the Live Activity, cancels the pre-drive reminder, archives the trip, and scans Apple Health for a matching kite/windsurf/surf workout on the trip’s day. If it finds one, it offers to log a session with real duration + distance in one more tap. Photos attach directly from the trip’s detail view; the first one auto-creates a session log entry with the trip’s spot + date.
Everything syncs, nothing leaves the phone
Trip defaults — drive time, setup, time on water, packup, Live Activity lead, pre-drive reminder — live in your private iCloud database and follow you across iPhone, iPad and Mac. Trip records, session log, photos: all yours, all offline-first.
New in the app for new users
A ten-screen Getting Started tour walks first-time users through nickname, trip defaults, rider profile, notifications, HealthKit, historical wind, map layers, units, session log and how to read the map. Skippable, and re-runnable from Settings any time.
Small things you’ll notice
Cancelling “I’m going” or a trip when you have alternates offers to switch to #2 instead of tearing the whole thing down. Every spot page has a “Plan a trip here” button (or “Edit your trip” if a plan for that day already exists) plus an “About this day” summary of wind, direction, verdict, peak, kite-size hint and tide events. macOS finally gets the map compass + recenter buttons. Bold markdown renders in onboarding. The custom rider-sizing fields have a Done button on the number pad. Session log gets world-map polish and a duplicate guard.
Same offline-first architecture. No accounts, no logins, no ads.
Get it now on the App Store — iPhone, iPad and Mac. Send bug reports and feedback to the usual WhatsApp channel, or via Settings → Support.
See you on the beach.