kite surfing sound
 

I'm looking for a recommendation for brand of mics/blimps to record sound from the beach of people kite surfing. 20 knot peak winds. Would like to pickup the sound of the board slicing throogh the waves, jube, etc.

At this point the camera is on the beach, along with the mic.

Sorry to report it Larry, but this is impossible.

Sound obeys physics. Physics tells us that increasing the distance from the sound to a microphone diminishes the intensity of the sound reaching the mic by roughly the inverse square of that distance.

A surfer 300 feet away generates sound that reaches your mic 90,000 times quieter than a sound 1 foot away.

Given that your in a noisy location already (wind, people, etc) it's simply impossible to get those sounds with ANY mic on shore.

You'd need to move an (obviously waterproof!) mic ON TO the surfboard to get anything close to the sounds you're looking for - and even then, I'd suspect that those specific sounds would get burried in the general noise profile.

"Shotgun" mics that pick up sounds with "laser like focus" at great distance are imaginary movie props - not real.

What about those dishes that spies use to concentrate the sound? I'm not joking.

Big Ears (and similar) will help capture more sound, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired.
Were it my gig, I'd probably put a mic and transmitter in a condom or other sort of waterproof cover, and use it this way. I've done something similar with skydiving, works very well.

Also, consider getting out there in a boat to do some sound efx recording (non-sync). Get a cooperative surfer to do some close passes. Maybe you could do some good following with an electric trolling motor. A wood boat is much quieter in the water than aluminum.

You might get a season's worth of sound efx in a couple hours...

Put a helmet cam on the kite boarder with a mic. There are loads of options on the web that will work great just do a search for helmet cam.

I have had great success with Helmet Cam on windsurfing, 49er's, 18' skiffs, kayakers, and Kite Boarders. The audio will be fine and you can cut between the helmet cam and your camera on the beach.