I just got back from a two week trip to Maui, it is a wind gold mine. However, unless you kite on the water, you're SOL. I asked around a bit about ATBing on Maui when I kept hearing about the predictable and daily tradewinds, but didn't get any definitive info one way or the other. To be on the safe side, I schlepped all my gear down with me, only to have it sit in the hotel room the whole time. My advice is to leave the gear home unless you have water gear.

The beaches are crowded, really small (typically less than 30 or so feet wide - even at low tide) and typically lined with the kite's natural preditor, the tree. The life guards I talked to wouldn't even let me launch a smaller (3M) kite just to fly around even when the beach was fairly free. I visited many beaches and asked lots of locals and had no luck. The closest thing to half-way acceptable would be Big Beach in Makena, which was amply wide, but way too crowded. Its a west facing beach, but gets tradewinds typically NNE or NNW, making it pretty much useless for riding anything kite powered in both directions.

Anyway, just an FYI to land-lubbers like me. If you kite-surf, this place seems like Mecca, especially on the north shore (Near Kahululi), where I longingly watched 25-30 kite surfers having a blast on the warm water.

Cheers.