MIA With Good Reason

Ok, not really a good reason, because buying kite gear doesn't take every moment of a full week, but it's been consuming my thoughts a lot. Here's a link to my Kiteboarding album that has pictures of my gear:

From Kite Surfing

So the board is a Liquid Force twin tip. It's basically a skinny wake board. 151 is the length in cm. The bigger the board, the easier it is to stay on top of the water in lighter wind, and more edge for carving upwind. Once I get going and know what I'm doing, a 140cm board is more inline with my weight. It came with "luxury" foot pads/straps. They feel pretty luxurious.

The kite - is huge. The pictures don't really do it justice because there's nowhere in my apartment I could be and get it all in the shot. But it's 10 square meters. Roughly 1.5m deep, making the breadth of the kite to be about 6m (aka 20 ish feet). The kite is a 2008 Ocean Rodeo Rise that I bought used for $750 (I won't tell you what it would have been new, but suffice to say I saved A TON OF GREENBACKS). It's kind of a cool kite because unlike most kites, it's vented, so in theory, the wind is a little less turbulent, meaning it shouldn't back fly into the wind window like the kite I took my lesson on.

Then when I picked up my board I also got a harness. But this one is built into some board shorts, so it's a seat harness, but doesn't look like a giant diaper. Plus a bar, bar pad, leash, and helmet. I also ordered an O'Neil life jacket and a travel bag from the interwebs (should be here later this week).

Damage: $400 board + $260 misc + $750 kite (steal of a deal!) + $250 vest & bag + $300 wetsuit + $500 land & water lessons + $100 trainer kite = thank goodness I'm employed.

Badly Beaten

I'm not dead. But I hurt everywhere. Three and a half hours of wiping out and sucking in sea water. And a few glorious moments of using the wind to pull myself across the water... Woooooooooooo!

We started off body dragging. So no board, just a big ass kite and twenty mile per hour wind, and if you do it right, everything from your knees up are out of the water. This was the fun part, I kinda just want to make a sport out of body dragging.

Then the board. So now you have to get up. The mechanics are identical on this part to wake boarding only easier because the "boat" is over your head. And now you're up so you have to move, well you don't have to, but it helps you look cool.

Wind is not a good boat.

So you have to help it. You have generate power but not too much power. You have to keep the lines taught. And your have to keep your weight back.

And you have to let it pull you though the harness, not the bar. In skiing, in wakeboarding, the power comes through your arms. It's the same on the two line trainer kite. But on the four line big kite the power is partly in the bar, but it really needs to go through your pants (wink). I have a hard time just steering with my hands and letting the kite pull through the harness.

Then there's fencing. I can profile like a champ to the left. But when you want me to go the other way, like I'm fencing with my right hand, "switch" they call it, I feel like a fish out of water.

I'm not a natural, but I'm a lightweight, which is great for wind. So I'm in. Just let me recoup first.

Authentic Battle Damage

I got my training kite today!!! So right after work I [tried to] ride the bus to Chrissy Park, which I had checked out yesterday. I got there around 6:30 and cracked open my kite. I was pretty easy to set up, or so I thought, especially after I untied the kite from the ropes and retied them. I was on a beach and ready to fly. But everyone had their dogs out and I was pretty sure I was going to crash it more than a few times. It turns out that to self launch the kite, you have to set it up just right, so there's a lot of "set the bar down, run up, flip the kite, put sand on the trailing edge, run back, untwist the lines, then, when it's just right, pull the kite up... and the kite should do the rest. But it didn't, it crashed, and it crashes hard.

A guy on the beach named CJ helped me launch it a few times, and he flew it with some success for a while, but noted that the kite didn't want to stay still. I figured it was too much wind. He left and I crashed a few more times, some in the water. Now my kits is not only water logged, but sand is sticking to it like a champ. I'm pretty sure I'm kite-retarded at this point and decide to let the kite dry a bit as I inspect how it works.

It turns out that even though I'm not fencing, I am still a foilist. The kite design is called a foil, which for kites at least, means it has air intake on the leading [wind facing] edge. The kite is sealed on the trailing edge. The wind flows in, and provides structure to the kite. For comparison, the kite used to surf is a bow kite (there are some others too), but it does not have the same air intake set up that a foil kite has. Instead you inflate the leading edge and some structural struts. This has two advantages, one being that it floats in water, which is nice for umm water sports. Yes. The other, which has not been mentioned in any of the literature I've read thus far, is that crap doesn't get IN the kite (ie. sand and water). What this means is that my training kite is not well suited for beach conditions, and would in fact provide a much more enjoyable experience in a park. Good to know.

I also notice that my kite has two sets of lines per side (that's four sets for those of you playing at home. The same will be true of my surfing kite. In this case each set attaches to a single line, that then runs to the steering bar in my hands. There are back lines, which are closer to the trailing edge of the kite, and front lines, near the leading edge of the kite. I saw that on the right side, these groups were easily separated. On the left, not so much. So apparently I managed to tangle the left side when I was initially setting up the kite. The fact that CJ flew it at all amazes me. So I got that straightened out.

Now I could fly the kite with a decent amount of ease. Surprisingly, steerable kites are steerable. I remember buying a yellow dinosaur kite, I think when I was in Kitty Hawk, and seeing steerable kites back then, and guys talking about how they could pull you off the ground. I remember being fascinated, but somewhat shy on money to have a kite I could steer. So single string it was. Anyway, I'm flying along, working the bar one handed, doing figure eights as the guides suggest, flying without looking at the kite to get the feel, when I notice my foot feels... "moist". Sure enough there's a sand filled skin flap on the bottom of my foot. It doesn't hurt just yet, but I still have to get home...by foot. I brush off my foot with my sock as best I can and hobble on home (with the help of a cable car part of the way). I make sure to clean it well when I get home, it's not bad, mostly dead skin that it got, but it makes walking interesting.

So lessons learned:

• Check your lines.


• Fly kites on the beach that don't have built in sand compartments.


• Fly kites that do have sand compartments in the park.


• Get proper footwear for beach conditions.


• My training kite can pull me for a step or two, but I'm not going to really go anywhere.


• Don't be afraid to let go. The kite will power down and everyone will be happy.

To work on: Right now when I fly near the edge of the "wind window" my kite keeps collapsing then unfurls when it is upside down and dives at the ground if I have tension on the lines. That needs to not happen (especially since a crash like that will break a bow kite).