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Yesterday was a casual but windy 25 knot session, I was riding along and unfortunately my friend was not looking where he was going and wrapped his kite around mine and then I got a lot of lines caught around my body in the aftermath.

I battled to pull them all off at lightening speed before they tensioned around my head, snagged on my spreader bar and god knows what. Fortunately my friend was swimming hard out down wind with leash out (cabrinha) while our kites were tangled to help me out that gave me some line slack and time to get them off me. My kite ended up splitting in 2 which was actually a good thing - didn't need dealing with 2 fully powered up kites in 25 knots. I made fast decision to release my kite tangled with the other one onto 5th line but couldnt release leash QR even with 2 hands and no idea why not because on land afterwards it was easy to release - I had to pull super hard on my leash and unclip instead and swam upwind fast as f***! lol flappig around feeling for lines to stay away from me.

Anyway, always like to share experiences other can learn from. I ran out of energy very quickly when i was stuck in kites battling lines was very surprised but i guess better to get them off sooner than later when they may tension up!

My friend is an awesome dude so no worries, shit happens sometimes, but I was for sure more scared of situation i found myself in than normal. Made me think about carrying a knife again; but in reality prevention is the solution as even with a knife it happens sooooooo fast, some of those crappy little knives way down low under water would have been pretty useless..

Anyway i ended up swapping my twintip for a surfboard and paddled in a km or 2, by now my kite was deflated in 2 parts so i managed to take lines off it while my friend was dragging it through water attached to his kite.

Not doing that again I hope. It's very complicated but I was happy to be on fully flag-able 5th line in this situation.

Holy shit. Glad you are okay. I think being hyper aware of the environment when things like that happen is critical. Most times more than one mistake needs to happen before an accident happens. Glad your buddy chose the right way to deal with it...

longwhitecloud wrote:Yesterday was a casual but windy 25 knot session, I was riding along and unfortunately my friend was not looking where he was going and wrapped his kite around mine and then I got a lot of lines caught around my body in the aftermath.

I battled to pull them all off at lightening speed before they tensioned around my head, snagged on my spreader bar and god knows what. Fortunately my friend was swimming hard out down wind with leash out (cabrinha) while our kites were tangled to help me out that gave me some line slack and time to get them off me. My kite ended up splitting in 2 which was actually a good thing - didn't need dealing with 2 fully powered up kites in 25 knots. I made fast decision to release my kite tangled with the other one onto 5th line but couldnt release leash QR even with 2 hands and no idea why not because on land afterwards it was easy to release - I had to pull super hard on my leash and unclip instead and swam upwind fast as f***! lol flappig around feeling for lines to stay away from me.

Anyway, always like to share experiences other can learn from. I ran out of energy very quickly when i was stuck in kites battling lines was very surprised but i guess better to get them off sooner than later when they may tension up!

My friend is an awesome dude so no worries, shit happens sometimes, but I was for sure more scared of situation i found myself in than normal. Made me think about carrying a knife again; but in reality prevention is the solution as even with a knife it happens sooooooo fast, some of those crappy little knives way down low under water would have been pretty useless..

Anyway i ended up swapping my twintip for a surfboard and paddled in a km or 2, by now my kite was deflated in 2 parts so i managed to take lines off it while my friend was dragging it through water attached to his kite.

Not doing that again I hope. It's very complicated but I was happy to be on fully flag-able 5th line in this situation.

Glad you're OK. I don't think there is much downside to carrying a knife but I agree it would take some time to cut the lines. Has anybody ever tested cutting lines in the water under somewhat realistic conditions?

in skydiving we use a hook knife...?

jodysantamaria wrote:in skydiving we use a hook knife...?

I have one that is similar, but only has one finger pull. That one looks better.

I have a dakine hook knife in my spreader bar and a salt water rescue knife in the side of my harness. Check out link. This a great knife , salt water, round tip so you do not stab youself , serrated edge for cutting quickly through lines, easy to open with gloves on. It also has a nice clip for attaching to harness and a small hole that is hard to see in photo that is perfect fo running a safety line so you do not drop knife.
Hard to say how it will all work in the heat of the moment, but I sure as hell would like to have the option of getting to a knife. And you never know what else you may get snagged on , like lobster traps, fishing lines, nets, and more.

http://knifehog.com/p-1420-spyderco-res ... 45sor.aspx

Starting about 3 years ago, some good hook knives have been produced.

The following KF thread presents quite a definitive discussion on the subject:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2343820



I feel that the DaKine, short, double bladded hook knife is the "gold standard"... after many different tries, they finally got it right.

Warning: Do not even consider carrying that orange handled hook knife.

Here is a picture of the good one to carry:

tomatkins wrote:Warning: Do not even consider carrying that orange handled hook knife.

Why don't you like the orange one? I noticed that it only has one blade instead of the two in a "V" shape. Two blades is probably much better. But is there anything else that makes the Dakine better?

The extra effort to cut a line with a single bladed knife vs. the double blade one is significant.

No single-blade knives should be sold or carried, they're just a false sense of security.

the orange one is not very sturdy. on trying to cut two lines, the plastic broke.