More Beginner Self Rescue Mistakes & Lessons.

[proletariat]

Hi,
I am getting better at riding and staying upwind and transitioning I still have yet to pull off a flawless deep water self rescue, so I keep practicing. I got the entire last attempt on video and it's a train wreck. Hopefully my video helps other beginners avoid some of my mistakes. One of these days, I'll post a flawless deep water self rescue (I hope)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bNZ5gZxafo

[GregK]

Here's another skill you may want to work on so that you don't have to do a down-winder when underpowered ( either kite or board ) - Get in to the upwind body-drag position holding your board with your front hand at a footstrap or the handle. Heel the board over burying the windward rail, and tilt the nose up. With the added lateral resistance of the board you can body-drag pointing much higher upwind, even in light wind for your kite. With two or three long tacks, the wind wiill take you back to your starting point.

Body-dragging with your board can be a lot easier than walking everything back upwind, if you 've got it under control. But you better have enough wetsuit on.

[cbulota]

Don't be too hard on yourself... a lot of those aren't really mistakes, you just need more practice.

About the self-rescue, I'm really glad you posted this. It's by far the most poorly taught skill in kiteboarding and therefore the most poorly executed.

I hate it when people say ''it's easy'' just wrap your lines...your video CLEARLY shows how difficult that is EVEN in LIGHT winds! Imagine in a proper 20-25 knots breeze!

I did a self-rescue experiment a few years ago and you can read all about it here: http://www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kite ... omparison/

Basically in a situation like you were in, wrapping lines is a complete waste of time. just keep going past the bar following that 1 safety line all the way to the kite, AVOID swimming and kicking As much as possible, and you will get to your kite super fast, create a sail with the kite and let the kite bring you in (again no swimming, no kicking). I've taught this technique with hundreds of students in strong winds an deep water (Perth, WA) same spot where I did my experiments, and never had any issues. Prior to that, we tried teaching wrapping lines in real conditions (deep water, strong winds) but that was huge failures and we ended up rescuing students by boat too many times, not to mention they didn't have any confidence in being able to actually achieve that skill!

I mean yeah ideally you'd wrap your lines easily and quickly but that's a load of crap, it's actually pretty hard and that difficulty increases exponentially with the wind speed!

Also, when you untangle your lines, never detach them from the kite first, just undo as much as you can without detaching the lines, it's much quicker.

With a self-rescue without wrapping lines, if you didn't kick or swim during, you'd get untangled in less than a few minutes!

Christian

[mbevo]

Don't be too hard on yourself... a lot of those aren't really mistakes, you just need more practice.

About the self-rescue, I'm really glad you posted this. It's by far the most poorly taught skill in kiteboarding and therefore the most poorly executed.

I hate it when people say ''it's easy'' just wrap your lines...your video CLEARLY shows how difficult that is EVEN in LIGHT winds! Imagine in a proper 20-25 knots breeze!

I did a self-rescue experiment a few years ago and you can read all about it here: http://www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kite ... omparison/

Basically in a situation like you were in, wrapping lines is a complete waste of time. just keep going past the bar following that 1 safety line all the way to the kite, AVOID swimming and kicking As much as possible, and you will get to your kite super fast, create a sail with the kite and let the kite bring you in (again no swimming, no kicking). I've taught this technique with hundreds of students in strong winds an deep water (Perth, WA) same spot where I did my experiments, and never had any issues. Prior to that, we tried teaching wrapping lines in real conditions (deep water, strong winds) but that was huge failures and we ended up rescuing students by boat too many times, not to mention they didn't have any confidence in being able to actually achieve that skill!

I mean yeah ideally you'd wrap your lines easily and quickly but that's a load of crap, it's actually pretty hard and that difficulty increases exponentially with the wind speed!

Also, when you untangle your lines, never detach them from the kite first, just undo as much as you can without detaching the lines, it's much quicker.

With a self-rescue without wrapping lines, if you didn't kick or swim during, you'd get untangled in less than a few minutes!

Christian

Personally I would be very scared to hold onto a single line and get to the kite while all the other lines are floating around me...in overpowered situations i sometimes have trouble to even pull the safety line from leash to the bar. If my hands slip and a line wrap around me that's an extreme dangerous situation I don't even want to put myself in. In were I kite time is not that much of an essence, I would rather take the extra 5-10min to wrap all the loose lines and make sure I'm completely safe, and be prepared to ditch kite/bar if anything goes wrong in the process. As for the tangles...not willing to potentially risk my life for 30 min of untangling.

Always kite side/side-on/onshore conditions and know your exits if things go wrong.

[Bushflyr]

First, and I realize you're a beginner, don't twist your damn bar when steering your kite. Pull in push out twisting it like a steering wheel does nothing.

Second, a big part of why you couldn't stay powered is because your bar was 1/2 to 3/4 pushed out ALL the time. How do you expect to stay powered with your foot on the brake? Dive the kite, sheet in, and pull in tight. Use your edge to control your power. When you have more power edge harder, less, let up a bit. You need to extract every bit of energy from the wind and it's not going to happen with the bar out.

On to your "tips." When you fall DO NOT let go of the bar. You then have no control of the kite. Keep flying it. Always keep flying the kite.

Next, don't practice by ejecting your kite at 12. The bar flies all the way up the lines and now you have a mess to deal with. Eject it low on the edge of the window.

Don't keep your board on your feet. It acts like a sea anchor, puts you face down in the water, and makes it impossible to wind your lines up. Take your leash off your bar, you're all done with it now, and hook it to a bit of cord that you intelligently attached to the tail of the board for just this situation. Or better yet, carry a spare leash on the back of your harness.

When you wrap up, and you figured it out sort of, take your time and wrap up neatly just like you would on the beach. It takes less time in the end and keeps you from getting loose lines that can snag you up. Especially important if you're way out somewhere and need to crawl onto your kite for an hour long raft nap.

[cbulota]

take your time and wrap up neatly just like you would on the beach.

I have yet to see one person do that...wrap their lines neatly ''like they are on the beach'' in deep water and strong wind....even for experienced kiters like myself with loads of experience in self-rescue, it's pretty difficult and time consuming.

I like how people judge other alternatives methods without even having tried them before... It's all about risk vs reward, if you can't wrap your line properly, easily and in a timely fashion, then why would you even bother in the first place ?

It would take TONS of practice for someone to be even remotely competent at wrapping lines in deep water in a moderate to strong breeze (most good days). Very few kiters are willing to dedicate that much time and effort to get good at this...I've seen more people fail to self-rescue wrapping lines than people succeed and that says a lot about this techniques. Many things can go wrong while wrapping your lines as well... it's definitely not a fool proof method either.

If one or more of the 700 students I taught practical deep water self-rescue to have had safety issues with non-wrapping of lines I probably wouldn't teach it, but It just didn't happen. More problems with wrapping lines as it's too technical and difficult which even for people with training and best intentions (as video above) is HARD.

Can someone show me a video of a self-rescue in strong wind (more than 20 knots) + deep water with a clean and quick wrap of the lines. Anyone ?

[cbulota]

take your time and wrap up neatly just like you would on the beach.

I have yet to see one person do that...wrap their lines neatly ''like they are on the beach'' in deep water and strong wind....even for experienced kiters like myself with loads of experience in self-rescue, it's pretty difficult and time consuming, not to mention you end up drifting very long distances downwind where no other kiters are which means no one will bother to help.

I like how people judge other alternatives methods without even having tried them before... It's all about risk vs reward, if you can't wrap your line properly, easily and in a timely fashion, then why would you even bother in the first place ?

It would take TONS of practice for someone to be even remotely competent at wrapping lines in deep water in a moderate to strong breeze (most good days). Very few kiters are willing to dedicate that much time and effort to get good at this...I've seen more people fail to self-rescue wrapping lines than people succeed and that says a lot about this techniques. Many things can go wrong while wrapping your lines as well... it's definitely not a fool proof method either.

If one or more of the 700 students I taught practical deep water self-rescue to have had safety issues with non-wrapping of lines I probably wouldn't teach it, but It just didn't happen. More problems with wrapping lines as it's too technical and difficult which even for people with training and best intentions (as video above) is HARD.

Can someone show me a video of a self-rescue in strong wind (more than 20 knots) + deep water with a clean and quick wrap of the lines. Anyone ?

[cbulota]

take your time and wrap up neatly just like you would on the beach.

I have yet to see one person do that...wrap their lines neatly ''like they are on the beach'' in deep water and strong wind....even for experienced kiters like myself with loads of experience in self-rescue, it's pretty difficult and time consuming, not to mention you end up drifting very long distances downwind where no other kiters are which means no one will bother to help.

I like how people judge other alternatives methods without even having tried them before... It's all about risk vs reward, if you can't wrap your lines properly, easily and in a timely fashion, then why would you even bother in the first place ?

It would take TONS of practice for someone to be even remotely competent at wrapping lines in deep water in a moderate to strong breeze (most good days). Very few kiters are willing to dedicate that much time and effort to get good at this...I've seen more people fail to self-rescue wrapping lines (most of the times because lines weren't wrapped well enough!) than people succeed and that says a lot about this technique. Many things can go wrong while wrapping your lines as well... it's definitely not a fool proof method either.

If one or more of the 700 students I taught practical deep water self-rescue to have had safety issues with non-wrapping of lines I probably wouldn't teach it, but It just didn't happen. More problems with wrapping lines as it's too technical and difficult which even for people with training and best intentions (as video above) is HARD.

Can someone show me a video of a self-rescue in strong wind (more than 20 knots) + deep water with a clean and quick wrap of the lines. Anyone ?

[kas911]

Your videos are very good and super informative. Especially for beginners! Keep it up

[ronnie]

take your time and wrap up neatly just like you would on the beach.

I have yet to see one person do that...wrap their lines neatly ''like they are on the beach'' in deep water and strong wind....even for experienced kiters like myself with loads of experience in self-rescue, it's pretty difficult and time consuming.

I like how people judge other alternatives methods without even having tried them before... It's all about risk vs reward, if you can't wrap your line properly, easily and in a timely fashion, then why would you even bother in the first place ?

It would take TONS of practice for someone to be even remotely competent at wrapping lines in deep water in a moderate to strong breeze (most good days). Very few kiters are willing to dedicate that much time and effort to get good at this...I've seen more people fail to self-rescue wrapping lines than people succeed and that says a lot about this techniques. Many things can go wrong while wrapping your lines as well... it's definitely not a fool proof method either.

If one or more of the 700 students I taught practical deep water self-rescue to have had safety issues with non-wrapping of lines I probably wouldn't teach it, but It just didn't happen. More problems with wrapping lines as it's too technical and difficult which even for people with training and best intentions (as video above) is HARD.

Can someone show me a video of a self-rescue in strong wind (more than 20 knots) + deep water with a clean and quick wrap of the lines. Anyone ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmbQFkTifE