Sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you are healing well and quickly. Anti-lofting technqiue is critical in this sport particularly when sudden gusts come. Lofting seems to come in two varieties. Those that happen very fast and don't allow for reaction. Then those that are more spectacular, that come in high gusts in which you are flown along for while. You can hit hard to very hard in either case but the later type of lofting potentially can have very high speed impacts. More about anti-lofting technique apprears in:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kitesurf/ ... EFERENCES/
Launching hooked in is convenient, allows you to fly a larger kite than you might otherwise but it does come at a price if you are hit by a sudden gust. You just paid that price unfortunately. It isn't real common but is common enough to discourage the practice in my opinion. I should release a sequence of photos in the next few days that present some ideas of how to avoid this sort of problem.
Even with successfully using anti-lofting technique you can still be dragged at high speed and exposed to serious injury. The only benefit is that when and if you sort out depowering your kite, you will still be on the ground. In a lofting you still have to free fall to impact after dealing with your kite, if you have time. The key in all of this is avoiding lofting and draggign conditions in the first place, i.e. squalls, excessively gusty winds, hooking in on launch, etc.
I too would like to learn more about the circumstances of your accident, things like the location, weather conditions, wind speed, estimated gust velocity, size kite, horizontal distance flown, what you hit, whether you were wearing an impact vest/helmet, etc. for a KSI account if you are amenable to this. Thanks for sharing the account of your experience.
Heal fast,
Rick Iossi
flkitesurfer@hotmail.com