Good reminder this subject.
A reminder to me to buy a propper marine line knife, which I have just done! a whichard marine knife that claims to cut through any type of line, soft grippy handle with spring out blade with auto lock, not pointy, and with a leash point.the rubbish little hook knife in the harness is just to unfriendly to use easily and murder to locate when you can't see it.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wichard-Offs ... 0148.m2813
I have been in 4 nasty line wraps where the bar and lines have wrapped around the mast and jammed up around the wings,on all occasions the wind was not strong so the kite only looped lazily a few times allowing me to duck down to untangle the mess, but it was scary as the lines get so tight and the bar is so hard to remove when you can't see which way to push it off,
the causes were - twice when learning how to gybe and simply running towards the kite and falling through the slack lines, early mistakes which once aware (as I am now) is relatively easy to avoid.
The other 2 wraps were really scary as I was attempting to jybe on wave faces using the power of the waves to accelerate me round, very exciting as the push is addictive but as I was attempting my early ones the waves were too big for me and I tripped up flying forwards and then rolled by the wave, really not nice as you can feel the lines wrapping you up with the board,now I have experienced these I am more aware of what to avoid(half hearted scared attitude when turning in on the wave)
for example when out 2 days ago in strong winds on a rough bumpy wavy sea I was thinking through my escape routes as I was picking my waves to turn on before commiting to the turn, rather that just going in to see what would happen.
I did get it wrong a few times but dived to the side with a powered up kite avoiding the lines with the kite sill under control which is so important in the waves as we all know!
but the knife is going to stay with me when it arrives for those moments not planned for, ie; another kiter crashing into me on a twin tip for example, which is my biggest fear on holiday as some of them just seem to aim straight for me which is bad news when you are on a foil.
Someone above mentioned its like a right of passage, you do need to experience it to deal with it more effectively or avoid it in the first place, final thing to mention, in all my wraps there was not the option to release, the bar was jammed up against the mast and wings with the leader lines and floats totally wrapped around themselves, if I had a good knife to hand then I would have been very tempted to cut free on just one of these occasions as it did freak me out as I was jammed up against the board with the mast inches from my bare arms,