There is a LOT more to kiteboarding than just rigging, riding and throwing some tricks.
Decorating trees, houses, walls etc. with lofted riders isn't going to help our access or the guys that got slammed for that matter. A man was partially paralyzed recently when he was lofted in less powered circumstances a short distance on to shore.
PLEASE learn about kiteboarding before JUST DOING IT.
KNOW about your local weather, read the forecasts, know the signs of changing weather, rig for anticipated conditions. Monitor weather conditions continuously and a lot more.
IF excessively gusty winds hit, DESPITE all your best efforts to avoid it, DEPOWER USING YOUR KITE IMMEDIATELY, WHILE YOU HAVE THE OPTION. If you don't have a kite leash to depower your kite, prepare to kiss your butt goodbye potentially. Guys have lost it in the past for hanging on just too long when powerful winds slammed in.
Once you are lofted and flying through the air or being ripped across the water at speed, you may not be able to pull off depowering the kite. It can be mere seconds from lofting/dragging to impact with NO time to react. What do you do if you drive off of a cliff ... Not much, it's too late.
Looking cool is important, right? Best to thoroughly know what is going on to avoid looking stupid AND risking trashing your kite. How will you look to your friends if your actions get everyone kicked out of the launch?
More ideas about these and related subjects appear at:
phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2300704
Some information about weather planning appears at:
phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2300711
While you are checking the weather forecast, check the Sat. images and realtime winds at
http://www.ikitesurf.com/ and forecasts, radar and Sat. images at
http://nws.noaa.gov/ or equivalent sites in your country.
You can often see the leading edge of the cold front in the sat. images and perhaps also the leading edge squalls with some wet cold fronts. ALSO, look up coast to see if the front has triggered wind spikes. Look at the wind speeds and times in the following plots for stations further to the north. Some cold fronts have violent embedded squalls at their leading edge. Realtime winds with frequent direction changes and rapidly varying gusts can be a give away of such unstable potentially hazardous conditions.
The front hit at about 5:30 am here, about 135 miles north of the launch and stayed up for a while. NOTE: all wind graphics are from
http://www.ikitesurf.com/ including the new, very nicely detailed windgraphs.
Further south, about 80 miles north of the launch, the leading edge of the front hit at around 6:30 am and stayed up for a while
At this station, about 25 miles north of the launch, it went off at 9 am and stayed up for a while.
Observations at the launch indicated the frontal winds hit at about 9:30 am.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, who could have possibly predicted this would happen?
Anyone.
So, risk being clueless cannon fodder OR learn your game, please. This isn't rocket scicence. Learn about YOUR local conditions. Why risk looking like a loser because of ignorance?
Have a care out there.
More at:
phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2312199
