The many meetings with the Marine Safety and Parks Victoria continue...
Matt from
Flexifoil put his hand up to help out at one of the workshops, and had this to report.
I attended the Boating review
last night in Portalington. This was the first of five reviews being
held to help give feedback to Marine Safety and Parks Victoria on there
proposals for regulating boating zones in Port Phillip and Western
Bays. Some sites have been identifed to work on immediately and it was
some of those that were proposed last night.
The region covered lst night was basically the bellarine peninsular from indented head to Geelong.
The
issue that we have is there is a marine law stating that all vessels
must go slower than 5 knots with 200m of the shore. Kiteboarders are a
vessel and hence are included in this restriction. This means that at
the moment we are all effectively breaking the law by kitesurfing
within 200m of the shore.
The Review has considered this and
in all honesty I don't think we can get exemption from this law
globally (I would like to and it is something that we will work
towards) but what has been offered is kiteboarding zones which allow
kiteboarder to be exempt from the 5 knots rule in these specific areas.
This is not ideal but it is a good compromise. It means that we can
still kite anywhere where boating is allowed but must be 200m offshore
to do so at speed. we still need to keep to the minimum distances of
50m from boats and swimmers (and hard objects such as piers / groynes)
and 100m from divers.
What we need to do is to identify as many
kitesurfable sites within the bay that we use, so these kitesurf
exemption zones can be included. We need to ensure that they are at
least 50m from any popular swim zones or 100m away from dive zones but
that is pretty much it. The more sites we can identify and get on the
plan the better our chances of getting the 5 knot rule a global
exemption as it would cost too much in signage and buoys.
So let
start making a list of all areas that we want to kite / do kite in the
bays and post up a satellite image of the area marked up with wind
direction and general area that is used. They have already accepted the
areas on the KBV site it is other areas that we need to know. I realise
that this may disclose your secret spots but I will make it legal to
kite there and ensure that Kiteboarding as a sport can grow as we wont
be forced into crowded small areas.
The guys proposing the plans
are receptive to the idea of adding more kite zones and did not
hesitate / query the two extra zones I suggested as they know we tend
to go out when the rest of the other water users do not (except the
windsurfers).
The meeting was really proactive and it allowed us
to educate other water users of what kitesurfing is and what we do. It
was definitely a positive meeting and the support from the authorities
is really good. We just need to ensure that we open as much bay up to
kitesurfing as possible.
So let us know what areas you kite and
in what direction so that we can ensure that any signage and buoys are
not in our way so that we can kite safely in the future.
Matt
If you can help, or this affects you, please contribute in the KBV topic here...