Lost control on a downloop at Brighton and the last thing I saw on my way down was the kite hitting the water hard with the leading edge.

The kite twisted itself and relaunched into a serie of very fast loops without any major boost as it was twisted.

I flagged it to a single line (yes waveslave,I actually connect myself to the flagging line for innocent bystander's safety), winded my lines and self rescued to the beach in a 30 mn swim (Thanks to whoever carried and planted my board on the beach).

Kite's leading edge did not appear busted to my surprise but was obviously majorly defleted. I attempted to relaunch as I didn't want to do the walk of shame back to my bag but the kite folded and I had to abort.

After a long walk, I reinflated the kite with a solid 15 pumps and everything was fine for another hour session.

Since there doesn't appear to be any leak, I am a bit confused as to where did the pressure go? I have noticed before that the kite loose pressure after getting soaked (air density?) but this was a massive difference and should I underinflate the kite in this situation to allow for the pressure building back up when the kite dries up?

Would be interested to know if someone can explain this one.

What kind of kite ? The Cabrinhas have a rubber seal in the valve that if sand gets in there will cause a slow leak.....just pull it out and clean the sand off if this is the case.

peanuticus said...

crashing a hard kite in 40c into water of ~20c will drop the pressure in the kite by like a million PSI. it will make it go floppy and do exactly what happened without popping valves.

either that or its sprung a small leak

Is that proven or are you just making this up?

na the temp difference could cause a noticable drop in pressure. wiv white water rafts we have to be careful we dont pump em up to hard and leave them in the sun because they explode or when we chuck rafts that have been in the sun in the river they suddenly go flat. I dont c why it d b different for a kite.

Yeah, I also get about 7%. So if I pump my kite to 9psi to start at 35 degC and if the water temp is 15 degC then if all the air got down to that temp then the kite would go down to 8.4 psi which is still good. If you start at 8 though, your kite may go down to 7.5 psi. I can only see it being an issue if you were on the border of the kite being hard enough.

I think the most likely outcome was that some pressure escaped from one of the valves during impact - like a pressure relief valve.

Yes it does and I had another kite with it today and it definitely deflated so I have obviously damaged something.
Might have to dip it in the bath and see if I can find where the air is leaking.
It could also be a good reason to tell the misses I need a new 6 meter!!!