bingles said...Mr Kutcher kinda hit the nail on the head - access to perth metro spots are on borrowed time and there willl be more and more kiters there each year.
dusta - short but sweet
Hey Paul,
I used to live on Cantray street and had the same after work options. Melville or lucky bay in a SW attracts a certain type of kiter.
1) Kites fly efficiently in clean wind, in turbulent wind your wind window shrinks and expands. And wherever you fly a kite on no matter what wind direction the wind on the river will always be turbulent due to the surrounding buildings, hills, and trees. Many people that kite at melville, know how to fly a kite but have no idea WHY it flies.
2) Many kiters at melville are not experienced water users, as they like the shallow water.
3)Because of the turbulent wind, there are only about 10 kiters who understand apparent wind theory and can always ride upwind. the rest do the walk of shame.
4) Because of all of the above some will be lazy and want to walk in ankle deep water, and have their kites around trees and the road. Walk in knee deep water and you are then using safe kiting guidelines, ALLOW 2X your line length as a MINIMUM SAFE distance.
5) WAKSA has spent so much time and effort,(I know of at least 3 occasions) to keep melville open, and a former member spent a lot of his own money on those bouys. THAT is minimum safe distance.
Melville is crowded. Many guys will never get better if they only kite there. Learning any tricks, especially unhooked tricks is useless at Melville, how are you going to effectively learn when the wind range is + or - 8 knots at any given time???? Learn to relaunch well, know how to self rescue, know how to pull your safety and self land your kite and move on.....
P.S. sorry if I highjacked your thead, but I know you will be cool.
