Not wanting to sound like the kite police but please be careful kiting out at wanda. Today i watched as one dumb ass rode through a group of people learning to surf and then performed a triple backloop near the waters edge almost coming unstuck. DUDE i know its cool to do tricks and to ride where people can see you , but you need to understand it doesn't matter how good a kiter you are things do go wrong, gear breaks ,kites crash, 20 plus m of line, swimmers and kites don't mix ( re Bondi etc).

Wanda is a big open beach with k's of kiteable area, surely it goes without saying to give swimmers and surfers ample room and also our pole dancin cousins . Maybe if we all (myself included) just walk down the beach a bit, similiar to where the majority of the kites were on Saturday ,this seemed to work well ( away from the few surfers and 500m away from the pole dancers.)

Anyway i just feel this needed to be said and hopefully if we all give safety a bit of thought we won't see any accidents or any other boring problems.

cheers
Russell Pell

Yeah, must say, I was surprised to see a few folks kiting down amongst the swimmers on Saturday. It was a great day and there was plenty of open beach up toward the middle of the beach with nearly no one around. Why kite in a crowd of swimmers when it's simply not even necessary? Wanda is very gusty on a nor'easter toward the shore and nearly anything can happen in those conditions. Most of us stayed well north of the crowd on the beach and there was plenty of room there (with the exception of a one odd guy who insisted on body-surfing amongst the kiters riding waves...) Raises the age-old question of how long do you watch someone bend the envelope of common sense before you say 'enough' and go and have a talk with them... Perhaps we need to establish some local guidelines here to protect the access rights from being compromised. Has anyone who kites here regularly seen this to be an ongoing issue? Cheers, Rob Smallwood -- NSWKBA Committee member