If its really nuken.... lower your kite ( wingtip on the water then reach up and grab your middle lines ( about half a metre up ) and hold onto those for extra depower.
Hmm, I'm not a fan of putting a wingtip in the water, as that will make the kite do nasty stuff if you get a change in wind direction (which is quite often what the "gusty" wind is). I have seen kites roll back on the wingtip and shoot through the power zone trying that trick - not fun.
Also grabbing flying lines is generally not a great idea, especially when the kite is not being predictable.
If in doubt use the safety and flag the kite out on one line - you do have one of those right?
my silliest overpowered situation was landboarding. I has doing a 24hr session and the wind was nuking through at 30 knots with squalls to god know what. 40-45 knots i guess... my foils are overpowered so at 1am I step into my smallest inflatable. 8m ozone light. Its a strange thing inflating a kite at 1am in the morning.
Any way you can't see squalls coming at night time. the gusts hit you instantly when all of a sudden theres torrential rain and its 40+ knots. crazy times.
during some of those squalls i'd stop park the kite at the edge and dig into the ground and assume a tug of war possition and essentially play and invisable game of tug and war between me and the kite/wind.
So morrell of the story is. if you find yourself on land when the squall hits and no time to land the kite. depower the kite assume the tug of war position and ride it out.
yep. see how far you can kite in 24hrs. conditions were a bit silly so we couldn't go as fast/far as we would have like. I had about 4 hours down time repairing and adjusting stuff. so it was 20 hours flying.
Nope a 6 hour kitesurf session is truely epic. I'm yet to do any epic kitesurf down winders as the logistics and chance for death is alot greater than landboarding.
At night landboarding you simply strap on lights and keep going. If you fall off you get up and walk to your board and carry on. What do you do if you fall off at 1 am kitesurfing out at sea. wheres your board? can you see it? what about the kite? what if you need to self rescue? it all gets very hard and dangerous kitesurfing long distances.
As others have said, kite hovering above the water, edging as hard as possible is the best way to go.
Also gotta agree don't come in unless you got a good plan stay a comfortable distance from shore.
Also like was said if the edging hard with the kite really low you can actually dunk the wing tip and park it on the water (once its on the water make sure your steering it down so it doesn't auto relaunch). Sometimes this is only a momentary dunk. Just gotta be careful to not relaunch to quick as dunking it will put it in the power zone more.
Kite at 12 is the worst thing you can do, I would even suggest if you have time to plan quick release pulling dunk the kite into the water then pull it- less things can go wrong.
Although I kite, I have to agree entirely with the windsurfers here. Although one could also surmise that the actual number of swimmers/crowd has actually increased rapidly in the last 10 years, whereby even the montonous procession in windsurfing may be a real danger to swimmers.
I propose , like say at coronations, a delineation between kiters and windsurfers, at least in general practise. Just an idea.
Wrote this article on the topic: https://sites.google.com/a/peterskiteboarding.com/kitesurfing-handbook/safety/kitesurfing-storms
Need to add to this - keep one hand ON the safety release if you are riding out a big gust - and release it before things go to custard. And release your second safety if you are still getting dragged.
It seems that some people panic and hang on the bar - this may have been the case at Brighton recently. So practicing safety drills is essential.
If you get lofted (which shouldn't happen!), you don't have much choice other than flying the kite until you come down, hopefully not to hard
It depends on where the kite is - and what is downwind of you.
I had a "bullet" hit me near Applecross from the city in a NW wind back when I used the 15 meter. I was in the middle of a slow speed transition with kite at 12 o'clock when I was yanked immediately out of the water, enough to see into the back yards of the houses on majestic drive - maybe 5 - 10 meters straight up. Bailing was not an option, however because I was dumb enough to kite upwind of the point, I had to try something, and steered for around the corner rather than into the back yards on the hill.
Moved the kite to 1:30 and saw I would end up under the walkway next to the rocks, moved it to 10:30 and was not quite going to make the palk, then I skimmed the water head first once before ploughing into the retaining wall about half way up. I had enough time to " land sideways" on the wall and destroy my wakeboard in the process but probable saved me as I was hooking when I hit it. I had a bouyancy vest on, and despite landing sideways, my head and shoulder still hit the wall.
If the same situation happened and there was nothing downwind of me - I would of just steered the kite above me in the gust, and then bail when I eventually hit the water.
If the gust hits and the kite is already close to the water ( Ie your not airborne just overpowered ) - then just bail. pretty simple.
If you ride suicide and have no bailing option, buy a new north bar which lets you ride suicide and still engage 5th line if you need to bail
Great story Chop.......far out, but you are right....sometimes the kite is already up there when the gust hits...especially when you kite where it can be weird, like the river.
I was once at Att. in an ESE and just standing there...well a gust hit, switching wind direction and taking me with it....lucky it was only a sec. or two...........could have been up in those pine trees.
Wind can do very strange things, esp. around objects....just ask the paraglider fellas.
Sure can, I turned around mid air to see dale behind me equal height.... He landed about 3 meters from the beach like a cannon ball, I cleared about 10 metres of beach to hit the wall......
