Just interested. How does the Dos Bandit stand up to three months at sea. Is it still in useable condition. It would be great to see some photos. - 18 miles and 3 months to sea, what a great story. /glad to hear it is finally home.

Rhys, thats crazy i am a friend of Herve's, the guy that lost his 13m waroo at the same time! I'll let him know that there is still hope. Post some photos. Was the bar and lines still attached, i remember that your kite became unhooked and your leash had been detached during the rescue. Anyway glad you got it back!!

any photos yet

kn unbelieveable, I haven't looked at the lost and found for a while but can tell you it was late March when you lost it(according to date of attached photo), I know because it was the kite I ended up with my arm wrapped up in the lines of when I tried to save it/you. I had watched it looping along for a couple of K's from the shore after sunset and thought that someone must have still been attached to it to cause it to loop, so I headed out to see if I could help.
When I got out to it it was that dark that I thought that the weed caught on the bar was a person and whilst I was trying to have a closer look the surf club rubber ducky that had came out after me bumped into me in the dark and pushed me forward into the lines. The resistance (me tangled in the lines) caused it to relaunch and start looping again, luckily (as I recently posted on a thread about line cutters) I had my line knife with me and was able to cut myself free.
I bet it had at least two (from memory) lines cut .



P.S. Rice dog ended up buying my 10 DOS off of me a couple of days later but was a bit worried that someone might find his kite and he would end up with two 10 Dos's, so I said that if it was found within the next couple of weeks he could just return my kite and I would give him his money back, gotta say 5 months is a bit long though, it looks like you are stuck with them both

Ha ha...Nuh the name was there before the bruise and was definetly not what I had in mind when I came up with it.
It is scary though how quickly things can go wrong, I got off lightly, it could of had a completely different ending.
I knew I was taking a risk when I set off, I had been kiting for about 4 hours and was already completely stuffed, myself and a couple of mates had packed up our kites on sunset when we saw a kite looping, only just visible, a long way offshore. I had started the arvo in light winds on a 13 Bandit and strapless surfboard but had dropped down to a 9 Nano when the wind had picked up. My 13 Bandit was the only kite still pumped up and we all talked about the fact someone should go out and checked it out, knowing how exhausted I was a mate Rob had said he would head out if he could borrow my kite.
I ended up going out because it was my kite and in the dark I didn't think it was wise for someone to use an unfamiliar kite.
It turned out there was three kites out there and when I got to the first two that were tangled the Clubbies arrived at the same time in an inflato, I left them with the two kites and said I would head out to the other one further out.
I am lucky that the breeze had dropped a bit and when I ended up tangled I simply (because it was such a well behaved kite) placed my kite on its wingtip at the edge of the window so I had two hands free to cut my way out and then was able to relaunch, the clubbies by then had picked up my surfboard, which by this stage was a long way upwind, threw it to me and I was able to kite back to shore.
All three kites drifted off into the darkness but more importantly all three kiters had swum back to shore .......the end.

Nah sorry mate as my last line said all 3 kites drifted off into the darkness.
Once the clubbies had established that there was no-one in trouble they just let the kites go and after my drama with the DOS I wasn't game to try to drag the others back.
It's a shame the Surf Club hasn't taken up the offer to learn how to handle kites because all they had to do was grab them and pull the deflate and they could have been saved.