Landing a kite on water and winding up the lines, to me, that is a self rescue, not a self landing. I would always self land a kite on land at all times. So what you're doing is very dangerous unless necessary to rescue yourself from deep water to land. Why can't you just self land it on land, by pulling on one of the power lines and get the leading edge down and parked? It's not hard with some practice in light winds.
In an overpowered situation, you need to pull the safety or quick release and let the kite self park itself, but again ON LAND, or shallow water at least.
Any situation where you loose control of the kite on water, to me that is a self rescue situation straight up!

When in doubt, just use the safety.

I will generally self land on a beach or park area if possible, but if the wind is up or there is no beach or just for the sake of practice, I will hit the safety.

Yeah i need "self rescue" with the water on my knees like harlie said because wind shadow gets about 10-15 meters from the shore. Alot "soft" gravel beaches are here, very long but very(!!!) narrow, usually there are boats and some fishing stuff on the beach, cant do selfland in shallow water because sharp razer stones in the couple of places 1 inch below the surface. (1st 10-15 meters are stones, then is 50 meters of sand, water 1,5 meter).So i can unhook/safety or both and stay on the leash while wrapping it up till i reach the kite (wrap center lines little more ofc to get more flagging i presume)? Thats is the safest possible way in this conditions?There are other better spots and not very far (i can think like 10 spots in 30 km radius) but most of them are or crowded, or beachbars, boats, docks.... So got 1-2 "secret spots" with shallow water and very small place to land on the beach + very risky, at least for my lvl of kite control.Just sniffing for some options till i get full control of the kite. I am drift launching it, i know it isnt the best method for newbie but i got the hang of it and i think it's best option to keep this kite long enough till i know fundamentals and get in my head what kite i actually want.

Just2807,

Winding up your lines on the bar in a self-landing scenario on land or in shallow water is a waste of time. It's understandably what most people do since it's the only method they know or been shown during their lessons.

With a little bit of practice you can self retrieve any kite in any wind condition in less than 30 seconds by climbing up a single front line (center line) only once the safety is activated and the kite has flagged out.

IDS systems on pre 2014-2015 models are all flagging on dual front lines, which delivers mixed results when the safety system is activated. The new Cabrinha models all flag on a single front line which is far safer and much more predictable, and most of all, never fails to fully depower the kite as soon as the safety is activated.

If you release the safety and the kite is directly downwind of you (in the power zone) on it's leading edge and doesn't flag out, simply walk forward quickly toward the kite ( a few steps should do the trick), this will make the kite roll on it's back. You can then put tension back on the front lines and proceed to retrieve it safely by walking the front lines, until they split in a ''V'', then grab only ONE of them and keep following it till you catch the leading edge. This is very well explained in this Cabrinha video at 3:29.



This procedure can be reviewed in the emergency self-landing video below. The videos Windreams posted are more advanced and only works when you have a and open beach space and no obstacles and no wind shadow to self-land. So in your situation I would recommend using the method in the video below, over the water.



Safe kiting,

Christian

Loftywinds said..
unless the wind is light, doing what nobo said above by walking the lines is very risky and you have almost no control
of the kite should it suddenly catch wind and rip the lines out of your hands.
Most of us are taught the other way for a reason.... because it's safe(r) dugh!

In 8 years of kiting I have yet to see a single newbie who isn't going through a great deal of struggle attempting to wrap their lines when the wind is blowing around 25 knots. That's right! A lot will simply fail (especially in deep water) and give up (releasing the whole kite), drifting up to a few KM downwind getting other people worried.... and many will forget to lock in the leash line, which results in the kite powering up while the lines are wrapped around the bar! And how about when two kites tangles and people start wrapping their lines...you get the picture. This is not speculation, but rather the conclusions I draw from many years of daily observations at my local spot.

Over the years we've only had thousands of students self-retrieving their kites without wrapping lines and without any assistance from the instructor in strong winds (we get winds up to 25 knots almost every day in season) without a single incident or injury. Prior to this we were teaching the ''official method'' and trying to get all students to wrap lines by themselves, in strong winds and deep water. The level of difficulty was too high, the success rate pretty low and too much time was spent assisting and rescuing the students. As a school who operates in 100% deep waters and 90% strong winds, this left us with 3 options:

1-Stick to simply demonstrating self-rescue with wrapping lines with hands-on assistance from the instructor and avoid the trouble of getting the student to practice it alone in actual deep waters or without touching the ground (what the majority of schools do!), or simply don't teach it at all (what some schools do!). All this hoping the student doesn't get in trouble and has to self-rescue alone during the lessons, which typically results in a student rescue.

2-Have all students successfully attempt at least one deep water self-rescue by wrapping their lines without the instructors assistance, which demands: a lot of time (at least 1 hour) and an instructor in the rescue boat ready to help. Yes, this takes an hour to teach this correctly for most students in strong winds if everything goes reasonably well and quite frankly is when a lot of students think of just giving up the sport. It's just too difficult and stressful for the average student, which is exactly why most schools opt for option 1 and also why most newbies aren't actually competent with self-rescue!

3-Come up with an easier, quicker and more efficient method that is safe and doesn't involve wrapping lines and is most importantly easily achievable by any students, even in strong wind conditions.

By choosing option 3 and working on improving our teaching methods we managed to have zero student boat rescues in the last 3 years and more importantly building confidence in every student's ability to genuinely get themselves out of trouble without any help.

So yeah keep on wrapping in strong winds, I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about.

Loftywinds said..
unless the wind is light, doing what nobo said above by walking the lines is very risky and you have almost no control
of the kite should it suddenly catch wind and rip the lines out of your hands.
Most of us are taught the other way for a reason.... because it's safe(r) dugh!

biggest load of **** i have heard . Cbulota's method works awesome in high winds