If it's a bowkite and the bar is close to you (i.e. coz somehow stuck to harness) if your head is above the water and you can clearly see the two cenre lines you can pull those hard towards you which will instantly depower the kite. Pulling the 5th line has AFAIK a similar effect.just heard about another incident:
a girl did an unhooked kiteloop. She hold the bar like a laser sword, meaning one side come close to the body. At that point that bar end got stuck under the harness hook and the kite kept looping many times, and also with power, so she was dragged under water. She had no idea what to do, and felt she was going to drown. Luckily someone got her kite so it stopped looping. If not, she might have been died. I'm very happy she is ok.
Are there any tips on what to do best in a situation like that?
She said, she had no chance to grab one of the O'Shit handles, too far away.
It was a four line kite.
Would it help to pull on the 5th line if you ave one? I think it should get some power out of the kite. The question is, if you are able to pull. But maybe keep this in mind as one solution, better than having nothing.
Just coming into my mind: you could pull the other bar end full power? Would you realize this in a situation like this?
If you are dragged underwater and you cant breathe and are panicking the only way is to physically touch your bar, try to find the ends of the bar and pull as hard as you can on either steer line. This will hopefully crash the kite into the water and it can't loop anymore.
If your bar is gone and you get pulled like mad then your bar has become wrapped either around the centre lines or the steering lines or both. In this case you can pull the leash safty release and collect your kite from a tree at the beach later ^^. Fortunatley lots of kite companies put tubing on their centre lines and I hope they will soon add some tubing to the steering lines too, so this stuff can't really happen.