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The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice!

Forum with lots of safety info - a must for newbees
matth
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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby matth » Tue Apr 08, 2014 6:44 pm

dracop wrote:I have a question for you guys, why the obsession with a knife when it seems all the safety systems include a primary emergency release that will release the kite. I have a knife in a special compartment in my harness but I could do a QR-> ER MUCH faster than I could slice off my lines if it came to it. Once did it by accident, releases very fast (went running to catch that kite, fortunately it was soaked in water and plopped down).

What am I missing that makes a knife so valuable over that system?

On a different note, since you guys advise having a plan for anything that might come up, what's your plan for accidentally ending up kitesurfing in a school of sharks? The jumping, biting, aggressive kind! Do you guys carry a gun as well? A machete? Spear gun? We just went thru shark migration season in FL, it can be scary to see thousands of sharks in the water. You don't always know they are there until tis too late though. Make for a good lunch if you could haul it back attached to your safety leash attachment line... :rollgrin:

I'm a noob but if there is one thing Ive learned so far in this sport, its that in ksing, snit happens!
I carry 2 knifes , one small hook knife under my hook/ckicken loop and a three inch folding rescue knife. Both are small and are hidden in my harness, but very accessible.
A knife is not a replacement for your safety release , and will most likely not help in a looping/lofting type of situation. Those just happen to fast. But there are other more slowly developing scenarios that a knife could be a nice thing to have. Getting wrapped up in your lines can be very dangerous. Someone just posted about having their lines sucked into a jetski. How about if you get tangled with another kiter and kites are powering up with no control. Fishing lines and nets, weeds, the list go on. A knife may not always save your ass but I sure as hell want to have the option to do something, without one you stand no chance against those lines.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby SpaceRacer » Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:58 am

A QR only releases the chicken loop from your harness. That's it. Not a line from a kite or a fishing net around your throat or ankle. A hook knife is essential...and cheap so IMHO you're an idiot not to carry one.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby William Munney » Thu May 08, 2014 1:01 am

I recently got a Mystic Clickerbar 3.0, it came with a pocket right below the hook and a knife in the pocket. Best setup yet and the whole spreader bar was on sale for about $50. I had another brand that was releasing on it's own.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby edt » Thu May 08, 2014 1:24 am

dracop wrote:I have a question for you guys, why the obsession with a knife when it seems all the safety systems include a primary emergency release that will release the kite. I have a knife in a special compartment in my harness but I could do a QR-> ER MUCH faster than I could slice off my lines if it came to it.
I get my feet tangled in my lines way too often. The way this happens is that the wind drops suddenly and the kite hindenbergs, so I hit the primary QR, sometimes the secondary one too. But the water can wash the lines around your legs if the lines are slack or even worse if you swim by kicking your legs and the lines are slack that will spin them up around your legs in a second. Or the wind can change direction and land behind you and a wave catches you and you are like a cat in yarn all bundled up. Now if the wind stays down you are fine but the wind can pick up in a second and start nuking. When my legs get wrapped like this and I don't have a knife, what I do is grab a line and haul like crazy on it until the kite flags. There is another situation and that is when the lines go slack but this time instead of the lines wrapping around your legs they wrap around your hook. You can sometimes wriggle out of your harness in this case.


most kiters are so reluctant to use knives. They would rather wait until the kite is power looping them with the lines caught on the ankle before they start sawing and by that time it's too late.

Hope that answers the question

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby downunder » Thu May 08, 2014 1:44 pm

This photo might shock you, it wasn't staged, and actually posted here years ago...The rider continued his Brasil 2000km trip if I remember well.
zapetljane_noge.jpg
zapetljane_noge.jpg (39.27 KiB) Viewed 2481 times
Always carry a knife. Practice taking it in a hairy situation, high wind etc (I don't but should).
One picture says a 1000 words. This one is priceless.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby dracop » Thu May 08, 2014 2:51 pm

SpaceRacer wrote:A QR only releases the chicken loop from your harness. That's it. Not a line from a kite or a fishing net around your throat or ankle. A hook knife is essential...and cheap so IMHO you're an idiot not to carry one.
I was referring to the final emergency separation release that releases the entire kite. It releases long before your chicken loop and if you have QRed, it will completely release the kite prior to your chicken loop. LF CPR, Cab IDS, etc. all have this system. Doing a QR and separation release can be done in a split second, a knife sawing at lines would take FAR longer. I suppose fishing line is a good argument for carrying a knife.

I did mention in my post that I have a safety knife...
SpaceRacer wrote:so IMHO you're an idiot for not being able to read."

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dracop
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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby dracop » Thu May 08, 2014 2:55 pm

edt wrote:
dracop wrote:I have a question for you guys, why the obsession with a knife when it seems all the safety systems include a primary emergency release that will release the kite. I have a knife in a special compartment in my harness but I could do a QR-> ER MUCH faster than I could slice off my lines if it came to it.
I get my feet tangled in my lines way too often. The way this happens is that the wind drops suddenly and the kite hindenbergs, so I hit the primary QR, sometimes the secondary one too. But the water can wash the lines around your legs if the lines are slack or even worse if you swim by kicking your legs and the lines are slack that will spin them up around your legs in a second. Or the wind can change direction and land behind you and a wave catches you and you are like a cat in yarn all bundled up. Now if the wind stays down you are fine but the wind can pick up in a second and start nuking. When my legs get wrapped like this and I don't have a knife, what I do is grab a line and haul like crazy on it until the kite flags. There is another situation and that is when the lines go slack but this time instead of the lines wrapping around your legs they wrap around your hook. You can sometimes wriggle out of your harness in this case.


most kiters are so reluctant to use knives. They would rather wait until the kite is power looping them with the lines caught on the ankle before they start sawing and by that time it's too late.

Hope that answers the question
Its a good response, that scenario sounds abit nuts to me. That picture is crazy lol.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby GregK » Thu May 15, 2014 8:01 pm

Can relate to that picture, as I had something similar a long time back. Wind shut off and I started to swim for shore without wrapping up the lines, as the shore was pretty close, less than 100 meters. Once your legs grab a bit of line, if you don't deal with it right away ( and at first with slack lines you might not notice ) it just keeps snagging around you more, and in no time you have a bowl of spaghetti around each leg and can barely move.

That picture looks more frightening as the breaking waves in the background suggest coming in all wrapped up through the wash cycle - that would be brutal.

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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby pmaggie » Tue May 20, 2014 10:12 am

A friend of mine, on our lake. Fortunately, he was trying to swim back to shore because the wind dropped to zero, so flat water, no waves etc.
Eventually, we rescued him with a boat (in the picture, I'm the one in the water). It took more than an hour to untangle the lines from his legs without cutting them.
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Re: The Safety Topic: please post your experience and advice

Postby SpaceRacer » Tue May 20, 2014 10:51 pm

Scary. Thanks for posting this picture with story. I am curious. How did this happen? Was it unavoidable or rider error? Not to shame of course but to learn. I have had this happen when I was a newer kiter.

SR


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