Improve Kite Drifting Technique

[tautologies]

Try a little flick of the kite to point it towards the zenith just before going slack line. That way it can sorta back stall down in the window rather than hindenburg. You can sometimes go deeper and longer with this technique.

Also knowing how to snap the kite back after a full slack line and hindenburg is key. Many times i run straight at the kite and slack line/hindenburg it on purpose because i know i can snap it back before it hits the water.
To snap the kite back carve upwind with top wingtip line tension pulled hard. When that line will unslack first, when it does it will snap into and upward turn and away from crashing.

I agree with the flick. Especially in more marginal conditions this will have a huge impact. If it is nuking it should not be needed.

I think the second part of Your post Plummet, illustrates a problem with the lack of clarity on the part of OP. Are we talking onshore or sideshore riding here? What size waves are we talking? Wind speeds? Because surely it will impact size of kite and how we use the kite for support and how fast we are going.

Other consideration not at all related to Plummets post.
Different kite does require different techniques. For instance some kites can be oversheeted to drift better while others are perfect in on shore conditions because the turn and move fast. Some kites will fall almost immediately on slack lines while some drift reasonably stable even with lack lines.

[jonysan]

Hi Vela,
Interesting you mentioned riding with straps, I usually ride strapless, but today the conditions were "lumpy, bomb crater sized chop, with persistent shore break, cross onshore winds, 10m conditions if you weigh around 75k.
getting off the beach would be difficult on my strapless.
So I used my seven year old 5'2 Quad finned strapped directional , perfect! could punch out through the inside confusion, and the heavy over finned quad, shot upwind. also could ride harder, jump, loop, which I couldn't riding strapless. I'm not good enough !
As the wind was onshore, riding frontside against the wave , meant I needed to fully depower the kite, to stay close to the face, top turns and bottom turns were so/so but sometimes you have to make the best of what you have. if it feels through your feet like you are surfing , then it's good, just keep an eye on that kite !.

if it's "One Eye" down the line , slightly cross off wind, then none of this applies !!! just follow the kite.

[jonysan]

Sorry if that post was slightly off topic, I'm not sure you can influence, or initiate a kite to drift, more like just keep it in the sky! over and out.

[foilholio]

Sounds like riding on the limit of dropping the kite all the time. Not too stressful?

Not at all, it's most enjoyable. But then I ride foil kites which don't nose dive, some of which float really well on slack lines, I have done over 20secs. The bigger ones can get a hot air balloon effect going on cold sunny days and hardly lose any altitude. Some of the newer inflatables ain't too bad either though.

[Eduardo]

a couple points to add:

First, you need side shore or side off for this too work. Forget it with side on.

Second, I suggest to get to drifting, you not actually park the kite and try to work with it but instead try to use lesser and lesser kite movements, more and more subtle. And eventually, you might decide that instead of moving the kite a little, you'll change the arc of your turn instead. I don't think it's a realistic goal for a new wave rider to park the kite and figure it out. There are simply too many other variables with the wave, wind strength, wind direction, gusts, wave speed, arc of your turn, timing of the turn, ...

As an example, here is a guy (not me!) in a place with nicely side off wind where it is certainly possible to park the kite. But he is still making some significant kite adjustments and his skill level is reasonably high. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm0vBWt8SCc

[PullStrings]

Sometime a nice carve onto a wave face using a kite downloop puts the kite in an ideal position of upstroke drift as you ride the wave going off the wind

[Matteo V]

Swell riding, was pretty foundational to my strapless experience prior to getting on the ocean. Inland swell is pretty much onshore as the wave is traveling in the same direction as the wind. That may help you, but you have to push the limits. Riding swell on the ocean (if it lines up onshore with the wind) or inland where it typically follows the is a big eye opener if you touch on downwind rides that actually over run the kite a bit and you can recover.

After going back to strapped, I realized that drifting was actually less important as I am not trying to "loose contact" with the kite to simulate prone surfing. If you add a bit of speed to your ride, or you are not as worried about losing speed on hard turns, you don't really need to drift the kite as much as powering it some helps get more turns.

[or6]

Sometime a nice carve onto a wave face using a kite downloop puts the kite in an ideal position of upstroke drift as you ride the wave going off the wind

Right on. Sometimes it all comes together and I initiate a kiteloop just before I hit a waveface. The loops keep the kite going, and I ride the wave as a prone surfer, if you know what I mean. When I time it correctly, there's no pull at all. Awesome feeling.

[dylan*]

I have to work a lot on drifting the kite because I almost always kite in light winds <20kt with a 12m (occasionally a 10) and usually directly onshore wind/waves. I find that keeping the kite high is crucial to riding down the line, but I usually start with it somewhat lower, around 45° and then give it a good yank upward so that it flies up to around 12 o'clock. While it's flying upward is when I'm in the wave, and the partial kite turn helps keep tension on the lines. Once the wave closes out or you start losing line tension, with the kite high in the sky you can downloop it to change direction, or if you're powered enough just pull it over your head to the other side and immediately carve a bit upwind to get tension up. A bit hard to explain but once you get the feel for just doing all you can to maintain line tension it becomes automatic. As the wind gets more sideshore you can just keep the kite higher and flip it back and forth from one side of the window to the other as you make turns. If you can get it in the right spot you may not even have to move it at all, but the wind and wave directions usually have to line up.

As the wind speed increases as well you have to do less and less work as the kite has more wind to just hang on. I personally have no idea how people say they ride much smaller kites when on a surfboard, they must ride in completely different conditions than what we have to work with here. I ride about the same size kite as when I ride a twintip since it gets easier to drift in the upper end of its range, the point when I switch to a smaller kite is when it starts to have so much power that it drags you off the face of the wave.

[vela99]

Hi All,


I am seeing a lot of good points here that will definitively help me improve.


plummet & tautologies, I will try the flick trick to see how my kites behave. Based on my experience it should work with the Neos fine.

Eduardo, that is exactly my idea to do less with the kite and more with the board in the good sections of the wave. To me the video shows a mixed style with the rider apparently getting out well into the flats and quite some kite movement in some sections and pure drifting in others. But the wide angle of the camera may make it look that way and in reality the rider stays close to the slope?

or6, good point on kitelooping as a technique to keep the kite up but not so much to generate turbo boost. Never thought of it in these terms.

dylan*, you touch on an interesting point I have always wondered about. Maybe a lot of the videos which inspire me to improve my drifting are filmed in days which are windier than the images reveal. Generally I kite in less than 20 knots with gusts into the mid 20 knots.