Don't kite in or near squalls, dozens of dead kiters and likely a few thousand seriously injured riders worldwide over almost 20 years support that conclusion.
If you are about to be nailed by a sneaky "white squall," hit your QR, punch out, emergency depower your kite, BEFORE the wind speed increases, changes direction, temperature seriously drops. You should have sufficient watermanship skills and have an impact vest on to help you deal with things.
People have been killed by being lofted into plain water, one very recently in Spain, in OBX, in the NW USA, etc.. We aren't ships to seek bluewater to avoid a windward shore, far from it. The kite forces and oscillations which can develop in truly high winds can get out of control very rapidly, assuming nothing breaks which can make things better or far worse. Small mistaken control inputs can induce a lofting even if you are trying to keep your kite low. Or, you just might be dragged into something, way too many kiters have been over the years.
If you have any doubts about this, please do some reading, there are hundreds of posts, articles about accidents, what happened, how to try to avoid it on this site alone. Click on
https://tinyurl.com/y9w28ayt for some of them.
I was a big proponent of keeping your "kite low and going" with two line kites and traditional four line C kites with zippo to minimal depower over 15 years ago. So, this really isn't new, just that part about trying to foolishly kite through a squall which may be manageable or one that just might kill you. Or, worse this nice guy on the other side of the world who watched this video decided to keep flying through a squall and ended up killing himself or harming someone else downwind.
People seem to be losing their respect for squalls given the dozens of riders, including students (!) in front of squall from hell in Sicily recently when a guy was dragged 400 m through a vineyard. The kiting community needs to inform itself of the risks and regain that respect. You can see the video at
https://www.facebook.com/kitesurfing/po ... __tn__=C-R
Stay away from squalls. Some ideas on how to do that with the more obvious variety in the second post at:
viewforum.php?f=131
Beardytello wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:41 am
I think the advice about keeping the kite low is good for that as well, it's all situational though I guess, if you're out at sea with space, your kite is low and a massive gust hits you will (hopefully) be able to eject....if the kite is high you would get lofted.
Nothing covers all possible eventualities, it's good to have a few ideas about what to do though to reduce the risk of panic / freeze.