Unfortunately I don't have any reverse relaunch recorded but already did with my Boxer and my old Alpha a ton of times. Even other 3-struct kites reverse launch easily as Jake shows with a Reach and you can keep trying forever as the kite will not sink. The secret is that you must produce some line tension to give a hard back line pull, thus, for deep water, you must use the foil board against the kite or even paddle backwards a little bit.nothing2seehere wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 2:08 pmI recommend you give it (land the kite trailing edge into the water and try restarting) a go next time then - and film the results.
Not claiming that single strut kites can't be reverse launched. Just saying that if you do it poorly (and I've done it a few times where I haven't reversed the kite high enough before letting it spin) and they fall trailing edge down then there isn't the buoyancy you get with a multi strut kite to keep enough canopy above the water to hot launch. You just can't get enough line tension then to pull the kite out of the water so its swim time.
You can get the same problem with a regular style relaunch in light wind too. Pull to hard on a steering line and it can fall back on the trailing edge. Its a light wind problem more than a single strut problem - its just you get bitten in conditions that a regular kite wouldn't often be trying to fly in.
I have both kites, Soul and Boxer. In fact, Soul is also very easy to relaunch, if it crashes untangled and there's some wind available, of course. My point is that LEI's are undoubtedly safer. With 2-skin kites, if the wind shuts off, you have a 15 minutes window to decide: "should I keep trying or start a self rescue?". With a LEI kite you can stay floating on water forever, waiting the wind come back Therefore, it'll depend a lot on your local spot conditions. In my case, I've decided that it would be safer (and more productive) keep using LEI's and leave the Souls for occasions that I judge is safer even for someone that is not so used with foil kites (my case).
By changing a Soul for an 1-struct (or a light 3-struct) kite you'd be changing efficiency for safety and peace of mind to focus on your progress with the board ( my 0.02 )
Regarding the other options 0-struct and Peaks, again, forget about them if you're not into foil surfing, they'll make things even worse in the learning stage...