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(How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

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RickI
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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby RickI » Wed May 08, 2019 3:49 pm

He spends a lot of time on, near and approaching land, aside from the ease of shooting, talking about keeping the kite flying come whatever. That is wrong based on many accidents over the last 20 years. Just pull the QR's as soon as you can safely do it BEFORE the strong winds come and don't try to manage through high gusts on land. The winds can rise so very fast that you can be easily yarded and/or lofted and slammed to hard impact before you have any idea just how severe the winds will go. Kiting can be complicated, individual circumstances often govern, but to planning to hang on regardless as a first step is wrong very special circumstances aside. With any kite you should be asking yourself, "what if" as surroundings and conditions change, trying to anticipate issues before they arise.

I long believed kiters should have reasonable watermanship skills for the conditions they ride in. If you intentionally kite in offshore winds and/or near land boundaries or islands you have a special set of circumstances you have to deal with and plan for. I have kited in such areas but I am particularly cautious about being nailed by violent weather changes. For my part I would much rather deal with a rip current and/or wave break than a major lofting. Managing one is far more straight forward than the other although it is potentially a lot tougher if you are drifting away from land or an island. If you choose to ride in such an area and with a foil, your list of potential issues goes up substantially. You should be wearing exposure clothing suitable for some time in the water in cooler conditions and reasonable flotation. To assume you will always be on plane and out of the water isn't realistic. Water is warmer in my area than in temperate areas and Europe but we may have more frequent, powerful thunderstorm/squalls typically. Although in recent years Europe may be catching up with more frequent violent weather. If your conditions offshore don't allow "immediate complete depowering of the kite, hitting the QR, flagging the kite," you need to stay AWARE of that and plan accordingly. It is a rare thing in my experience with some isolated exceptions throughout Florida, the Caribbean and some temperate venues.

If you are flying a foil, you know things work very differently in many respects from LEI kites which are still the primary kites in use worldwide. In choosing to fly foils and training with them you need to be sensitive to what they can and can't do and modified procedures and safety considerations that go with them. I started with open intake RAMs in the late 1990's and some early RAMs with intake valves but readily sinkable kites shortly after. If they hit the water you were going to have to deal with a mess but you knew that and how to deal with it. You should try to anticipate foil-specific issues as you monitor changing conditions as well as you are able. The video doesn't mention foils one way or the other.

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deniska
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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby deniska » Wed May 08, 2019 7:58 pm

Not sure if you saw other Anton's videos. He has very nice tutorials on boosting big and looping.
Part of boosting big is rigging very powered for given conditions.
Part of rigging big is that occasionally you get overpowered, tea-bagged when stronger than usual gust comes in.. Not so uncommon in 40kts conditions.
So that tutorial mostly about that...
You advice to flag every single time a gust comes - good luck with that! I have a feeling you are not in to big airs...

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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby Bille » Wed May 08, 2019 8:27 pm

deniska wrote:
Wed May 08, 2019 3:02 pm


...

Why don't you show me how to use a flagged out foil kite for propulsion?
...
I don't want Ya to die Dudster ; even if we don't agree on stuff
but
if your using a foil kite in open ocean ; then i would have a backpack filled with
enough water and dried packaged food ,to last two days, along with :
An open ocean approved emergency GPS locator and 2-mile beacon ; such as :

https://www.westmarine.com/buy/ocean-si ... fIQAvD_BwE

As for the inflatable PFD i recommended ; it created almost NO drag
when swimming , and it's hardly even noticeable when wearing it un-inflated.
Kinda hard to get around that one , from a safety prospective ; but i'm sure
you'll tell me a reason why you wouldn't wanna use one .

BTW -- i know a Lot of Cool Dead people . I actually died on the cliffs of Torrey pines Ca
on a hang glider, in the mid 80's , (got CPR'd back) ; and now my prospective
changed a bit. Dead people , don't get laid ; so don't get dead, it ain't worth it. :nono:

deniska wrote:
Wed May 08, 2019 7:58 pm
...
...I have a feeling you are not in to big airs...

My idea of Big-Air is 12 to 14,000-feet ASL on a Hang glider, or Paraglider ; nothing
else gets my heart pumping. I kite to relax and mellow out ; cause it really ain't too
dangerous of a sport. I'm 67 now ; i choose my options and exit plans more carefully,
than when i was 19.

Bille

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RickI
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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby RickI » Wed May 08, 2019 9:09 pm

I am concerned about one video currently, one with the remarkable title: "Kitesurfing: Wind Storm 40+ Knots - How To Stay Safe If Overpowered" without emphasizing "killing" the kite power.

Lots of guys have been killed and many more maimed in far less than 40 kts.+ worldwide in the last couple of decades. This extends to recent times as well and involving experienced kiters. If you are out in strong, sustained conditions, have the right experience, small enough kite, good luck and have fun.

If you are out and rigged properly for say 15 kt. conditions with a 12 to 14 m+ kite and the winds in seconds goes to 40, 50 kts. or higher with winds from a thunderstorm or microburst, playing around with your now excessively large kite in the air is a bad idea. Numerous severe injuries underscore this conclusion, some dug in with kites low, others heading into a lofting. Advocating keeping your kite flying in a widely circulated video with no consideration for the experience and skills of the viewer, site conditions, etc. is an equally bad idea.

I am not stating "You advice to flag every single time a gust comes - good luck with that! I have a feeling you are not in to big airs..." far from it. I am advocating using good common sense and procedures backed up by sound accumulated experience in kiting. Telling people to just stand there and keep their kite flying even dug in and low particularly on land, regardless of what is blowing in will result in needless injuries, count on it.

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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby deniska » Thu May 09, 2019 7:01 pm

RickI wrote:
Wed May 08, 2019 9:09 pm
I am concerned about one video currently, one with the remarkable title: "Kitesurfing: Wind Storm 40+ Knots - How To Stay Safe If Overpowered" without emphasizing "killing" the kite power.
Look, I am not sure why we are going in circles on this..
This is not an introductory kiting tutorial.
It's mostly aimed at intermediate to advanced kiters who INTENTIONALLY go out in high winds.
I think everyone who successfully finished his kiting lessons is aware of flag out as your main option if things go bad.
Repeating this in every video that deals with more advanced stuff is just wasteful...
Aside from squalls, tornadoes, micro-bursts, etc there are many scenarios when you may want to deal with overpowered situation w/o flagging your kite
I hope this make more sense to you now...

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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby Tone » Thu May 09, 2019 7:15 pm

Toby wrote:
Wed May 08, 2019 12:04 pm
well said kite_hh

it depends on the situations. Being far away from shore it is no good idea, since the kite can be your life saver.

On the beach, yep, immediately hit the QR and be ready to activate the leash QR too.

Never forget the death loop...happens quiet often. We ned to anticipate that every time we hit the first QR.
I disagree to a point...

Depending on the beach and the location staying out a bit from shore can save you when coming to the beach. I have recently used the landing out to sea technique to save myself during a squall when the wind went from 35-50 knots, I was on a 10 edge. Get the kite down, deal with the swim and live to kite another day.

Experience tells you this.

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Re: (How not to?) Deal with 40 kt.+ sudden winds

Postby RickI » Thu May 09, 2019 7:43 pm

It's mostly aimed at intermediate to advanced kiters who INTENTIONALLY go out in high winds.
Wrong, watch the video again.

It doesn't qualify who it is aimed at, which is part of the problem.

It would be a great guide for people IF it was just focused on dealing with "normal" overpowered conditions with the white squall/microburst emphasis removed.

But, with a title like: "Kitesurfing: Wind Storm 40+ Knots - How To Stay Safe If Overpowered" where a video says to keep your kite flying in winds over 40 kts, talks about continuing to fly in microbursts, which is totally nuts btw, it is far from such a guide.

People see the nice graphics, smooth editing and conclude, wow, this is some really great advice without thinking things over carefully. That is a problem.

RE: Toby/Tone: I have pretty much been at liberty to self-rescue after full depower, hitting the primary QR and dealing with getting back to shore all over my region (arguably warmer than some) with minimal problems, many dozens of times in 20 years. That is in high wind, no wind, sudden offshore wind, big seas as well as calm conditions, sometimes with rip currents, long shore currents, docks, seawalls, cliffs, whatever. Once I was almost a half mile off Antigua when my kite got tied in knots in rotor off a distant island following a jump landing and I sailed in with the kite on the surface without missing the island, fortunately for me. There are lots more stories. I really don't understand what the problem is about swimming in particularly if you have adequate exposure clothing on and flotation AND you have reasonable watermenship. If any of those factors are lacking then folks should work to improve things. If the temperatures are particularly low or there is ice on the water, different story potentially. There are cases I can imagine in which I might be deep in it but they haven't happened despite lots of trails. Guys have been seriously harmed following being lofted impacting water or just on bad landings as we have all seen in the news. Blue water ships don't get lofted out at sea but kiters do on occasion. Going out to sea in hazardous winds is far from a cure all in short. Killing the kite power early and competently self-rescuing has a lot to recommend it in many conditions.


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