joriws wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 9:32 am
azoele wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 10:40 pm
If by mistake you get your kite in the water in light wind, you *must* be sure you'll be able to swim back: the 11m, and even more so the 13m, are large kites, and once in the water they get incredibly heavy.
Why Peak4 would get incredible heavy on water? There are just *two* tip closed cells which will collect water but which you can easily drain? You can roll it up, lift from LE above water, S-bend it above water and all water will flush out => and the kite will weight the same under one 1kg (2lbs or something) when you swim home.
azoele wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 10:40 pm
and more than once I got to the point of almost unhooking from the kite (even thought it would have meant losing it) because after a while, Peaks sink a meter or more below the surface, where they can get caught in currents leading away from the beach.
How can you sink peak over one meter. Let me explain the basic physics. If Peak4 fabric is less dense than water it will float. And you can floating drift launch Peak4 meaning fabric is less dense than the water. So your technique must be totally wrong if you can make Peak4 fly as underwater wing..
Joris, I appreciate you're trying to help, but resent your patronizing tone, and wish you hadn't used it.
That said, I'll try to explain myself better, as I sense there's much more available that I do not know, and would sincerely like to learn it.
My Peaks (8m and 13m), and the 8m of a friend, all went under water, and all more than once.
Have no idea why it happened, given your theory of cloth being lighter than water seems convincing to me, but it happened.
The whole kite lingers 30/60cm below the water (some parts may go lower; I can grab some parts with the hand, so it's probably less than 1m), and extraction is difficult, because pulling one part or the other will move lots of water. But it most certainly does not linger gingerly under 5cm of water, that is certain. It is actually a bit of an unpleasant sight, seing it float like there's wind, but underwater, and moving slowly.
Then, when dragging a part of the kite out of the water to load it on my foil board (bit by bit), significant effort is required, because I am floating, holding the foil board in place (usually with my chest on it), and lifting a piece of the Peak which is full of water trying not to let it slip on the other side of the board.
And then, quite literally,
rinse and repeat with the rest of the kite.
Just that.
Eventually I have been able to load the 13m on the foil everytime – bar once, when the foil left without me, and it was truly hard to get back to the beach, because the Peak 13m made a huge resistance. WIth the kite on the board, it's just a matter of patience until you'll corralled to the beach by small or bigger waves. Without a board, I do not want to do that again, period.
So, in my experience (personal, and personally witnessed), Peaks do not float (or they do not do it always, or forever), and when that happens, they get problematic.
A friend unhooked in moderate waves after a crash where he lost his foil, a bit away from the beach, because he felt pulled by the kite in the waves, and the kite was also submerging. He thought it wise to unhook and recover the foil to have a "barge", and recover the 8m later.
The kite+bar were never recovered, they were invisible from the surface for the many kiter friends who tried; it never resurfaced, as much as I (we know).
So, I am very, very weary of this fact, and always am super careful to stay when I have reasonable expectation of swimming back, and always, always, grab my foil if I see there's no chance to relaunch the Peak, so I have a barge to hold myself and load the kite on to.
Just my experience, of course, and that of friends frequenting my spot.
Am honestly very happy for all the others that never see their Peaks sink, as, with big sizes, it is a significant hassle, and certain to ruin the mood for the entire 40/60 minutes it might need to return to the spot, and for the time needed afterwards to untangle the unholy mess of the lines!
Still, I remain convinced that it is a kite more suited to advanced kiters (and I am not), and if not, then extra care is certainly needed.
Bests