apextech - 17-5-2012 at 08:03 PM
As I've been involved in this hobby, sport, pastime or whatever you want to refer to the kiting addiction as for 2 years now, I never tire of being
humbled by either my lack of common sense or my over enthusiastic approach at times.
So today I went out to the beach as I knew the wind would be up and I wasn't disappointed, checking the handy wind gauge it was @15 to 17, so I
thought to myself " what perfect 12m weather" (LEI 12m, that is), I also surveyed the surf break tring to determine if I really wanted to give that a
try, but being 5-6 ft. I thought not, that process took about an hour to figure out.
Though I had modified one of my control bars (shortened the throw on it) and wanted to see how it felt. Upon rigging the kite it seemed to me that the
wind was picking up and I thought, if only for a moment "should I go get the 9 instead" "Naw, it will be fine"
There in lies the lesson, if a thought of this sort pops into your mind, just do it, like in sailing if you wonder if its time to reef, it is.
So, I put up the 12 (self launch off the beach) and have it 1/2 depowered, when it lifts me up a bit upon launch and I stumble just a bit, no problem,
I recover and all is fine, I pull in the rest of the depower strap in and think to myself "it seems windier now than it was earlier. Everything was
fine, but all I really wanted to do now was to safely self land the kite, which failed.
It landed and bounced back up and powered and I caught it and tried again and it got ugly enough to where I hit the safety and was kinda stuck with a
kite (with no real power) but unable to get it to land properly, finally I did and I checked the wind again 19-22, so I straightened it all out and
(get this) decided to relaunch the kite as I didn't want to end the day on a failure.
This time it all went fine, full depower strap, it went up fine and landed as it was supposed to, so OK one more time and I wont bore you with any
more, just to say I was 1 for 3 or 33.3% successful on the day.
Anyways, perhaps this little episode might be remembered by someone in the future on the verge of a similar situation as to save them some of the the
learning curve that I seem to experience myself.
bigkid - 17-5-2012 at 09:22 PM
that little voice is so much smarter than I am. I keep telling my wife the voices in my head are telling me different things and its hard to...... I
should keep this to myself.......... no body heard me say anything bad about the voices, RIGHT?... got to go now, I'm in trouble, they are screaming
bad things.....
HAHAHAHAHAHA
YES, LISTEN TO THE LITTLE VOICE, THINGS CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE WITH IN A HEART BEAT.
Glad you had a good day.
AD72 - 17-5-2012 at 09:29 PM
Dude you got a Bellacera! I have been eyballing that board. Nice!
Back to topic - reminds me of when I had one water kite and every day was a 10M Pulse day no matter what.
The nice thing about LEIs is the assisted launch you get to start off at the edge of the window and check out how it feels and if you are overpowered
or not. I have used an anchor a couple of times for a self launch at the side of the window. I would try that before the flip the kite over and semi
hot launch the LEI.
apextech - 17-5-2012 at 09:49 PM
Just kinda glad I packed it in when I did, the wind went from there to 22, 24, 25 gusting to 30+, now I dont mind that on a 6m, but the second time
the little voice said "why dont you call it a day" I actually listened. No one was injured or slammed into anything and all the equipment came home
unscathed. A good day. Just got the board yesterday hoping to try it out, next Tuesday is looking promising.
Kamikuza - 17-5-2012 at 11:57 PM
That little voice - ignore at your own peril :evil: I was out today when what sounds like similar wind arrived ... with the S3 21 over my head :o