BeamerBob, You being a water ski man have you considered riding your kite surf board behind a boat to get the feel of the board?

I've been thinking about trying this one day if I can get a board. Seems it would build skills needed for the board so the kite could be given more attention when the windy day comes.

Lots of practice with the board using the boat might have some real benefits for later if this would work.

Didn't want to hijack another post and wanted to know if this has been done to help with part of the learning curve.

im not a waterski (no other water or board sports prior) man, and i have given it a lot of thought. getting up on a board was very difficult for me.... i think that if i had practiced behind a boat, things may have been different....


i say go for it

common way to go... a cable park session like in orland. pull on a boat will help.

i had very few water board skill but a day at a cable park would have been a nice, easy trans. to help get a feel for board control and with weight transfer on starts .

a common mistake i recall having was too much edging literally choking the kite.

kinda the "GET off the brake" problem . once i let the board go a little down wind timed with the kite power stroke ..one of the best instantaneous revelations i remember, albeit fast but welcome

Definitely helps but remember you're not gonna want to let yourself get pulled straight towards the power or even broad reaching the power otherwise you're gonna have problems getting upwind!! Will definitely help with water starting though it can be tricky, the best bit of advice i ever got for waterstarts was keeping the rear leg bent and the front foot 100% straight, this forces you to kind of edge and makes sure you don't just skip over the water downwind...

When i was in NY we used to use our kiteboards behind the islandriders kiteboat actually, it works perfectly fine as a wakeboard, although i have no wakeboarding experience so it might be terrible, but it felt good to me

I've talked about this in other threads in the past but I'm not sure if I'll ride the kiteboard behind the boat or not. I think my 15 years + of wakeboarding has made me comfortable making the boat pull me up and out of the water. I never miss a wakeboard start, but I'm not in an energy conserving position. I think body position becomes more important coming up under kite power, so I'll need to adjust my technique when kiteboarding. I think energy conservation might be more necessary without 315 hp and someone mashing the throttle enough to force you to plane off. I think those years wakeboarding make the board start a big non-issue for me though. When I had a chance to drag around at the Folly beach meet about 3 weeks ago, coming out of the water wasn't a problem at all. Matching board angle, kite power surges, and the tidal currents were my issues. I'll refine that soon with practice. I get my very own board this Sunday from Tridude on a trade so I'm prepared when the wind blows. I'll be at the lake labor day weekend for 4 days so who knows what combinations I might put together.

If you don't have board start experience, gaining some behind a boat or on a cable park would be quite valuable. I've taught hundreds of people to water ski with only one guy I never got skimming across the water. The failure rate is about 40% on the wakeboard because so many things have to come together at the right time, it is difficult for those that cant' "feel" where you and the board need to be at certain points of the start. Not knowing those things AND trying to put them together while trying to extract your power from a kite that YOU are also controlling is a pretty big combo for someone not extremely athletic and balanced.

Some good points there for sure. I used to live to ski but as I got older, the cutting up and jumping the boat wake got to be a real pain on the fall. Now I don't care for it much and my boat is a gas hog from @@@@.

I never did go wake board thats why I was thinking maybe I should for awhile. My long term goal is to learn kite surfing but I'm thinking way down the road.

There will be some things to overcome on the lake with a kite like the launch areas for starters and then other boats. I've been watching the wind on the big water and it looks real good some times.

From your post there's a ton of things that have to come together to be able to do this so maybe one day I'll spring for a good kite and board and get to work on it. Just taking it slow for now.

I've pointed out before how I forgot most of what I had learned about kiting the first few times I rolled away in a buggy. It MUST be worse in the water if you don't know how to do a boardstart.