Saw this post and thought it might be useful to review - you never know when something can happen and good to go over your gear and know how things work before sh_t happens:

Safety: Kite Death Loop
In case you have been trapped in a cubicle somewhere from sunrise to sunset, summer is officially here! The weather is beautiful, the water is warm, the beaches are getting crowded and more and more kite boarders are coming out for the season! With the onset of the summer season, it is a good idea to talk about safety. While we all love the sport and enjoy pushing our limits, it’s important that we stay safe about it so we can continue to enjoy it year after year! I am going to try to post about different safety topics/examples on a regular basis.
This week, I am going to be talking about death loops. If you have been kiteboarding for a while now, you have likely seen this happen. In my own experience, I have only watched this happen four times and I will share that experience with you now. The names have been left out to protect the privacy of the riders. As you read this, I want you to remember that anyone can get into a bad situation, regardless of your experience level.
A death loop is an uncontrolled looping of the kite. This happens when one of the outside lines gets caught up and is causing the kite to loop. This is a pretty easy situation to recognize. The rider will likely be in the water without their board and the kite is repeatedly looping. It can be looping in the air or complete a loop, hit the water or land and then begin another loop.
Hence the name, this is a dangerous and potentially deadly situation. The rider will quickly become disoriented and their is a chance of drowning from being pulled forward and under by the kite. The more likely scenario is that the rider gets pulled back into shore and into an object.
Situation 1:
Rider Level: Intermediate (able to ride upwind, basic jumps, starting to learn back rolls)
This rider was really just starting to get good with the kite. The rider had pulled the safety system and then tried to reset it in the water. Resetting your safety should be something that you are very careful about in moderate to high winds. If your lines get tangled around the bar during the release, then your kite could go into a death loop if you reset and hook back in before realizing there is a tangle.
I had kept my eye on the rider periodically when I saw he had pulled his safety. The next time I looked over, his kite was in a death loop. The kite looped several times, pulling him under the water from the force of the forward pull. This rider did the right thing and pulled his quick release on the leash (completely releasing the kite). As soon as this happened, myself and another rider who had been riding upwind of the kiteboarder came in. The other rider grabbed the stranded kiter and I retrieved the kite.
Everyone and everything was OK. The rider was pretty shaken up but otherwise fine and his equipment escaped any damage.
Situation 2:
Rider Level: Advanced (10 years experience)
There were three of us out riding this day. It was crazy conditions with gusts into the 40s, head high surf, and onshore winds. All of us were experienced riders and, of course, riding on small kites. Our session had been a good one and we had started to come back in. When my friend came in with his kite, I offered to let him try mine since he had never flown it before. He took the kite out and was really ripping it up. Me and my friend decided to stay on the beach and watch and rest a little.
The rider rode a wave in and dropped the kite in the surf. The waves tumbled the kite and the rider released the safety. He was a little way down the beach and we decided to start walking down to help him grab the kite. We hadn’t been in a rush because the safety had released properly and the kite was completely de-powered. This is when the rider made the decision to reset his safety system…
Let me stop and say right here that if you are in heavy winds, do NOT reset your safety system. Get back into shore and make sure your lines are OK before you out the kite back up.
His lines got tangled and was soon as he reset the system, his kite started a death loop. As soon as this happened, we began running over to him. He had been very close to shore when this started and the pull of the first loop brought him onto the beach (remember that this is a straight onshore wind condition). As my friend and I ran, we decided I would grab the rider and he would go for the kite. I reached the rider and tried to grab his harness, but he didn’t have a handle and he got pulled away from me. I ran back up to him and wrapped him in a bear hug to try to slow him down. As we were being dragged, he was yelling that he couldn’t reach the safety. We finally got it pulled…I don’t know if he finally released it or if I helped…the situation at that point is a little bit of a blur. My other friend had been ready to grab the kite and when he went to grab it, he missed, but one of the lines got wrapped around his leg. He was now being dragged up the beach, but fortunately, the rider and I were back up on our feet and able to grab the kite before the situation got any worse.
I want you to take a few lessons from this particular story:
1) We should not have even been out that day. Yes, we kite in some crazy winds because, let’s face it, we love the adrenaline. However, when kiting in conditions like that, it is even more important to be smart about it. If the wind had been side shore or even side-on, then it would have been more manageable. Kiting in an onshore wind leaves even less room for error in a situation where the conditions already leave you no room for error.
2) When I gave the kite to my friend, I should have gone over the safety system with him. I foolishly assumed he would know the system because he had been in the sport for so long…
3) Do NOT reset your safety system in heavy winds like that. It really isn’t worth it and it doesn’t take that much longer to just set your kite down and check your lines first.
Everyone was fine at the end of this-aside from bumps, bruises, scratches and a healthy reminder to have a little more respect for the wind and waves.
Situation 3:
Rider Level: Intermediate (rider is able to ride upwind, perform basic jumps, trying to learn back rolls); side-onshore winds from 15-25; rider on 12 meter
This situation happened most recently and is very fresh in my mind. I had been on the beach watching my boyfriend ride and giving him some pointers. A young woman walking down the beach stopped me and pointed out one of our local rider’s kite. I looked over and just explained that he was likely doing a self rescue and is OK. He was pretty far out, but I saw another rider bringing in his board and assumed everything was fine. I looked away for a few moments and then when I turned back to check on him, his kite had begun a death loop. I signaled for my boyfriend to come back in with my kite and I took it from him and told him that rider was in trouble. I jumped on the board and started riding down the beach down the rider. My boyfriend began running down the beach towards where the rider would likely come in. By the time I got to him, he was being dragged up onto the beach and there were people straight downwind of the kite and another group off to his side-all in a dangerous area. I yelled to everyone to get away from the kite several times and luckily they moved away. Just as I rode up onto the beach, the rider’s safety line snapped and the kite was blown into the dunes.
What caused this? When the kite fell onto its back, the rider decided to do a self rescue and come in. Instead of pulling the safety and flagging out the kite, the rider unhooked and began rolling up the lines. Let me stop here for a moment..
If you pull your safety, it is OK to wrap up your lines during a self rescue. If you have a long swim in, it just makes your life easier! When you pull your safety and pull the bar back to you, pull more of that safety line out through the safety system. Technically, you could just walk hand over hand up to the bar and start wrapping that safety line from there, but pulling more line out just helps to ensure the kite won’t power back up. So…
1) walk hand over hand along the safety line to the bar
2) pull additional line through the safety system
3) wrap ONLY the safety line (likely one of your center lines) on the bar
4) once you have completely wrapped up the safety line, begin wrapping all the lines on the bar
Continue your self rescue like normal
So, we have a rider wrapping lines up on a bar on a kite that has not been de-powered. As tension increased more on one wingtip than the other, the kite righted itself, relaunched and began it’s death loop. The rider was pulled all the way in and onto the beach and the only reason this person didn’t end up in a hospital is because the line BROKE.
Let’s go over what should have happened in this situation..
1) the rider should have pulled the safety first and flagged out the kite before wrapping up the lines…
2) Once the death loop began, the rider should have pulled the quick release on the leash and let the kite go
This was probably the worst death loop I have seen and simply thinking about it gives me chills.
What I want you to take away from this is that you should practice your safety. It might not seem “cool” to go to the beach and practice self rescues (not only when you are learning, but periodically if you are not needing to do it during normal riding). Kiteboarding is a safe sport, if you are safe about it. Just like any sport, the goal is to build muscle memory. When you are in a situation, you want to be able to react without thinking about it.
Of course, we don’t want to practice pulling that quick release on the leash with our kite attached, but we can practice just pulling it on the beach. You will build the muscle memory and pull it when you really need to.
I hope that this was helpful. Keep your eye out for more safety entries this season!
Check out this video of a death looping kite:

I found myself in a death loop situation one of my 1st days after lessons back in 04.

Was using an old D-loop pre QR ( Airush 03 ) and forgot to unhook to start unhooked . As they taught back then. Dove the kite to water start and blew it. Let go of the bar but got Tea Bagged since I was still hooked in. Grabbed the bar and slammed again. Tried to unhook and slammed again. Realized I had twisted the D-loop on the spreader hook and slammed again. Thinking what was I taught and slammed again. Get the bar level with the horizon like you were told in lessons !! Did it and the kite slammed down as I got slammed again and it was all over. Fortunately I was only in knee deep water as I sat there winded and shattered.

Turns out the bar had rotated 180' and I was holding it backwards Trying to turn out of the loop was having the opposite effect.

What did I learn :
When it all goes bad get you bar level with the horizon.

Always leave at least twice your kite line length between you and obstacles downwind. I am certain I traveled more than 5 times the line length that day. Since I was slammed 5 times.

Take lessons! It was hearing my instructor telling me to get the bar even that came back to me . I'm sure I would have been in worse trouble if I hadn't been given that tip.

I have had it happen twice so far. one on the beach while trying to self land. once during a water relaunch when a bridle got hooked around a wingtip.

Bothtimes I pulled the safety and recovered the kite before resetting.

The video is interesting - looks like there was a collision. both riders pulled both safeties and one kite got hooked up on the other

film made me sick...but you have to think about this stuff all the time

No bar end leash attachments! :o
Don't flag to a back line.



More information here: http://www.kiteforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2335380

Is your handle-pass leash release accessable?

Thanks Mark, perfect timing I will be getting my feet wet in October-Newbie on water ..your post points and videos
should keep out of trouble.

Distance is your friend.

QR should be a first-resort instinct.

Practice for contingencies - QR, Oh #@%$#!! handles, hook-knife, leash release... can you get at and use all that without thinking or being able to see them?

Order of importance - yourself, kite, board. Save, in that order.

Hook-knife - better to buy new lines, depower rope etc than a new wheelchair.

Oh and one I learned recently:

"Lightest steering" setting is also "vaguest control feeling" - if the bar pressure is too much, rig a smaller kite.

"Is your handle-pass leash release accessable? "

any pull on the the leash drags it to one side or the other where it becomes easy to reach

Quote: Originally posted by lives2fly

"Is your handle-pass leash release accessable? " any pull on the the leash drags it to one side or the other where it becomes easy to reach

... its not always true ... I have been drag backwards downwind with kite in full power at the moment with leash right in center and it was impossible ( because it happen to me first time ) to turn you body for leash to slide .... Only option was to reach back and release , witch is very hard if you never practice that move .... I seen this issue pointed at some instructional videos and now I know how important it is to know what to do ......

Kite Death Loop

I have chance to experience it few times ....

It actually happened on my last kiteboarding session a week ago ... When practicing new trick I accidentally let kite overfly after landing a jump and kite start drooping from the sky ... I force it to stay in air by puling steering line to make it face new direction and then pulling front lines to get forward speed and tension back on all lines ..... One of steering lines manage to wrap around my bar , and kite end up in center of power zone death looping ..... I was on my 14m way overpowered that day with gusts up to 25mph .... Since it was not my first time I react quickly releasing safety after 2nd loop , then grab my secondary release ( Gin kites have 2 stage safety plus leash ) and pull out my knife just in case something did not work ..... Everything was ok .... Now it was time to practice reseting safety on deep water when kite slowly pulls you downwind and trying to keep you board with you when managing to deal with all those lines in water ....... I am sure some of you know that this is not as easy as you do it on land .... So ... my recommendation is ... go and practice it ... on deep water , first without your board and then with it ...

My other death loop adventure did scare me to death .... lol ... I was searching for a board that was lost by one of girls on downwinder in OBX .... I did ride upwind very close to the shore for a mile o two to middle of nowhere when my chicken loop pop out from hook and kite begin to kiteloop ... first loop got me to the shore and second pull me thru the tall grass before I have chance to realize how bad situation it was and disconnect ..... Kite disappear in grass and I lay down in pain ...... There was 2' bulkhead that I hit with my ribs when being dragged to the shore .... Picture below shows damage that was caused by this incident .... I have impact vest on me that save my ribs from breaking .... I was 2 miles from any house or any kiter ... and if kited OBX you know you can't walk to the road or along shore ...... so I man up and after 30min of rest got back on water and return to the house ...... I was lucky .... 2 weeks later all bruises and pain was gone ....
Next day I kited again .... with rented seat harness ....lol....

Hope you enjoy this little story ....

As recommendations ....
Pull the safety !!!!
Get you knife ready !!!!
Practice self rescue and reseting you kite after release .....
Check you safety release mechanisms on kite and leash , Those are hard to release when unused for some time , so make sure they clean and sand free
Hook up one end of leash to the pole and other to the back of harness ..... turn you back to the pole and tilt away so all you weight is hold by leash ..... now try to release ...

There is one more thing ......
... When kite is in death loop mode .... and you did not release ... u can try grab opposite steering line and pull hard to slow down the loops .... don't wrap line around you hand ....... this is only useful in lighter winds , you may be able to unwrap other side if there is not much power in a kite or if someone is about to reach you kite to grab it ......






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Quote: Originally posted by lives2fly

"Is your handle-pass leash release accessable? " any pull on the the leash drags it to one side or the other where it becomes easy to reach

Ditto what Kober said - no. There a famous video (that I can't find right now) of someone being dragged backwards, head under water, by a looping kite, with the leash attached to the back. Lucky she was close to shore so someone could grab the kite.

Unless you're doing handle passes, mount it on the FRONT.

Even the side can be bad IMO... the fabric gives way and you can lose the kite when you don't actually mean it. Happened on my Mystic harness - thank god someone downwind caught my kite before it went into the coconut trees!

Cabrinha gives you a wrap-around-the-spreader-bar ring that does the job nicely on my harnesses. OR has a built-in one on the Session2 harness.

The new Nav bar from PL has a small nylon strap with a ring on one end and a sewn loop on the other. It's for larksheading onto your spreader bar for a leash attachment.

You can flag an ARC on a front line or back line with similar results.

bob- thanks for the post was wonder what that strap was for- thought it might be for a keyring :D

good one mark. witnessed 2 of these. just to add to the awareness and one which my be the most rare.

-first one dude was unhooked, on a bow, throwing junk , really nothing unusual bar end gets wrapped, goes to suicide leash and just continues maybe 10loops or so---->OFFSHORE in 30knts +! he released it, we make chase to recover kite, get the kite, drag him in all is fine.
lesson here ---------->being with a crew ...he could made the swim in his rig would have been lost for sure.

-second was on the beach, in 15-20. i was out riding came in and watching from about 50 yds back in the wash, as this guy was setting up and set for solo launch at hi tide(narrow beach space). kite rolls and is tettering on wing tip kiter is in total control...tip is touching the ground as well as lines on that side and all is basically launched ...A BIKER ROLLS THRU THE LINES KINDA STOPS to push up the top lines and go under/ thru!!! not kidding...unit blast off as he touches them. intangles biker, bike and is slammed to front line connector all of them! bike, biker, kiter are lopping into the dunes loop pop, loop pop, loop pop... rag dolling the whole collection of entanglement...like 6loops and the kite finally hits some trees. crazy...kite was jacking the guys thru dunes like a horse! other than scraps and few cuts not so bad. kiter was in control til lunatic biker drop in. very messy....

it can happen!

i know i've had some but discharge to flag before too many twist...thankfully

Hey Chad
some good stories - the bike story reminded me of something that happened this summer. The kiteboarders get to the beach early and we try and set up in a pack downwind to establish an area of the beach - problem is when the wind picks up and most launch it leaves places where families come in and sit not knowing a bunch of kites are coming back and they'll sit there right beside where it's obvious people are handling kites. Most we suggest moving a little and we'll help them re-locate and if they don't not a big deal we have to manage launches better .... anyway I've got a buddy launching my 17.5 and just as I'm about to give the thumbs up a little girl about 5/6 yrs runs up from the water turns 90 degrees and straight upwind right into the middle of my kite lines and pushes them up and steps on them like going through a fence but gets hung up on the lower lines for a second as both myself and the kite handler are quickly moving to get the pressure off everything - the family just laughs like it was all fun and cute.

yeah its all cute til a body part pops off.

hey we got reactive healthcare with insurance and lawyers.. ..prevention isn't cool enough !

Bet you'd never heard this one...
Several months ago, I was ridding with my normal surfboard in waves. I fell on a wave and surfaced to find my kite is uncontrollable. Two of my lines had ripped into the fiberglass of my board and were impaled about 4-5 inches inside it. The board was dangling in the lines, and the kite was trying to death loop with the pressure of it.
On that note, I poped the QR, never ride leashed so off it went. (no leash cause no public to hurt where I ride)

Had my Flydoor go through my bar lines in surf a couple of weekends back - 3 times twice, the foot pad got hooked over the leaders and I had to drop the kite in the surf to sort it with both hands...

Yep, his behind the back quick release worked :P

Quote:

caribbeankitecruise: Unconscious on impact but came round after 5 minutes. lucky the crew were so fast to respond. Some internal injuries and a week in hospital but now all 100% and riding as hard as ever... (http://vimeo.com/76499906#at=0)

Another tethered kiting failure!

This is the vid I was thinking off - lucky she was near the shore.



I especially like how at 0:24 when she COULD release the kite - she doesn't. And it starts looping again :puzzled: good enough kiter to know better :o

Oh, NOW I notice Pete posted the same one