I'm planning to power a kiteboat and hoping to use a ram-air kite like a Flexfoil Blade. (I'm open to advice on choices too.)

Does this sound really risky?:

- I'm going to mount a flexible mast well forward in a long, narrow rowboat
- point the boat into the wind
- haul the mid-point of the kite to about seven or eight feet above the water
- let it fill, then
- pay it out on its control lines over the boat and aft.

In general, does that sound possible? Where do you think I'll get my feet tangled?


Thanks

Doesn't sound easy to me. I don't know of any reel type bars for four line quad style kites.
I'd look into finding an old reel bar type and use a 2 line inflatable. That is how we did some kayaks years ago. Launch the kite with only a few feet of line out and let the kite pull the other line out of the reel bar. With the reel bar and inflatable you have a chance of picking the kite up out of the water or launching and landing in tight places. You can paddle the boat out to the wind line and then put the kite up if the area is surrounded by trees for example.

See ya-Scott

Thank you Scott --

Yeah, I've been thinking that an LEI would handle best once I got it out of the boat and behind me (downwind). But a claim that a non-LEI could be water-launched (Flexfoil site) caught my attention.

Not having to deal with a pump, etc. in this boat would be an advantage. Sounds like you've sorted this one out.

I don't have to make a kite decision until the Iowa spring, so I'll be back and forth on this a few times.

How much traction kite experience do you have? A lot of the water foils are tough to relaunch if they sit in the water for very long. If you flipped out of the boat and need to get your lines and bar figured out the kite may have taken up water and might not relaunch. Plus you have to retension the lines by paddling back upwind if you've drifted toward the kite sitting in the water. I've tried the boat stuff in the past and it was a pain in the a.....

Check out Davinch at www.secondwindkites.com he's in Iowa.
Scott

HA! Not much. I'll be looking for plenty and, yes I noticed that Davinch is just down the road apiece.

I plan to sit in the boat, unattached to the kite. (Boring detail omitted here about how the control lines rig to the boat ...). When I relaunch, I expect to have a small advantage with the height of the mast -- not much I know.

Was also considering some very light flotation and rigidity around the mouth of the ram.

The boat rows really well; it's an off-shore skull and big enough to be stable. Wetass -- yeah that's the challenge I'm looking for.

Love that picture at Saipan -- the one with the blue-green sea.

Check these:
http://www.kiteship.com
http://www.lynnkitesailing.co.nz

I'd say to go with say a blade or any other truly open foil, you'd probably end up going with a 2 line setup, then track down one of those old 2 line kitesurf reel bars, as stated above, you could easily launch it with 2-3m of line, then reel the kite out and you still have control while doing it. For safety, you could easily rig up a wingtip safety line to one tip, rig it up to the 3-4 bridal points on one tip, run a second line down one side and have some sort of loop to hook onto the safety with at the bar end when the lines are all the way out, Vio's and a number of other closed cell foils flag out this way and it works pretty good.

Worst case if you drowned the kite, reel it in, leave it sitting on the boat for 10min in the sun/wind and it should be dry enough to relaunch if the wind is good.

Be sure to take lots of pics and let us know how it goes. But I say try it out, I've been thinking of race kites with the kitecat all summer.

Oh yeah, bring a paddle.

Your best bet is to get a NPW and do some trial runs with it. The NPW is a single skinned kite that won't fill up with water if (or when) you drop it in the drink. There is one person here that uses a NPW quite regularly with his Kayak setup. You will probably need to add on some keel to your boat as well, especially if you are going to attach the kite to the boat. The keel will help keep the boat from pulling over and also give you an easier time with steering. Make sure you have a quick-release system that can be deployed at a seconds notice to dump the kite if the winds change or if you get into trouble like heading straight for a swimmer or sharp rocks. There are plenty of quick-release systems with kite leashes that you can retrofit to your setup.

The other nice thing about the NPW is that you can fly it right off the bridles, no need for long lines and deployment systems.

My bud here that uses the kayak has advanced to using the Peter Lynn twinskins (scorpions and bomba's). He likes the stability and depower that these kites have. He still uses the NPW's as well, just depends on the wind conditions.

Hope this helps.

NOOO NOO NOOO make a NPW it is SOOOO much cheaper (5.5m=$50) and it is easy

http://members.shaw.ca/kiteman/Downloads.htm

make the npw9b
if you do. Also easy to make a 2 line and hook to a custom reel bar.
Also i found some cylinder shaped inflatable pillows that i tied to my power
bridles so that the kite wont sink past 5 feet and take you with it (start on land though)

(Sorry for the awkward reply; still getting the interface.)

PKF - yes, thanks. I've followed Kiteship (David Culp) for a few years. They seem to stick pretty close the spinnaker replacement kite, but I'm more interested in upwind capability ... of some kind. So Peter Lynn is more interesting, but his choice of a catamaran scares me -- because I've chosen a "different" approach to stability. Oh Oh?

Pablo - You've got me thinking about reels again. Given that I'm attaching the kite to the boat, and not to myself, it seems like complication I may not need. That is, if I can water launch, and if my boat is mobile, I'm not sure I need to reel it back in. So maybe I need to decide between launch-ability and the need for four-line control.

(And by the time I have this working, I'll be back home in Vancouver. Up for a ride?)

awindofchange - NPW sounds like something I should see. Researching now. Ah ha! Looks interesting.

Thanks for the caution re q-release and keels. I'm pretty confident about my boat design; I have some experience there, and a little less so about my quick release engineering. Good thing I'm chicken ...

And thanks to everyone -- this is starting to make sense.

Hello John_Adam! Were in Iowa are you? I live in Glenwood - about 30 mins from Omaha.

Funny thing Pablo - I was thinking about the possibilities of PL KiteKat all day

Yeah the npw is a great kite especially for raw power (like buggying and boating) something with less finess as it isnt the most "stunt" worthy kite. (wont maneuver like a foil):cool2:

John,

If you're going with a WR sail, the PL stuff is awesome, it makes it so much easier to deal with stuff, with the kitekat, I launch the kite then forget about it, it'll park overhead with the autozenith all day, with it sheeted out there's minimal pull. I've anchored the kite to a flipped over buggy and left it for 1/2 hr while having a lunch break. This will give you time to get in the boat and get everything set up before you have to think about the kite again. I know with the kitecat, it's a bit of a trick to get it in the water, far enough out to not be grounded, by that point you're waist deep in water and the seat's up there a ways. I've watched guys try with C-kites and it's no where near as easy for them.

Relaunch is not a problem, power is good and the Scorpions match the depower of any bow out there. Down side to PL is they have poor low wind performance, I wouldn't take the 16Scorpion out on the kitecad in anything less than 12mph.

Flysurfer would be my second choice, you lose the autozenith, but build quality and performance are awesome, They're also a great low wind machine in the larger sizes.

PS: anyone have a large Psyco I can demo? 250lb rider 10-15mph winds.:D

Pablo, I'm running to catch up. "WR" means? and "PL"?

This sounds interesting. I had pictured getting the boat launched (it's 18-feet), rowing offshore (strangle no children), then dealing with the kite.

What you are saying suggests that routine, and then, sitting in the boat, maybe hauling on the oars, I could get this kite into the park position and sort out the next step, which would be finding a reaching angle and stabilizing the boat.

What kind of upwind angles are you getting with this rig on the Kitekat? Could you tack your way back up Howe Sound to Squamish with the wind in the NE?

Sorry, used to guys that know the lingo,

WR = Water Relaunchable
PL = Peter Lynn
FS = Flysurfer
LEI = inflatable kite
Bow = flat inflatable kite

Are you launching from a dock?

Either way, if you have the room to launch the kite on the beach somewhere it'd be best, get it overhead, walk over to the boat you've placed close to the shore line, Push it the last 5-10ft to get it floating, climb in and go, Start off 45deg down wind, it'll allow you to get some speed up for your cross wind reach. With the KiteCat I push out maybe 5 ft, climb into the boat and sail right from there. A dock would be even easier, simply tie off the boat on the down wind side of the dock, climb in with the kite flying, Untie the boat and you're off.

Only problem I have is if you stop dead sideways to the wind, you've got to be a little careful to get the boat moving again because it's easy to end up with a lot of sideways pull and no control to cut into/out of the wind to adjust the pull. Easy enough though if you slowly work the kite down one side of the window.

With the 16m Scorpion, 20mph winds I can head upwind 45deg fairly easily. If I go for 30deg upwind I can still carry a fair bit of speed though, so it's a toss up, slow and steady hard upwind or lots of ripping around on a shallower angle. Still have to bring a GPS along and see what sort of speeds I can reach.


If you have to paddle out before you launch the kite you'll be somewhat limited in kite options. It's possible to drift launch an inflatable kite, pump up the kite, then using a line manager like the Turbo Launcher, you can simply throw the kite overboard, feed out the line with the wind pulling the kite away from you, then when it hits the end of the line, simply relaunch the kite and sail away. For landing, dump the kite to a 5th line and simply reel it in, deflate and paddle to shore.