I went down to BB on Saturday but decided it was too windy for a beginner. Fun to watch though.




Yesterday after a long wait for the wind to pick up I finally got out at about 4pm for an hour or so. After lots of face planting and crashing the kite and being crashed into and having to self recue.... I did finally get a few good runs before I had to head home. Feels really good when you get it right.

Patrick

I will be there saturday sunday. Probably first car park. Kurnell is too far away

I will probAbly go around 2pm saturday and planning to go earlly on subday around 10am. Ill keep you posted via facebook

I'm heading out soon. Blue/White crazyfly kite with yellow ribs, struggling to get up on the board!

Today is kind a scary day to kite

jms said..

How long until you get your kite back?

I had a look at kite repairs, and it seems they can do some amazing things and make the kite fly/look as good as new.

Crazy wind today! Gusts up to 45k this morning!

Got a call from Steve yesterday saying it was ready to go, he looked at it when I took it in, reckons it was no biggy, easy fix etc.

I was able to get my postponed lesson moved to this arvo so will pick up kite before my lesson. Hopefully wind is good for my 11m so I can test it out at the same time. Will probably be at Dolls as always with the lesson.

Will let you know how it goes.

jms said..

That's good news! I think I'm off to Kurnell shortly. Theoretically I'm supposed to be hard back at work today, but I'm going away for 10 days so this is my last chance.

Good luck with the kite & lesson.

Thanks JMS, wish I was able to "work" from Kurnell, nice for some haha.

Yeah my mate was in at KP yesterday and talked to Steve about the kite, reckons it looks good as new. Because it was such a clean tear he reckons was super simple repair and can't even tell its there, only took him about an hour to fix it all up. So fingers crossed, could be the best of a bad situation.

jms said..

How did it go?

I'm still not up and going, but getting closer each time. I have a bad habit of yanking on the bar to try and generate more power to brute force my way along, but I was told not to do that. I think the main key is to figure out which way I should be pointing myself/thekite/theboard.

Big thanks to Ian and the others at Kurnell who were giving me pointers.

I managed to do a powered faceplant which gave me a minor headache, a brief feeling of whiplash and salt water all the way up my nose and down into my lungs. I kept going though and progressed more after that and finished on a high note.

It was nice at Kurnell today. Some of the more experienced guys seemed to be staying out of the water due to fast tides?, but it was not too busy, not too quiet, and what seemed like decent winds to me.

Was awesome session mate, got some pretty good rides. Longest one was from about 5m off shore out to about a line length from the green channel marker and then about half as far back again before I had to send the kite before I ran into 3 real newbs that were pretty much out of control lol.

Yeah I used to yank to hard on the bar as well, you end up basically giving it too much power and you stall the kite, or like I did today, boost the living fark out of the kite and get some serious freaking airtime. It would have been wilding amusing for anyone watching but it hurt like hell when I body slammed from about 2m up lol. It sounds counter-intuitive but you need to give it less power to get more. Basically you depower it (push bar out) to let the kite fall further downwind and further into the power window.

Vladan who I had my lesson with this arvo showed my a little different technique which worked brilliant, took a bit of timing and practice but it was certainly effective. It kinda goes like this:
- Kite to 12
- Take your hands off the bar, it WILL sit there for a lot longer than you think without needing any input from you.
- With both hands free you can now easily use both hands to get board on your feet.
- Leaving bar pushed out (depowered), swing kite slightly back to the opposite direction then dive hard and fast across the other side. When I say fast I mean FAST, I was in basically 22-24 knotts on my 11m today and I was diving from basically 1 o'clock to a bit below 10 o'clock.
This is where he changed things up from what I had been told previously and I found it so much easier to get power.
- As you feel the kite start to pull you, you pull in the bar to give you the additional power boost to lift you up out of the water. This take a bit of practice as too much and you do the flying leap of awesomeness I did today lol. It will take practice and will depend on the wind and conditions etc.
- As you roll up over your board, push your front foot down wind. Aim slightly across the back of your kite.
- As you start gaining speed you ease the bar out otherwise you will basically out run the kite with too much speed, your lines will go slack and then you'll slow down and have to start again. This is what I keep doing.
- Once you get speed and feed the bar out a little, time to lean back and edge the kite. I only actually edged a couple of times, I think I have trust issues with leaning back and just expecting the kite to hold me. Kind of like when you abseil for the first time, that first step over the edge when you lean back on the rope, the first time it feels fkn weird but once you do it a few times you just do it without thinking.
- From here it's just a matter of feeding the bar in and out to keep the kite in the sweet spot in relation to your speed, how much you edge etc. It purely comes down to feeling it.

I know we were talking about how to find the right direction to head etc. One thing I found helped to find it was once I send the kite to 12 and slip the board on my feet before diving the kite properly, I tuck my knees right up and move the quickly to 11 (or 1 depending on the direction you are wanting to go) and then back to 12 again. What I find this does (as long as your legs are tucked in) is drag you around so you are facing the right direction, if you are swinging your kite to the left, put a bit of pressure on your right foot, this ensures you swing around and you then use your board like a break. Now dive your kite, push your front foot in the direction you want and off you go.

Just my 2 cents and what is running through my head after today's lesson.

Yeah without seeing it, it sounds like you are doing the same mistakes as I am.

If you are sinking bum first back into the water this generally means you are pointing too far upwind before gaining enough speed. Try straightening your front leg a bit more to push the angle of your board further down wind, then once you have some speed up you can transfer more weight onto you back leg to point the board across wind rather than down wind as much and push on your heels to edge the board more.

If you slow down and feel like you are getting pulled over the front of the board, what I was mostly doing yesterday, you are probably choking the kite. Essentially trying to give it too much power by pulling the bar in or not diving quite hard enough. What happens (from what I can figure out) is you get the initial burst of power to get you up, then you keep the power on, or keep increasing it until the kite swings right around to the edge of the window. This washes most of the power out of the kite, you sink back into the water as the kite drifts back from the edge and picks up a little more power which in turn pulls you over the board.

I was mostly doing the second one, kept getting too excited trying to hold the power on. I would realise too late that I was stalling the kite, let the bar out, kite would drop back from the edge and gain some power but by this time it was too late and I had already slowed enough that the board was under water and acted like an anchor on my feet as my top half was pulled over the board. I did however start to feel when this was going to happen and before I let the bar out I would give a quick hard pull on the bar to turn it towards 12 then let the bar right out. What this did was stopped my getting pulled over as hard and stopped me getting pulled off the board, I would just kind of roll onto my stomach, bend my knees to kind of lift the board up behind my butt then once the kite was at 12 and settled I could take the board off my feet, bring it around the front and try again.

Again, one of the biggest things I learnt yesterday was more kite control, or lack of really. The kite is actually quite well behaved when left alone. I could give it a pretty hard pull to turn it to 12, let the bar right out and it would basically float itself up and sit there, occasionally a quick, short, sharp pull on the opposite line as it was approach 12 was needed to slow it down if I got a little too eager sending it but that was it. I was then free to use both hands to sort the board and myself out.

Glad to hear you are progressing so well mate, I am a long way from consistent water starts but getting there. I have done a few good ones where everything clicked and trust me it is sooooo much easier. You're not fighting the kite, board or wind and everything flows and just feels right.

jms said..

Haha, more than once I was standing on my board without it moving, sinking down to my knees, with the kite having gone back up to 12... I'd try to dive it again to do a sort of standing start, but no dice!

Yep, you can't restart from a bad start, you have to reset everything and start again otherwise good chance you are about to get pulled over the board and face plant. I found the sinking down while standing tends to be from not diving the kite enough, you get just enough power to kinda get up and going a couple meters but almost instantly you slow to a stop and start sinking down. Just sit the kite at 12, lie back, tuck your legs in and use your board as a brake then try again.

jms said..
I think you've got it - I'm suffering from a lack of feel for the kite in a dynamic situation, combined with board issues - or in other words getting everything wrong! Ah well, as I say every single time I go out - I'm sure I'll get it next time.

It will come man, trust me. I've just been lucky with the instructors I've had and the help I have gotten from other more experienced guys on the beach. I still have a long, LONG way to go before I am going to be confidently and consistently getting my water starts. Reckon I am about 50/50 at the moment of at least getting up, staying up and under control are a whole other story though haha. As I have had told to me several times it is like driving a manual car (or motorbike as the case may be), at first getting the co-ordination of clutch/gear shift/throttle are a complete shambles, you keep crunching gears, slipping the clutch etc. Then slowly you start understanding the theory, you know what you have to do and can see what it is you are doing wrong, then slowly but surely you start getting the timing right and before you know it you are shifting gears without even thinking about it and you can tell what needs to be done just by the noise/feel of the car. Think how many hours it took you to be able to be that confident on the bike, then realise that really, you only kite 1-2hrs at a time and you already understand the theory.

It will come mate, just get on the water as much as you can.

Awesome! Nice to hear you're progressing quickly, and that you're finally getting some good sessions in!


Big congrats on using the kite to save yourself during a stack! It must be starting to become a bit more instinctive.


PS - I'm not complaining about the steep learning curve, I love it really!

anyone hitting botany bay today?

It's great to read that guys are progressing... Why is it when I am free, the wind hardly tips 12 knots at Dolls...?

It's equally painful watching England lose the cricket!

dam thats some bad luck warehouse13 !!

I got back from NZ around the beginning of Jan and now my eyes have recovered from surgery ive been getting out when I can. Im progressing slowly, but usually feel ive impoved something at the end of the session.

My biggest problem is the wind has been too strong for my comfort zone and as such im looking a 9m kite to compliment my 12

Hope to see you guys out there when the wind picks up next!

I don't think I'll be ahead - I didn't manage to get out much last week in the end, was pretty busy. I'm hoping to get out tomorrow and at the weekend wind permitting.

I tried going out on Sunday in the southerly at Doll's, but I didn't have much luck. The wind was a bit gusty, dropping down to a level where it was hard to keep the kite up, and was on-shore. I think I could have coped with one or the other, but both at the same time was too much for my newbie self!

I'll pass on the cable park - need to recover financially after the holidays.