Kiteboarding

My friend and coworker John Morris recently invested in a kiteboard. It's pretty amazing. The sail is 14 square meters. It's connected to you by a handle and a harness. The board is fairly similar to a wakeboard.

The prescribed method for learning how to kiteboard is:
1) Fly a practice kite (2 m squared vs 14 m squared) on the beach for about 20 hours total.
2) Fly the real kite on the beach for about 20 hours.
3) Fly the real kite in the water without the board for about 20 hours.
4) Strap on the board and go.

A couple weeks ago we flew the practice kite, and decided to do it again this weekend. This weekend we only flew the practice kite for an hour or so before we decided to move on to the real thing. The training kite is large anough to yank you around pretty good, so we were fairly cautious about attempting the launch of the big one.

After arguing about what was what and what went where we finally got the thing all set up. To make a long story short the afternoon involved a torrential downpour before which the wind suddenly kicked up and neary dragged John and the kite into a fence, me getting dragged across the sand until John was able to dive on me, and finally a sad lack of wind.

Here is John flying the practice kite.


Here is a novice with more experience than us. He is not experienced enough, however, to tack back up the coast into the wind, so he has to exit the water and carry his gear back up the beach.


Here's a couple kiteboarders riding the wind and waves.


And here I am flying the practice kite.