Thursday 4 18 24 morning call
4 hours ago
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
His "ouch" is worse
I'm sure by now, most of my fellow windsurfing internet geeks have seen this video. I hope this guy is ok, it seems like this could have been a pretty devastating accident.
I can identify with this individual's desire to push himself in hairy conditions. We've all done it. We're all trying to push ourselves, we're all trying to find our limits. But the nice thing about windsurfing is that the consequences are rarely this bad. From my experience, the more wind you're dealing with, the more up and down it will be. When it blows 30, it's usually blowing 20-40+. These conditions are far more ideal for windsurfing. If a huge gust comes along and begins to sustain you can hang out in the water until the tough stuff is over. Kiting doesn't come with that luxury, unfortunately.
I hope this guy makes a full recovery, and I hope that everyone who watches the video, kiter or not, learns something from the video. Think with your head, not your balls, kids.
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7 comments:
Now thats good advice;)
Guys like that give kiting a bad rep, he never even went for his safety release, shit he didn't even drop the bar!! The first rule of kiteboarding is practice what to do when shit goes wrong. The major key to kiting a hurricane is using the smallest kite possible(5m-3m or less), and ride a down-winder. This doof was going to riding too much kite with onshore winds..just my opinion...hope he recovers..
Yea, side-onshore in front of a city-line during unpredictable TS induced winds is a gamble.
I see many people mentioning the "quick safety release", but I wonder if those things would really make a difference in cases such as this. Even if he would have thought to pull it (I am sure his mind was elsewhere and in the "OH SHIT!!" train of thought in those few seconds), his body had so much forward travel, that it would have been bad news either way. Those work great if you are on the water skipping like a stone towards shore and have time to think about getting out, but in this case, it was a complete "Oh SHIT" moment, with no time to think "Ok, what do I do now... oh yea, pull the safety release."
Seems it was just a combination of bad luck, bad judgment to have no downwind space, and perhaps lack of experience to control the kite when things got dicey.
For the amount of FWD momentum after he first hit the sand, my guess is he unintentionally looped the kite which produces enormous forward pulling power. It would have been interesting to see what the kite was doing when he got launched after hitting the sand.
There's a follow up to this story...he's doing better but doesn't remember it...sounds like he needs another dose of reality about what happened to him:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricanes/story/649692.html
full URL to the story:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricanes/story/649692.html
well...for some reason the full URL won't take in my comments. The rest of it is:
/story/649692.html
If you've missed the interviews with this guy, he is an idiot. Does indeed give kiting (and anyone who may have a sane approach to playing in a storm) a bad name.
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