Hi Everyone
My mates Brother had a Kitesurfing accident on Saturday 13th August down at Falcon beach, has left him paralysed from the chest down :(
Perth now has ran a story today - link below - his wife Naomi has setup a gofundme page.

www.perthnow.com.au/news/michael-roberts-wife-naomi-sets-up-gofundme-page-after-kite-surfing-accident-leaves-him-a-paraplegic-c-8053095

Just read the article and donated.
Wish the family all the best.

Michael is an absolute top bloke who has been surfing and kiting the perth coast for a good 15 years. He may have landed your kite or given you a wave. If you can manage a donation, I'm sure his family would be very grateful. Dan.

What happened?

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Spitfire said..
What happened?

For some reason it's not polite to talk about specifics of an accident like this even though it helps others.

So we're left to guess. Mine is he went out in unpredictable stormy winds and ended up on some rocks.

It mentions in the story a bad landing ? I'm guessing a self lending that went into a loop. ?? just guesses.
We can all learn from the details if any body can let the community know what happened.
Everybody needs to not be afraid of pulling safety if things go badly. But sometimes it's just all too fast. I think most of us have been there.

Surely he would want others to learn from the accident. Knowing the dangers and the outcome of dangerous actions might make people think twice about pulling the trigger on something which could harm themselves or worse, others.

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Spitfire said..
Surely he would want others to learn from the accident.

How about you give the poor bugga something to help financially and pull your rubber neck back in, ay? fairdinkum man

I reckon there's a chance that he may not even remember what happened.

Donated tonight $81

any donation is good

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NorthernKitesAUS said..

Spitfire said..
Surely he would want others to learn from the accident.

How about you give the poor bugga something to help financially and pull your rubber neck back in, ay? fairdinkum man

It's not rubber necking - it's always good to hear what went pear shaped and how. It does help us all - back in the early 00s before today's depowerable kites there were SO many accidents, learning what went wrong and why, helped the development of today's safety features from which we ALL benefit.

Sorry to hear

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NorthernKitesAUS said..

Spitfire said..
Surely he would want others to learn from the accident.

How about you give the poor bugga something to help financially and pull your rubber neck back in, ay? fairdinkum man

Actually,

on 22nd of Sep 2013, Mark "Coldshot" Sprod died. We know what happened. He was riding a winter storm. I was there, did not go out. Watched from a car, drove away, 20mins later, it happened.

It is always a freak accident for kiters with 15+ years experience. The risk is much higher riding a winter storm.

Sorry to hear tho, whish him all the best.

I just found this post and wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for their well wishes and for those of you who chose to donate to our page. It means so so much to Naomi and I.

For those who are keen to know what happened, I got caught out by a strong front that hit me while I was out on the water. I was on a 5m kite and it was still throwing me around so I decided the safest thing to do was to go in and land the kite. I self landed the kite and just as I was about to get to it to throw sand on it and call it a day, a gust hit and the kite relaunched. I was still hooked in and it took a second for the kite to be back in the air. The force of all that slack line going tight once the kite was in the air cracked my back and I was thrown into a dune and broke several ribs. It took half an hour for someone to find me. The lesson for me is no matter how experienced you are, don't ride in storms alone. Always have a buddy to help you land your kite in those conditions. I know this seems obvious but I always went out when I had a spare 30 mins when the kids were all happy etc so I often went alone given it was so unplanned as to when I could go. Kites have taken off on me plenty of times before like that and I have been fine even in storms, this time however I wasn't so lucky and I now have to live the rest of my life as a paraplegic along with dealing with the guilt of impacting my wife's and children's lives which I struggle with the most. I hope this helps clear things up and please reach out if you have any questions as I don't want any fellow kiters to ever experience what I'm going through. Cheers, Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for having the courage to share your story.

Really sorry to hear what happened to you. 24 years ago, I broke my spine in a snowboarding accident and was very lucky to be able to walk again.

Your are absolutely correct that it's always preferable to kite with someone and have someone help you launch and land your kite. However, landing or launching your kite with the help of someone else is not always possible.

If I may give some advice to prevent this situation from happening, it would simply be to activate your chicken loop quick release or to unhook from your chicken loop prior to attempting any form of self-landing, especially in super windy / gusty / stormy days.

Unfortunately, almost every kitesurfer I see self-landing do this while still being hooked into their chicken loop, which means there is no plan B in case the self-landing fails.

Regardless of anyone's skill level, everyone can fail to self-land.

The video below shows how we teach an emergency self-landing to complete beginners in their very first lesson. I believe that this technique should be used in very heavy wind conditions regardless of anyone's experience. When I self-land in winds above 25 knots, I will always use this technique myself which has the lowest amount of risk.



The video below shows how we teach advanced self-landing to more experienced kitesurfers. Note that this technique also makes use of the safety system in case something goes wrong.



Hope this helps.

Christian - KiteBud

I am relatively inexperienced and next time I get slack lines I'm going to pull the safety rather than fight it.