Hi all

Did a self rescue winding the lines in 25kts SW at pinnas 2 years ago when the kite powered up while holding the bar and snapped in half folding over my right hand crushingf my second index finger as it rolled over with the tip of the bar causing me to get two s/steel pins inserted.
Bandit 1 owned from new, bar had coroded under the rubber grip.
Still not sure what went wrong as I was or thought I was following the guideline rules.

diginoz said...
Hi all

Did a self rescue winding the lines in 25kts SW at pinnas 2 years ago when the kite powered up while holding the bar and snapped in half folding over my right hand crushingf my second index finger as it rolled over with the tip of the bar causing me to get two s/steel pins inserted.
Bandit 1 owned from new, bar had coroded under the rubber grip.
Still not sure what went wrong as I was or thought I was following the guideline rules.

did you wrap/secure the flagged line before wrapping all the lines? if you dont then all your doing is just shortening your lines with a powered kite in the water.

Damn I should have read this post before heading out in the water yesterday :P

Great experiment and good out comes to discuss

Read my post

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kitesurfing/General/Hats-off-to-the-Melville-Kiting-community/

Now the question is and i know this is something which does not happen to every one ALOT..what to do when your BAR actually breaks in two.

mine did yesterday....I have been taught the roll your lines on the bar technique...what to do when you actually don't have a bar to roll the lines on to ...I tried to roll the line on the one half of the bar but it was taking to long and i was going no where ....so pulled my self in on the leading line...I think i should have pulled my self into the kite with out worrying about the rolling up ..

something to ponder for the people out there.. What to Do when you bar breaks ...

I had my kite invert on me yesterday and wrap a line around a strut, if I was to try relaunch it would have destroyed the kite. Instead I pulled my release and pulled the kite to me, once in my hands I unwrapped the line and let the kite drift away again. I quickly hooked in and watched to make sure lines didn't get tangled. Happy days!

antlanglands said..
I've run quite a few free safety packdown clinics thru our local club here in the UK.
We always run these in deepwater with a safety boat and always on +25mph days.
I would say on average 95% of people end up having a very hard time and end up in a total mess on their first few run thrus , lines wrap around them , kites powering up and causing them to loose the bar ... allsorts.
Its a real eye opener.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's great to see other instructors taking the time and effort to do practical deep water self-rescues with their students rather than thinking a simple demonstration on the beach or shallow water is enough to tick the boxes.

Those numbers don't surprise me at all and are exactly our biggest concern. Why bother to teach something that you know only 5% of your students will be able to achieve? I understand you ''have to'' because of liability but at the end of the day, it doesn't make much sense and is not helping the kiters build confidence in their ability to get out of trouble autonomously.

Self-rescue should be an easy task achievable by anyone in their first or second lesson, even in deep water, even in winds above 20 knots. The reality is our sport is more accessible than ever to people of various ages and fitness levels. Deep water rescues by wrapping lines demand a good deal of fitness, strength and confidence in deep water, which is unfortunately not the case for many students.

As you said, many experienced kiters have never done deep water rescues in strong winds, yet they still speculate on which method is best and the possible outcomes...

I stopped counting the amount of times when I've witnessed kiters struggling to self-rescue by wrapping lines and get rescued by others or end up drifting 1-2KM to the next beach.

Self-rescue is a vital skill to build confidence in any kiter. Students are always stoked when they come out of the water from a successful rescue knowing they can get out of trouble without anyone's help.

Every week we get a couple of students from other schools who come to us simply to build confidence in deep water and learn self-rescue, for the FIRST time. It seems the new trend is not to teach self-rescue at all, even from IKO qualified instructors or IKO schools...

We take the time to explain both methods (wrapping lines vs not wrapping lines) and go through pros and cons. In our opinion and experience, wrapping the lines should be reserved for rarer scenarios such as: kite deflation, off-shore winds, very low or no wind, or self-rescuing through large waves.

With experience and careful instructions we manage to have a 100% success rate in first time deep water rescues without wrapping lines, and in almost all cases lines are untangled in within 2 minutes, ready to go again. The whole process to teach self-rescue from start to finish of the practical rescue is always done under 30 minutes. I can't remember the last time we took out the rescue boat to rescue one of our students...


Christian

The fundamental assumption of the original poster, and most of the contributions, is that there is a right way and a wrong way to self rescue. This is wrong.

In reality there are a range of ways to self rescue and you need to pick the most appropriate method depending on the circumstances. It's all about using your brain to plan out a course of action to save yourself no matter what is happening.

In strong winds it would be very unusual to either wind up the lines, or swim to the kite. It is generally safer and easier to manipulate the remaining lines to steer the downed kite towards the beach and get towed in. That keeps the lines straight and reduces the risk of tangling and is a lot less effort.

If you do need to wind up the lines then the technique is to streamline your body to reduce drag on the lines and stop the kite from bouncing around. If it's too hard to wind the lines end over end then simply turning the bar round and round will work.

Remember you're in a survival situation. It doesn't matter how easy it is to relaunch after. Your only priority is to save your life ... and just maybe, save your gear.

In extreme situations the best thing is to simply release your gear.

In lighter winds with a bit of distance to cover you would wind your lines then set up to sail the canopy in. I like to put a turn of the lines around the harness hook to support the tip. You can use a TT as a makeshift rudder. A surfboard or raceboard can be used as an outrigger with the fins as the rudder. In the right conditions you can sail upwind in this configuration.

For short distances you can simply swim in and tow the depowered kite at the end of the lines.

If you have to you can wrap the lines and tow the kite by the pump leash, or lie in the kite and dog paddle over the LE.

Note that all these techniques work for inflatable and foil kites.

Gorgo said..
The fundamental assumption of the original poster, and most of the contributions, is that there is a right way and a wrong way to self rescue. This is wrong.

By now it's easy to see that when I post about safety I primarily target entry level kiters with little to no experience in how to get themselves out of trouble. You have to understand that the techniques used by advanced kiters with lots of experience getting out of trouble with will fundamentally differ from other less experienced kiters getting in trouble for the first few times.

In other words the way I get myself out of trouble most times (for example: un-inverting my kite and untangling crossed lines in the water) is definitely NOT the way I would teach it to my students!

When you teach new students you have to make choices because you simply can't teach EVERYTHING, especially with regards to safety systems and practical rescue scenarios. It would simply put people off from enjoying the sport and would make lessons long-winded and too costly. Just imagine if I read your post to my first timer students and started to train them for every scenario. It would make things more confusing than anything else.

The IKO (along with other instructor associations) has decided a long time ago to make wrapping lines the only method to teach. We've decided to go another way for the reasons lengthily discussed in my previous posts, even though we mention that wrapping lines is a preferable method in certain rarer scenarios. In case there is still confusion, we never teach to SWIM towards the kite, and I don't know why this is still being brought back...

So in reality for experienced kiters, you are correct, it's all about choices and taking the best decision given the circumstances; no one can argue with that. There is often no right or wrong, only consequences.

Your tips are great although the issue is you are making the fundamental assumption that any kiters getting in trouble are able to ''use their brain'' meaning they can keep calm and use conscious parts of their brain to make conscious decisions. Any instructor worth its salt knows that in a problematic scenario, panic often sets in and inexperienced kiters are unable think clearly and end up making unconscious decisions. This often leads to poor decision making and failed or strenuous self-rescue attempts.

The only way to reverse this mechanism is to train students to repeat the same maneuvers over and over again, which will eventually allow them to think clearly and make conscious decisions. Where the majority of instructors fail is assuming that verbal explanations and demonstrations are enough to get students to master a certain technique without practice in real conditions. Where instructors also fail is by overloading students with information which eventually makes things too complicated and unrealistic to put in practice.

The main goal of my experiment was simply to demonstrate that in strong winds and deep water, wrapping lines is a complex and difficult task that is unlikely to be achieved successfully by most in similar conditions... Since a majority of kiters have been shown to wrap their lines to get out of trouble without any practical experience, this explains why most fail in similar conditions. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree amongst each other about this topic, I believe this thread at least puts things in perspective and helps kiters reflect on practical self-rescue methods.

Christian

A mate and my self self rescued at the same time light winds off shore. I rolled up my line's and my mate did not. We had to swim home. I was fine but my mate had so much line around his ankle i could not believe it did not fall off (purple). I then had to cut him free with my knife so we could make it home. After that if i can roll up i will.

gokid said..
Unfortunatly I can say that Im quite experianced at floating in the ocean with a disabled kite after spending quite some time in the ocean and a mega swim in after snapping one of the power lines on my 5m kite in strong cross offshore winds I can say

that is does not matter if you roll up your lines or not

Check out the story "Lost at sea"in the general forum

I could of let the leading edge down and floated on the 3 small struts of the 5m kite but would of just kept going out, I could not of paddled against the wind

I rolled up my lines and tried holding the wingtips and steering back to shore

And I tried flipping the kite on its back and laying on it and lifting up one wingtip to use as a sail

but no matter what I did I was heading to Sri Lanka or Madagasgar

Best thing I could of done is released the kite as soon as it happened

I still would of had a longish swim but not a f%#^%$# marathon kitemare

Onshore wind would be a different story

You have more balls then me going out that fare on a offshore wind in strong conditions to start with. Asking for trouble!

skywalker3d said..

gokid said..
Unfortunatly I can say that Im quite experianced at floating in the ocean with a disabled kite after spending quite some time in the ocean and a mega swim in after snapping one of the power lines on my 5m kite in strong cross offshore winds I can say

that is does not matter if you roll up your lines or not

Check out the story "Lost at sea"in the general forum

I could of let the leading edge down and floated on the 3 small struts of the 5m kite but would of just kept going out, I could not of paddled against the wind

I rolled up my lines and tried holding the wingtips and steering back to shore

And I tried flipping the kite on its back and laying on it and lifting up one wingtip to use as a sail

but no matter what I did I was heading to Sri Lanka or Madagasgar

Best thing I could of done is released the kite as soon as it happened

I still would of had a longish swim but not a f%#^%$# marathon kitemare

Onshore wind would be a different story

You have more balls then me going out that fare on a offshore wind in strong conditions to start with. Asking for trouble!

Note to beginners here DONT GO OUT IN OFFSHORE WIND CONDITIONS

gokid said..

skywalker3d said..

gokid said..
Unfortunatly I can say that Im quite experianced at floating in the ocean with a disabled kite after spending quite some time in the ocean and a mega swim in after snapping one of the power lines on my 5m kite in strong cross offshore winds I can say

that is does not matter if you roll up your lines or not

Check out the story "Lost at sea"in the general forum

I could of let the leading edge down and floated on the 3 small struts of the 5m kite but would of just kept going out, I could not of paddled against the wind

I rolled up my lines and tried holding the wingtips and steering back to shore

And I tried flipping the kite on its back and laying on it and lifting up one wingtip to use as a sail

but no matter what I did I was heading to Sri Lanka or Madagasgar

Best thing I could of done is released the kite as soon as it happened

I still would of had a longish swim but not a f%#^%$# marathon kitemare

Onshore wind would be a different story

You have more balls then me going out that fare on a offshore wind in strong conditions to start with. Asking for trouble!

I wasn't that far out when the line snapped,I was'nt out any further than the other 3 kiteboarders were going before they turned back towards the waves,

I was dragged out by my kite whislt I was trying to self rescue

I was consentating on getting to my kite and not realizing I was quite quickly heading out to sea

There is a big difference between offshore and cross off.

Off shore is stupid and shouldn't be done without boat support.

Cross off, or even better cross cross off is doable by experienced kiters. You can still body drag back to shore if the board is lost. However you need to be prepared to ditch the kite if it goes down and you can't relaunch it.

Cross cross off gives the be best wind angle for riding waves.

Kamikuza said..
I've never been taught self-rescue, but have watched videos and thought about it :D

Had to self-rescue three times now... on our lake.

Twice with a Speed3 21 when the wind just DIED completely. In the same week too - and the kite went in the water at the same spot... which was, naturally, as far from shore as possible

I wrapped the lines (without bothering about shortening the front-line safety) but only to about half way up the lines. Swam in, towing the kite.

Next time I rescued myself, both lines on the RHS snapped (steering at the bar, center line at the kite) in high winds on my Speed3 15 - same spot the 21 went down :lol: wrapped up best I could, all the way to the kite then just drifted in. Had to swim sideways to avoid a rock wall/river mouth drain thing but managed to get what line remained in the water wrapped around a buoy

The only time I've ever actually needed a hook-knife was when I dropped the kite onto the water and the center lines got wrapped under a buoy was just a sand bag it was anchored too, so the kite had picked up the whole thing and I was bobbing off to the left. I reached down for my hook-knife (Dakine one, in the spreader bar pad) but it wasn't there... seems like a slam or six had ripped the pocket and it had fallen out

Put the kite on the water, hand-over-hand to the V then unhooked the buoy. Only took a few minutes but... my board drifted away and I lost it :(

With all the crap in the water here (buoys, rocks, trees, roots, walls etc) unless you're right off the beach, I think wrap up is compulsory. When others have "self-rescued" on the beach here, they've just let the kite and themselves float in to the beach...

Oh I remember now - I had a CL break a couple of years back on a Bandit - I could stand up though so I wrapped up the safeties and lines only to keep the kite off the crap on the shore.

And I lost my Psycho4 19 too - but the 5th line snapped and the WHOLE kite flew over the beach, over the trees, over the road, over the YMCA camp ground and into the paddy fields 300m downwind

Kami, can I know where you live so I can pick up your kites and boards that you seem to be losing all over the place?