Just a heads up from my personal experience with winter kiting.
When i first started it was around May when most of the seabreezes had moved on and the water had shifted from "ooh that's nice" to "jesus that's cold!".
At the moment the water temperature is "Holy F#%^ my balls are the size of ball bearings it's that cold!!"
I was super keen and was trying to learn while heading into the winter months.
Here is my advice from reading a lot of posts in seabreeze and good advice from other people here.
If you are really keen then make sure you have a full length wetsuit + boots + gloves. Fashion takes a step down under freezing your balls off in my opinion.
By all means if you think you can tough it out in water that is 2 degrees in your board shorts then i praise you all mighty iceman (woman) for you are more worthy than I!
On a more serious note here are the main challenges you will run into when trying to learn in the colder months.
- The wind is unpredictable most of the time - fronts and unpredictable gusts are the main dangers for kiters so do your research and learn what to look for with the weather.
- An example of this was when I was last at Parham about a month ago and the wind went from a comfortable 19 knots to 30+ in a space of ten minutes. Personally I thought it was lovely how the sun had come out and it was nice and warm now.. what I didn't realise was that the incoming wind had quickly moved the clouds away and I was about to cop it - good fun on a 12m
- Try to kite with like-minded snow people who can watch your back. I say snow people because they are the only ones dead keen enough when the water is that cold. In winter the kite population on the water is less so therefore if the shiite hits the fan there is less people to help you out who know what they are doing and less people to call an ambulance if it really hits the fan.
- Finally - cold water saps your energy. In case you haven't noticed - when you are first starting to learn kiteboarding you get dragged around and dumped in the water a lot. This is hard work combined with the fact that if you struggle to go upwind you will be walking back up the beach - wet - tired and walking directly into a cold breeze of 15+ knots.
- Read this article - it has some good points in it as well
www.seabreeze.com.au/Articles/Kitesurfing/Winter-Weather-Warning-for-new-Kitesurfers_2879690.aspx- Overall I don't want to scare you away I just like to share my own personal experience as it can be very disheartening to fail at something for 6 months (trust me I know the feeling). So if you can reduce this disheartening period by giving yourself the best conditions to learn in then I think there will be less chance of us seeing your gear for sale in 3 months time :)
End of essay :)
Spawn
, even if it is just the body dragging and all that. I'm not really too sure what wind directions are safe to go out on around the Adelaide metro beaches.
And, Yup! I just made myself member today, and had a look on their website as well as to where you can and can't kite 
. 
ouch! I hope you've got a wetsuit, cos have you seen the forecast for next week?? I know its a few days away, but tuesday and thursday look gooood 
