A while ago I posted a table relating kite size to body weight and wind speed for kiteboarding. It starting getting a lot of hits, so I decided to go ahead and soup it up as an entirely interactive kiteboarding calculator, modeled after my windsurfing calculator spreadsheet. It has two pages- one for kites and one for boards, which you can switch between by clicking the "kitesize" and "boardsize" tabs at the bottom. As with any effort to apply simple math to a complicated and subjective thing, it ain't perfect, but it ought to help give less experienced kiters a rough idea about what kind of gear they need.
If you can't view the embedded version, you can download the file here.
Windsurfing has a slow learning curve in which bravery and athletic talent alone are not enough to get you beyond the kooky beginner phase. To progress in windsurfing you must also mentally tune in to the nuances of wind and water conditions and learn the technical aspects of gear and rigging. Therefore, by the time you make it to an intermediate level in the sport of windsurfing, you are probably well rounded in terms of understanding, ability, and common sense. If that's you, give yourself a pat on the back.
Kiteboarding is a little different because it has a quicker learning curve in which either bravery/athleticism OR tuning/technique can get you going. So there are two kinds of intermediate level kiters; the ones who rely predominantly on their bravery and athleticism, whom we'll call the Brats, and the ones who take a more cautious and deliberate approach to gear tuning and technique, whom we'll call the Tutes. Generally, younger kiters and those with a surfing or wakeboarding background are more likely to be Brats, and older kiters and those with a sailing or windsurfing background are more likely to be Tutes. The best kiters have the good qualities of both Brats and Tutes.
As you might guess, I'm more of a Tute. As such, I feel it is my duty to share some unsolicited advice with all the talented Brats out there by pointing out the dumb things they do and how they could fix them to become much better kiters that I'll ever be.
Dumb Things That Good Kiters Do by James Douglass, a bad kiter
1. Struggle with inappropriate sized kites for their weight and the wind conditions. A Brat will usually go to the beach, see what size kites the other guys are using, and rig about that, regardless of whether he is 125 lbs or 250 lbs. Dumb. Kite size for a given wind strength is directly proportional to body weight, so a 125 lb person should use a kite half the size that the 250 lb person is using. For more specific kite size advice, check the chart I made here.
2. Ride too small a twintip or a surfboard with too much rocker. Brats usually do well in powered or overpowered conditions that freak out Tutes, but they often have trouble in the light winds where Tutes flourish. This happens for several reasons including Brats' tendency to try to ride the same, small board all the time, or to dumbly consider a sinky little surfboard with tons of tail rocker to be a good light wind board. It doesn't matter how skilled a rider is; a small twintip (anything < 150 cm) just doesn't work very well in light wind, even when paired with a big kite. And a dinky, rockered-out surfboard will not get going and stay upwind nearly as well as a big flat twintip.
3. Oversheet (choking the kite) and over-edge (forcing the kite to the edge of the wind window). This is another reason why Brats suffer in light wind. They aggressively sheet and sine their kites for power, while burying the rail of their board as hard as they can in the water. This often stalls or partially stalls the kite, slows them down, and prevents them from going upwind. Then they walk back up the beach and pack up, complaining that it's not windy enough and dammit when are we going to get some REAL wind. It would work better if they flattened out and finessed their boards to create less drag, more speed, and more apparent wind in the kite so they wouldn't have to sine it for power. And then they could sheet out and edge just a bit to have the kite pull them effectively upwind.
4. Don't put upwind "in the bank" on the way out or at the beginning of a session. Just like what goes up must come down, what goes downwind must somehow come back upwind. Brats often gleefully zoom off downwind without realizing it, maybe because they didn't pay attention to the wind or current direction, and then have to struggle to make it back upwind to where they started from. It's better to go upwind as much as a possible when you first start out, to make sure you can maintain ground, and to build up some buffer space downwind in case the wind dies.
5. Launch in a ridiculous way. Some Brats feel that to be a good kiter they need to do one of those lame, show-off starts where you slide your board down the sand of the beach, pop off an embankment, or hop into the footstraps when your board is floating in ankle deep water. It beats up your gear when you do it right, and it beats up your body AND your gear when you do it wrong, and it's tacky. Just wade or body drag out away from shore and launch like a normal person.
6. Jump too close to the beach or over super shallow water. Just because you can usually jump, land, and turn around in about 100 feet doesn't mean the 100 feet remaining between you and the shoreline is a good place to try to jump, land and turn around. And just because you usually land softly doesn't mean you will land softly when you do a big air over 6 inches of water. Even if you do everything super skillfully, shit can happen with the wind that makes you go a little further, higher or faster than you expected, and then you crash and hurt yourself or some other people.
OK, that's it. Now here's my videos from the weekend, both shot Sunday. I started out kiteboarding, then when it got windier I went windsurfing, so that's the order the videos are in.
Yeah, I know, it's getting old. But the only other thing I've been doing lately is working in the lab, and I doubt y'all want to hear about me entering hundreds of pages of crustacean counts into spreadsheets. So anyway, on to the light wind kiteboarding...
I like my new foil kite, sort-of, I guess, so I'm going to go ahead and sell my inflatable kites, which are both currently in working order. One is a 2006 Cabrinha Crossbow 12 for $200 with no bar and lines, and the other is a 2008 Cabrinha Contra 14 for $500 with bar and lines. The same bar will work for both, and I'll knock $50 off the total price if someone wants it all. There's video of the 12 here and the 14 here.
I'm still ending about half of my foil kite sessions in disaster, but the magnitude of the disasters has decreased because I haven't been going so far offshore. I think both the frequency and the severity of the disasters will decrease soon because I'm learning some important lessons from my mistakes. Lesson #1- If there's not enough wind for the kite to fly steadily, don't go out. Lesson #2- Come back in immediately if you suspect the wind might be dropping. Lesson #3, if you crash the kite more than a lines' length away from the beach and can't relaunch, wind up your lines and roll the kite up completely before swimming in. Because if you swim in with the kite dragging behind you it will suck 100 tons of water in through the air intakes and be too heavy to pull up on the beach. #5- You can empty water out through hidden velcro openings in the wingtips. Wish I knew that yesterday.
While managing the kite in light wind continues to be challenging, I feel like I'm getting a pretty good understanding of the nuances of light wind boards. Check out the four in the pictures below. From left to right they are: 1) The Airush Sector 60 that my buddy Marc has on loan from the dealer for demos. 2) My custom freeride-raceboard designed by Mike Gebhardt. 3) Marc's Litewave Wing 153, a stiff, flat-rockered "door" style twintip. 4) My Litewave Freeride 179, a more old-school twintip with a longer, narrower shape and moderate flex and rocker.
Here's what's up with the boards, starting with the twintips. Marc's square-shaped "wing 153" gets planing slightly earlier, stays upwind better, and is faster in smooth-water conditions than my "freeride 179". But it annoyingly splashes water in your eyes when you ride, it tires out your back leg, and the nose tends to catch in chop. By comparison the freeride 179 needs a teensy bit more wind to stay upwind, but is a gentler ride that is comfortable carving and stays smooth in choppy water and waves. Now the directionals: My "Gebi" board took me a time or two to dial in, but it is wonderfully smooth, fast, and efficient upwind with its straight outline and relatively small but powerful asymmetrically-foiled fins. It's narrow enough that you can jump it and still land softly. I've only had one session on Marc's Sector, but it's pretty great, too. Despite its longer fins it felt "looser" and more turnable than the Gebi board, maybe because of the rounded outline. It was pretty easy to get going, it really liked to ride upwind when sailed flat, and it stayed floating well through slow jibes. It seemed a little slow and de-tuned compared to the Gebi board, though, like maybe the forward rear footstrap position made it harder to kick into high gear. Hoping for a chance to ride it a bit more before Marc has to give it back. When comparing both directionals versus both twintips, the twintips win for overall ease of use since they're easier to jump, you don't have to jibe them, and they make it easier to maintain line tension to keep your kite in the air or relaunch it when it goes down. But the directionals win for absolute earliest planing and staying upwind, and for having a nice, windsurf-like riding sensation where you can let the fins do the work and don't have to grind the edge of the board into the water like crazy.
ANYWAY, here's two videos of foil kite sessions corresponding with the green-circled periods of wind on the iWindsurf wind graphs from Friday and Saturday. I think the wind at my spot Friday was actually a bit lighter than down the road at the wind sensor, but the trend was about the same.
This first one was nice because I kept my kite dry. This is also the session where I tried out the Sector, but I didn't film that. The music is "Big Brother" by David Bowie.
This second was also nice, because it was with my buddies Antonio and Marc. But it sucked at the end because we all got caught out at the same time when the wind died and had to swim in with our gear. The music is "Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches.
I'm in a rush to prepare for a science-related trip to Boston (leaving tomorrow) so I'm going to see how efficient and terse I can be in composing this watersports-related blog entry. I'm giving myself 20 minutes. Ok:
News item #1- I got a new toy from Maui Malones. It's an Exocet Warp Slalom 71, an all-black, carbon fiber, slalom windsurfing board. (For going fast and racing.) Sunday afternoon I rode it with a 6.8 sail in 10-13 knots. In that wind strength I had to pump the sail and fish for gusts to get planing, but once planing, wow! It was like the board had afterburners and could go upwind and plane through lulls like magic. I'm sniffing around for a nice 7.5 - 8.5 sail to complement it better.
News item #2- To avoid toy and time overload, I'm selling my formula windsurfing stuff. Here's the info on it if anyone is interested
2004 Exocet Turbo Formula II. Well used but no leaks or major repairs, 5 straps- $200 Select DC 70 cm fin with screws and washers- $50 520 cm NP 100% Carbon Mast- $100 9.8 Aerotech VMG 2005, fuschia and yellow, durable grid construction, rigs fine on the mast.- $150
There's videos of the gear in action here and here.
$460 for everything if you pick it up in Fort Pierce.
News Item #3- Since the wind was from the Northeast last weekend the Fort Pierce crew launched their kites and windsurfers in the lee of the South Jetty. Here are my most poignant jetty weekend memories:
*The illusion of flying over the underwater terrain because the water was so clear. *Steering around sea turtles. *Steering around schools of jacks. *Steering around bold yellow clumps of Sargassum seaweed. *Steering around a manatee orgy. *Chasing a flying fish on a way-out-there windsurfing run. *Three rednecks wading through the swimming area with full spearfishing gear. *One redneck returning early and vomiting copiously into the sand. He buried it. *My roommate Antonio and buddy Marc advancing their respective levels of kiteboarding. *A fat guy with tattoos and a ponytail hitting on Antonio's Brazilian intern. *A very stoned teenager stumbling around trying to bum a ride to Port Saint Lucie.
Another thing wasn't so much a memory as a set of observations confirming my theories about what it takes to kiteboard in light winds. It takes a big board, a big bow kite, gentle kite trim, and only moderate edging with the board. Some good kiters had big enough kites but tiny boards that wouldn't allow them to stay upwind. In windsurfing it's obvious that you need a big board to use a big sail. A similar principle seems to apply in kiting, but a lot of kiters just don't seem to get it. They lose in the light wind stuff because they never go bigger than their narrow little 125 - 150 cm boards. Some other kiters were sheeting and sine-ing their kites too aggresively, generating power but getting dragged downwind or stalling their kites on the upstroke. In light winds I think it's better to ease out on the sheeting and let the kite "suck" you upwind, which of course is easier to do if you have a bigger board with more glide and float. The sheeting out a bit to go upwind technique works best when you keep your board speed up and the kite flying efficiently by not edging harder than necessary to maintain line tension. Finally, I noted that big "C" shaped kites are lousy, since they have more drag and less power for their weight and they require more wind to do everything.
Ok, that was more like an hour. I'll see if I can be "terser" in my composition next time. Back to work...
I'm a marine biology professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. My professional page is here, my personal blog is here, and my no-longer-maintained science blog is here.
