Hi, Alex here.
In this video series I will try to answer the most commonly asked questions about kitesurfing.
Let’s begin with is kitesurfing dangerous?
I would say that kitesurfing is completely safe ... but it’s also very dangerous.
It depends entirely on the individual and what they’re doing.
If you’re a competent kiter, out in suitable conditions, not trying anything extreme,
then you were probably at more risk driving to the beach than kiteboarding.
There are specific situations that do greatly increase risk for a kiter.
The first is a lack of basic training or skill.
If your kite control is poor, simply launching a kite could kill you.
Lessons and experience overcome these types of risk.
With more experience you learn to launch safely,
you learn to not crash your kite, you can even use the kite to support you when you fall.
I would say that your risks drop sharply as your hours of experience increase.
Assuming you’re staying within your comfort zone.
The next big increase of risk comes from the conditions you go out in.
Kitesurfing is vastly more dangerous in gusty wind.
And beginners typically will lack the skill to judge if the wind is clean or gusty.
Kitesurfing is also more dangerous in stronger wind.
You need a smaller kite in stronger wind, of course, to reduce the force from it.
But even with that, strong wind is still far more risky.
In 35knots, for example, the kite’s movements are so unbelievably fast,
that it will be difficult or impossible for a beginner to keep up with what the kite is doing.
If something goes wrong with the kite you get less than a second to react.
It really takes a lot of experience to handle stronger wind.
I would recommend that you try to stay under 25 knots for your first 100 hours of kitesurfing.
And that you only think about going out in more than 30 knots of wind once you
have more than about 400 hours of kiting experience under your belt.
The other common cause of increased risk is competitive kiting or pushing boundaries.
The faster you try to learn new tricks, the more likely you are to have an accident.
And the harder you push doing a stunt – for your
sponsors or Instagram or whatever – the more likely you are to get hurt.
Whereas if you stick within your comfort zone,
and you gradually make improvements, you’re going to be a lot safer.
I would like to put numbers to this for you – to quantify the risks.
But unfortunately there’s not enough data available.
There are a few national institutions that collect
information about sports and injuries but they use broad categories like sailing or
water sports – and they don’t have a category specifically for kitesurfing.
And the few studies that have been done specifically into kitesurfing
didn’t have a very big sample size, and they didn’t collect information
about hours of experience or the type of kitesurfing being done.
Whether it was just mowing the lawn (just riding around) OR doing very dangerous tricks.
Which are so different – that it’s almost a different sport.
So unfortunately I cannot give you a numerical answer to how dangerous kitesurfing is.
Okay next – this is a good one.
Can you teach yourself to kitesurf?
The short answer is no. It’s a terrible idea. You can get badly hurt.
But people want to know a lot about this – so I’ll try to give a longer answer.
Firstly a common reason that you might try to teach yourself is to save money.
However, generally, teaching yourself does not save money.
There is a high chance that you’ll break some equipment when you’re teaching yourself.
And that damaged equipment will generally cost more than lessons would have,
that would have prevented the damage of that equipment.
So, teaching yourself rarely saves money.
I think it’s well worth explaining why it’s so difficult to teach yourself to kitesurf.
Other sports you can teach yourself reasonable well – but kitesurfing is different.
Firstly, flying a kite is a fairly subtle art.
The tensions applied to the steering lines to control the kite are fairly small.
It’s very easy to apply too little tension and not get a reaction from the kite.
Or apply too much tension and get too much reaction
from the kite and get dragged around the beach.
The second reason it’s so difficult to teach
yourself is kitesurfing is often counter intuitive.
What your gut tells you to do is often the wrong thing to do.
The third reason it’s so difficult to
teach yourself is something I call the launching paradox.
Just flying a kite is subtle but not that complicated.
You’re just applying tension to one steering line or the other.
With a very good instructor you should be doing this in half and hour;
and even reach the point that you’re not crashing the kite.
By comparison, the skill of actually getting that kite safely in the air is vastly more complicated.
To get a kite in the air you need to assess the wind strength,
assess the wind quality and direction, you need to select the correct kite,
you need to set up correctly orientated relative to the wind direction,
then reliably inspect your setup,
then you have to hook up correctly,
you have to move around to a specific angle to launch your kite,
while also keeping the correct distance from the kite,
as the kite catches the wind you also need enough
flying experience to know whether your kite and lines are in order,
then you must be able to fly the kite with finesse (since there may be hazards nearby),
plus you must be able to do this with one hand ready to use your safety systems.
All of that requires a lot of experience, and a lot more experience than simply flying a kite.
So, the paradox is: it takes quite a lot of experience to get a kite in the air;
but you can’t get any experience if you can’t get your kite in the air.
This is why kitesurfing lessons are so valuable.
And this is why teaching yourself usually goes very badly.
Generally speaking when someone is teaching themselves: if it’s light
wind they’ll fail to get the kite in the air,
and if it’s strong wind they’ll usually hurt themselves or damage equipment.
Having said all that, there’s definitely some people with a certain mindset (who
are particularly cautious), who can teach themselves safely.
Also, in the early days of kitesurfing pretty much everyone was self taught or learnt from friends.
And, although there were many injuries,
there were plenty of people who taught themselves without an accident.
If you are going to teach yourself, because you’re ignoring the warnings or because you
live perhaps somewhere very remote, then there are ways to greatly reduce the risks.
Start with tiny kites, known as trainer kites, just 1 or 2 meters squared in size.
Also start in light wind, even though the kite is tiny.
A 1 meter kite in light wind, of say 10 knots, is not going to be powerful enough to move you.
You also want lots of flat ground or water upwind of you so that the wind
is clean and not made gusty by moving around obstacles on its way to you.
You also want no hazards close by that you could fly your kite into.
On top of all that, you want no people close by.
That’s really important.
If you’re crashing kites near people that could
end up getting kitesurfing banned or overly restricted.
That’s quite a long list of requirements actually:
Light wind, clean wind, tons & tons of space, and a tiny kite.
It can be difficult to find all of that.
I taught myself using similar requirements,
and it took me more than 2 years to go from flying small ram-air kites,
to doing a bit of kite landboarding, to eventually getting my first runs on the water.
It was a monumental effort and the driving around to find the right conditions alone
would have cost me a lot more than a couple of lessons would these days.
Also, you should probably know that the control systems for a
trainer kite and a 4-line kitesurfing kite used on the water are different.
However, any kite flying experience or skill is valuable and can be transferable to some extent.
I taught thousands of students before starting this channel and I definitely
found that the students that came along who could already fly a trainer kite
well then progressed much faster through their 4-line kitesurfing kite lessons.
I’ll be back with more episodes of Kitesurf FAQs.
In the meantime, if you have any questions that you would like to
see answered please do add them in the comments.
Thanks for watching and stay safe.