Ah, Go Fly a Kite
By Kim Steutermann Rogers
Sep 14, 2004, 08:08
So, I'm sitting behind my computer, strategically located next to a window that overlooks the ocean, when something colorful catches my eye. I look and see two giant kites flying past my window. On closer examination through the whale watching binoculars sitting on my desk, I identify none other than a friend, Bill, attached by a belt to a bright blue kite, skimming across the water. He and his buddy George are kiteboarding.
Kiteboarding is the latest adrenaline water sport to emerge from around the world. It hit the Hawaiian Islands where I live, a few short years ago. Bill and George, longtime windsurfers always game for a new adventure, took up the sport last year.
Strangely enough, the shallow beach outside my window isn't known for surfing of any kind. The reef and volcanic rock bottom usually deter participants, but Bill and George decided they wanted to be the first to kiteboard Aliomanu Bay, for whatever reason.
Mere seconds later, George is zipping along the water 300 yards offshore, and Bill's kite is tangled in a tree on the beach. Some claim kiteboarding (also called kitesurfing) is easy to learn; all it takes is a few months of dedicated practice. But I'm not so sure, especially when I watch Bill gather all his gear: a kite with flying lines, control bar, safety leash; a board with footstraps and fins; leash; harness; and safety devices like a helmet, gloves and protective eyewear.
It certainly evokes a technical--hence, difficult--image to me, but Bill says it's easier to learn than windsurfing, and loads more fun. I agree about the fun part. To me, it looks like water skiing without the boat times 100 on the thrill meter. I watch George zigzag along the coast--it almost looks like he's flying.
LEARN TO FLY
If you want to kiteboard, you might want to go fly a kite first, you know, the kind from your childhood. Seriously. Martin Kirk, president of the Kiteboarding School of Maui, has a 92% success rate getting hundreds of students kiteboarding successfully and safely. He says 80% of the sport is about flying the kite correctly. A knowledge and sense of wind direction are also helpful, and transfer easily from windsurfing, but the key to kiteboarding is learning how to move the kite through the air without making it crash.
Pro rider and recent winner of the widely recognized world championship Red Bull King of the Air 2000, Julie Prochaska, couldn't agree more. Her first experience with a kite left her in a sticker bush with scratches down the fronts of her legs. Her kite landed down wind in a palm tree. "When you launch a kite, until it's grounded, it's alive and kicking." Prochaska explains. "It's like you're living with a beast, and you have to learn how to live with it."
She managed to tame the beast in no time, though. Months after landing in the sticker bush, she placed second in the sport's first major competition held on Maui in 1999. Now, a little over a year later, she's ranked in the top five of her sport. Prochaska says the key to kiteboarding is taking a lesson. "It's the most important part in learning to kiteboard."
And she speaks from experience. She took up the sport at her boyfriend's urging. A top-member of the kiteboarding circuit, he's no slouch either. But a rider amped up about his sport is not necessarily a good instructor. This might explain her sticker bush incident.
Talking about her first time kiteboarding, Prochaska says, "It was really windy. My boyfriend probably put the kite up in a little more wind than he should have, but he so much wanted me to like it. And I did. I was HOOKED™. I was absolutely out of my mind. I still carried my windsurfing gear in my car, but every time I went to the water it was with the idea that I was going to kitesurf today."
She hasn't windsurfed in a year-and a-half and today travels the world kiteboarding in competitions with her boyfriend.
Fadi Issa, another top-ranking rider in this emerging sport recalls his first experience: "My first day kiteboarding, I felt scared, exhilarated, beaten up, and very stoked!" Issa says the key to kiting is "good judgment, patience and balls."
Good judgment because it's important to know your limitations, which is why Kirk starts his students on the land, not in the water, with a training kite. Within a couple days, his students are on the water riding the waves. From that point, it's all about practice. Prochaska advanced from beginner to professional in all of six months.
Patience also comes in handy, especially with the weather. Riders search the world for consistently windy conditions. Two prime locations in the US are Hood River, Oregon, and Maui, Hawaii, although Maui tops out for its warm water.
And lastly balls because it's a radical sport, which will only get bigger--bigger air moves, bigger technical tricks. It also takes balls--and determination--to keep kiting after pulling stickers out of your legs from an accidental bush encounter, or disentangling your kite from a palm tree 100 yards down the beach after it first dragged you seemingly miles face-first in the water until you finally released it.
Kiteboarding certainly has a radical image, especially with its "Hangtime" competition, which scores riders on their tricks and maneuvers off the water (think wakeboarding on steroids). Yet Kirk says you can get as crazy as you want or you can just get out there and have a really good time riding back and forth. And he should know; he's taught people of all ages, from 12 to 75.
Like the kiteboarders who catch air of upwards of 30 feet, the sport is skyrocketing.
Even though the majority of his students are males in their mid-30s, Kirk looks to kids as the key to the sport's growth, similar to snowboarding and wakeboarding. The usual response to kiteboarding that he hears from kids is, "This is so much cooler than my dad's windsurfing."
Apparently snow skiing, water skiing and now windsurfing have become "the parent sport." And we all know if our parents like something, then it ain't cool.
But whatever age you are, just remember: Take a lesson, or two.
To learn more about kiteboarding visit www.ksmaui.com.
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