Some great manouvers during a kite surf competition..
Body drag redoux, figure 8's, and superman, the path to enlightenment is sometimes long and winding. The second day started out with the usual delays of interruptions, which didn't get better over the couple of hours of today's course.
Despite the idiot proofing and yesterdays lesson, I managed to almost put the lines on wrong. Dark color to dark color, light color to light color, even that seemed too complicated for me. The teacher noticed my error and corrected it, so at least he was paying attention. If that wasn't enough, once the kite went airborne one of the lines was crossed. This was not fatal, but I had to bring the kite down and correct the problem before continuing. Maybe I should be paying more attention?
Ok, once these "minor" errors were corrected and the kite was up it was time for some more body drag exercises. I actually enjoy these things, the sensation of being dragged back and forth in the water is pretty cool, and not difficult. Today I got a larger kite, 9 sq meters, so it has a bit more pull than yesterday, of course there was a bit less wind today, but at least it wasn't gusting.
Some great manouvers during a kite surf competition..
After a while of this the teacher called me over and gave me a new exercise, figure 8's. What I had been doing was keeping the kite steady at 2 o'clock or so while dragging me out, and then 10 o'clock to drag me back. This is all fun and well but pretty slow and boring. Figure 8's give you more speed as the kite is moving around getting more wind. To go out I would do small loops with the kite, from 1 o'clock to 2 o'clock and back, then turn and do the same from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock to get back. You are now moving quite a bit faster and so is the kite across the sky. The best part was the cross-over where you were turning back, here the kite would lift me out of the water. Weeee... The more I did these the faster I would move the kite around and the faster I would go, now this is fun. Which is of course why after a while the teacher called me over and gave me a new exercise. This one was called Superman.
The point of the exercise is to be able to retrieve your board after having lost is upwind. He explained that when you loose your board, and you will, many times over the course of a days kiting. The board is dropped behind you as the kite is always pulling you forward. This necessitates that you go upwind to retrieve it, or at least not go too far downwind, while the board comes to you. So the exercise teaches you to steer the kite with one hand while using the other as a rudder to steer against the wind. Now as you are steering against the wind while holding one hand in the water and the other hand controlling the kite. Keeping it nice and steady at 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock coming back, you body is positions directly into the wind and waves, so you will find out very quickly that the second object of this exercise is not to drown or drink half the ocean.
Not all manouvers ended well...
Now this, though not being really hard, is certainly more work than fun. Pick an object on the beach go out steering against the wind with one hand, turn, come back steer against the wind with the other hand and see how close you manage to get back to the object you picked. I did manage to get back to the same house but that is about it. Maybe 10 meters? But there is certainly a difference between just being dragged downwind and steering against the wind. In the end the work in the water at least kept me from having to walk too far back up the beach to do the exercise again!!
That was it for the second day. It would have been much better if I had not made those stupid mistakes at the beginning but hopefully I have learned something, which is why I am here.
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