Decided to give this a thread of its own.
I saw one jump by a windsurfer of about four feet off the water over a short lateral distance in the Dutch video. Everyone else is staying close to the water. How often have you seen windsurfers jump over 15 ft. upward and fly over 30 yards downwind? How often have you seen kiters jump over 15 ft. high and 30 yards downwind? What is common for us, is rare or almost unheard of for windsurfers.
How many windsurfers vs. kiters have been picked up in gusts and blown into buildings, sand dunes, trees in storms?
Kiters die and get badly messed up in these conditions. We had 16 killed in loftings last year,
11 of those were in Europe with many in storm conditions. For each one of those there are likely many more seriously injured kiters who survive. Weather awareness and planning are still very poor in our sport. We had three kiters vacuumed up in a water spout and blown inland in Italy last year, taking one out when he hit a house. There were many kiters obliviously riding around this damn thing for quite a while first.
People watch these megajump clips in strong conditions and want to go riding in these conditions themselves, believe it. They may not appreciate what they are getting into for lack of fair warning and/or common sense. I think Lenton usually doesn't have clips showing him riding out into squalls unlike this one however. European storms can produce high wind for days, squalls can dish out high erratic gusts in seconds as you know from Florida. The smart kiters get off the water before the squalls move over as you don't know what violent conditions they will create. The guys that don't care and may well get taken out someday stay out in them.
Was looking for something else and found the following just now. This was a kiter out in a squall and was lofted into a house in Mexico. He lived but it does look painful, wonder what after effects might come with this? Looking at his tibias, both seem to have fractures as well. Wonder how long it will be until he can walk again unaided? A young man was killed at this same beach last year in another squall.
http://morphkite.blogspot.com/2010/0...temerario.html