The most important thing I've learned from kiteboarding is that kiteboarders cannot self regulate. They will get banned, and then move on to ride somewhere else until they are banned there too. How many people have tried to regain access at Howard Park beach? I know, there are other places to ride... and there always will be... until all of the good spots are gone.

Face it, we will kill our own sport.

There is a constant supply young egos which makes it impossible to agree on anything or do anything to protect our sport.

I gave up a long time ago when I tried to help "protect our image". We had some journalists hanging out on our forum collecting info for magazine articles when suddenly a civil war errupted ... I tried to filter it out by moderating posts and well you can see how well that worked out. I finally had to shut it down before everyone ended up enemies. That was just a forum.. imagine trying to enforce rules on a beach!

So my conclusion is, why bother. It's like bailing water from a river. There is an endless supply of people who just don't want to agree on anything or who will just ignore the rules.

At one point I wanted to be an instructor and teach people to kiteboard... then I realized that the faster our sport takes off, the quicker we will loose our favorite spots. Is making money on kiteboarding worth loosing our spots? I'd rather work a 9-5 job and have a place to ride than spend a couple of years cranking out students only to have our spots over crowded or lost altogether.

Kiteboarding will not be regulated until it's banned. Don't worry, it'll happen soon.