View Single Post
  #6  
Old 02-14-2005, 01:14 PM
ricki's Avatar
ricki ricki is offline
Administrator
Site Admin
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Florida
Posts: 8,700
Default

A question came up in another post, I thought it was worthwhile to copy it here:

quote="fourperf"]You will hit your head kiteboarding[/quote]

how so bro?[/quote]

Let's count some of the ways. Many of these have little to do with experience by the way. Not everyone will suffer head injuries only some of us. Now tell me who, in advance, OK? That way ONLY the guys that are going to get bashed will need to bother with lids, simple!?

- Sudden strong wind gust

- Rigging too large a kite for conditions

- Sudden change in wind direction

- Rigging your lines in reverse

- In the OLD days using a board leash, although the board could easily miss the helmet and could hit your throat, spine, torso, wherever. Not a lot of people use leashes anymore anyway, right?

- Miscontrolling your bar

- Launching your kite with the bar upside down

- Having a jump extended on to shore

- Being knocked over by a wave

- A line tangle on launch

- A line snag on launch, say with a stick

- A line tangle caused by strumming in stronger winds

- Having an assistant screw up an assisted launch or landing, releasing too soon, throwing the kite, loosing thier hold on the kite, slipping, grabbing the wrong part of the kite

- Slipping on the bottom and falling over at speed

- Trying to climb up some rocks to exit the water

- Chicken loop breakage

- Someone tangling their kite lines with yours and releasing their bar

- Being uplift lofted when your kite passes over a vertical surface in onshore winds.

- Someone grabbing your bar or lines unexpectedly

- Jumping a hard object and having the wind change or merely setup the jump wrong

- Hitting a floating limb or other flotsum

- Having a wave propel your board or someone elses into you

- Jumping using a kite on land

etc.



That is all that I can REMEMBER for now. That is these have ALREADY caused people to be injured and in some cases killed. None of these are made up. The victims have ranged from newbies to some VERY experienced kiteboarders.


So, who needs helmets?


and


These photos were taken by the rider yesterday. He will continue to heal over time, the hair will grow back fairly rapidly still this is not a great experience for anyone to have to go through. Thanks to this kiteboarder for sharing his experience in the hope of sparing some other guys from having to go through this.





Be careful out there, learn what precautions to employ and use them even if you feel you need to hurry. While you are at it, get a good helmet for kiteboarding, impact vest and wear them WHENEVER you kiteboard. This rider usually wore a helmet, just not this time. Safety gear is for just in case.
__________________
FKA, Inc.

transcribed by:
Rick Iossi
Reply With Quote