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Old 05-07-2007, 08:42 AM
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bryanleighty bryanleighty is offline
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Default bad times at SW. almost horrific.

so.. fully powered on 9m waroo this morning.. rigged and riding by 7am.

745 i was coming back downwind from a huge tack up past the bridge.. just a great great cruising day.

i'm about 200 yards from shore when SNAP.. my right side of my waroo 2006 bar comes apart. kite did a quick, unpowered loop and landed on its leading edge.

i'm thinking 'crap.. this sucks' when the kite loops again.. and again and again.. no power.. just annoying that the damn thing wont settle down.

i yell to guy on the beach to see if he can grab the kite.. he comes running towards it from the side..

kite loops again and again.. little more power in it now.. i see the lines are tightening up.. difficult to stand in the waist deep water.

guy is approaching and i notice that as the kite loops, the broken part of the bar is looping with it and SMASHING into the water with tremendous power.

i yell "Get back .. get back.." .. that bar end would have knocked him sensless. seriously dangerous to come in from the side.. should have gone downwind of the kite and to grab it from the back safely..

i am about to tell him this when the kite really starts to gain power and i realize that i am being dragged quickly into the beach.. i'm trying to fight it.. pointless.. absolutely pointless and i know i have to ditch the kite.

i pull the release and the release on the leash and expect to see the kite fly into the mangroves right there on the beach line..

NOPE.. f**king kite takes flight and goes overtop the trees full steam towards the freeway.

F U C K.

I run to my car and haul ass to the road.. i am expecting to see my kite wrapped around a car or some other horrific scene... i look to the mangroves and THANKFULLY the kite is tangled up in the very very edge tree..

i never would think that i would be estatic to see my kite in a tree.

after 30 minutes of work i am able to climb to the top and cut the lines and recover the kite. not a scratch on it that i could see. (same cannot be said for my legs) bar and lines still in the tree tops. going back to reclaim ASAP to get the parts back and see what exactly happened to the bar.

i am lucky as hell that the kite got tangled where it did. could have been hell.

i had a guy pull out in front of my while driving home yesterday. I was going 50 when he ran a stop sign.. it was the nearest i've ever been to what could be a near fatal accident. i was able to swerve out of the way...

i am freaked out more from todays little adventure.

my bar was about 1 and 1/2 years old.

and.. i do have to say i am quite dissapointed that not a single person at the beach offered to help me recover my kite. i've always gone out of my way to help out in any situation i could. always try to keep an eye out for people that could use some assistance. my legs are sliced to hell from recovering my kite today. another person or two helping out and we could have brought down the limb trapping my kite with ease. not pointing fingers, just saying.. help your fellow kiter cuz i PROMISE that you will need help yourself sometime...
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Old 05-07-2007, 08:58 AM
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bryanleighty bryanleighty is offline
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thinking about it now.. what i should have done.. and will do in the future if something like this occurs..

i should have disconnected my leash from my CL and clipped it to the left side safety loop and then pulled the CL release.

this may have flagged the kite completely ... not sure .. but its something that might have worked ..
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Last edited by bryanleighty; 05-07-2007 at 09:30 AM.
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Old 05-07-2007, 09:41 AM
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one other idea, if your already planning on letting it go, dont bother trying to leash to the OSHandle, just grab it with one hand and release the kite with the other, once you flag it to a back line your fine..
sorry for the bad luck...
i had LP to myself from 5:15 to 8:30 nice flat water on the inside, perfect 3ft ramps on the outside with gusts to 40.... man did i get high this morning......
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Old 05-07-2007, 10:00 AM
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bryanleighty bryanleighty is offline
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one other idea, if your already planning on letting it go, dont bother trying to leash to the OSHandle, just grab it with one hand and release the kite with the other, once you flag it to a back line your fine..
sorry for the bad luck...
i had LP to myself from 5:15 to 8:30 nice flat water on the inside, perfect 3ft ramps on the outside with gusts to 40.... man did i get high this morning......
i'd rather not risk getting a finger tangled...

with the one line disconnected there was no controlling the kite. i know that the OS handles are supposed to be fingers friendly but I'd rather lose 10 kites than 1 part of my hand.



BTW... Toby.. if you are in the mangroves later tonight with one of your "friends" and you see the remaining parts of my bar/lines can you get them for me. Daryl from Extreme Kites mentioned that w/ a photo of the bar that came apart, BEST might be able to do something to cover the cost of replacement or help a bit.
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Old 05-07-2007, 10:24 AM
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That was scary stuff Bryan, I was way on the outside when I saw you do what you had to do. Release the kite. I was amazed to see it just go over the top of all the mangroves. Thankfully it didn't hit I-275.

One thing about these bow kites, I think I mentioned it two -three weeks back, THEY DO NOT SELF LAND OR STAY ON THE WATER @ 30++KNOTS. period. something has to be figured out to be able to 100% kill the power when the wind goes above the kites range. BTW, I also "self-landed in a mangrove via kiteloop" 3 weeks ago in 30++kts.

Sorry , no one helped you out getting your kite Bryan , but there was nobody really at the beach except for Lori, Alan and another dude. Me and Shane came in soon after but I think you had gotten your kite by then.
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Old 05-07-2007, 10:50 AM
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toby wilson toby wilson is offline
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It doesn't matter WHO was on the beach. If someone was there, they should have helped. PERIOD. This is an individual sport but it is one where we consistently need assistance from our fellow kiters.

This same "it's not me, why should I bother to help, they'll just learn a lesson" attitude was the reason Roy's old Turbo Diesel got a tear across the whole leading edge from the rocks downwind toward the bridge at the SW when he was a newbie. Why not just make a little bit of effort and help out our bros? It takes just a little bit of effort and makes you feel good about helping others and earns you some respect from the person you helped out.

BTW Bryan, you may not want that bar back after me and my "backside buddies" are done with it...LOL

I'm VERY glad to hear that you are okay bro!!!
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Old 05-07-2007, 11:28 AM
robertovillate robertovillate is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bryanleighty View Post
i'd rather not risk getting a finger tangled...

with the one line disconnected there was no controlling the kite. i know that the OS handles are supposed to be fingers friendly but I'd rather lose 10 kites than 1 part of my hand.
BL - Wow, glad you are OK. That is a situation I've often imagined at that spot and I've steered my students away from these spots with this in mind. And yes, someone should have helped you out...but then again sometimes there's nobody there who can help.

This type of situation is precisely why I carry 2 leashes - so I can transfer one to the O-shit without being completely leashless and disconnected / or having to rely on my fingers to hold the OSH - very risky. I typically ride with both attached to the centerline most of the time...If I am going far offshore cruising and not doing tricks I hook one to the OSH in case my centerline or something else breaks unexpectedly. I've even used the extra leash as a tow line for another kiter.

Not to sound redundant but launching/landing/and anything else close to shore is where we are most vulnerable. Even an experienced rider can have it handed to him/her...things can happen so fast.

PS...can you post a photo of the bar so other 06 Waroo bar owners can see what happened?
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Last edited by robertovillate; 05-07-2007 at 11:35 AM. Reason: info request
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  #8  
Old 05-07-2007, 11:43 AM
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bryanleighty bryanleighty is offline
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good idea Roberto..

could have been SO much worse..

could have been jumping.. could have been way upwind where i had been only 5 minutes prior.. could have been a few hundred yards from the bridge where i had been only 3 minutes prior.. could have been while i was launching.. could have been when i was riding at the beach last weekend..could have been when Dan and I were riding with this bar at backside skyway a couple weeks ago in 30+ wind.

could have been so much worse in pretty much any scenario ... i think i got off light.

and really.. about my comments for no one helping.. i did race to my car and speed off like a bat outta hell.. (thinking i wouild have to do a freeway kite recovery).. so i know that it was impossible for anyone to see where i went.

as a whole...i dont think people *have* to help... i just hope that everyone would always *want* to help.

i know i have gone WAY out of my way to help a downed rider or two.. and often do board retrevials to help a fellow rider out as much as possible. I just hope everyone else would do the same for me ...

I guess after a really good scare my emotions were a bit outta whack so i got a little pissy. hehehe..
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  #9  
Old 05-07-2007, 11:45 AM
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bryanleighty bryanleighty is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robertovillate View Post
PS...can you post a photo of the bar so other 06 Waroo bar owners can see what happened?
will do!

going to brave the mangroves tomorrow afternoon to try to get it back. it up about 20 feet..

i have a retractable hook pole on my sailboat.
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  #10  
Old 05-07-2007, 11:57 AM
Lori Lori is offline
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Bryan I am glad you are OK.

That freeked me out enough not to put up my kite this morning and go to work!

I have to admit I froze when seeing the kite hit the water for nanoseconds and then relaunch, then think you were OK cuz kite was in air (did not know your bar was broken) and then do kiteloops and crash and repeat. How do you even go and grap someones kite without making the situation worse. As you said approaching from the downwind side is probably the way to go but still hard to judge where it is going to land to grap before it relaunches without you being on the wrong side of that. So it was not an easy can you catch my kite situation. But next time I would run downwind and try to grap it. I barely was able to grap Rauls kite on the sand before it relauched and it was not looping that is how windy it was.


I was actually more concerned for the cars on the skyway then the kite as I am sure you where at first as well as the kite appeared to go over the first set of trees. But I saw no change in trafick flow so figure it had been caught somewhere you were OK and no accidents on the bridge so I thought it was a very good ending. But if you ever need help getting a kite down just ask for help unfortuntely today it was not clear how to help you out there today so I think everybody was a bit frozen with the looping kite going over the trees.
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