Blown Out to Sea...

[ricki]

Originally Posted by Polaris

Thanks Rick.
My wound is healing up great and I should be back in the water in a couple of weeks. Yes, it was a C kite. I never thought about launching unhooked. I do keep the leash on?

Good news, hope the time passes rapidly.

Absolutely, you keep the kite leash attached when launch a C KITE unhooked. The idea is that in a gust emergency the bar is pulled out of your hands causing the leash depower to be activated immediately. Alternately, you consciously drop the bar before you are slammed by a big gust, again activating the leash depower. You need to trim the kite for its size the wind speed for stable flight while being sufficiently depowered using the trim strap.

i.e. if you pull the trim strap all the way in with lighter winds the kite will fly very poorly. You want to pull in enough trim strap to depower the kite while not sacrificing kite flying stability. It takes some practice to dial this in. If you can't hold on to the bar because of strong winds you are probably rigged too big in the first place.

I did a study in 2002 that concluded that 75% of kiting injury accidents might have been reduced or eliminated if launching/landing unhooked was performed. http://fksa.org/showthread.php?t=454

REMEMBER, launching flat kites unhooked may not be a good idea UNLIKE with C kites.