Dancing with Water and Wind   

          I was entranced from the first moment I saw someone zipping across the water with a brightly colored, curved kite in the air high above.  I immediately knew I wanted to do that, and the more I watched it the more I wanted to do it.  Windsurfing - which I wasn’t much good at anyway - paled in comparison.  When I received some unexpected money, I blew it all on kitesurfing gear.

          At the time, I happened to be on the north east coast of Australia, which has steady winter winds, warm water, and plenty of wide beaches, making it an ideal place for learning to kitesurf.  But by the time I got there, summer was starting and the winds were not regular any more.  The dealer who sold me my Boxer kite - which is what he recommended for a beginner - gave me one lesson, and then the wind forsook us.  I drove down to visit my friends in the south of Australia, in Adelaide.  At the first opportunity I went to a beach where there might be other kitesurfers, and sure enough, there were two of them.  There was also a very strong wind.

          I introduced myself.  “I’m not sure I should try to put the kite up in this wind,” I said.  “I’ve only had it up once before, I’m not even sure how to rig it.”

          One of the blond and muscular young men said, “Oh, give it a try, you’ve got nothing to lose, I’ll help you rig it.”

          Nowadays I would never trust anyone who said that; you always have something to lose, it’s called your life, and it’s quite easy to lose it kitesurfing.  But I didn’t know that then.  We put the kite up.

          The kite was a twelve square meter C-kite - about as big as a small to average sized room.  It had one edge that had to be inflated with a pump, and four lines, around a hundred feet long, that attached it to a bar which controlled the kite, and was attached to my waist by a harness.  The pull of a kite is from your belly, through the harness, not through your hands, which should just be holding the bar lightly.  I also had a board, but the primary, all-important aspect of kitesurfing is learning to control the kite, and I wasn’t there yet, so I wasn’t trying to get on the board.  I was practicing body dragging - that is, getting in the water and allowing the kite to drag me.   The problem is a C-kite only operates well in a fairly small wind range.  By the time my new found friend and I had the kite up, the wind had risen in strength.  I managed to get myself to the water, before I got dragged all over the place, and quickly lost control of the kite so that it smashed down into the water with quite a resounding bang.  Somehow or other it picked itself up again and me with it.  I flew over the surface of the water at alarming speed.  The kite hit the water again.  Even when it was just sitting on the water, it dragged me downwind at a startling rate.  I was out of my depth (in a couple of senses) and very unsure of what I ought to be doing, but I figured I should get back to shore, hoping the kite didn’t pick me up and throw me down on hard land.  How to get it to pull me back to shore?  Then I noticed that my blond friend was running along the beach parallel to me, shouting something which I couldn’t possibly have heard.  

          I don’t even remember how I did get back to shore - it just seemed like luck, as did anything else that went right with this sport.  I was completely exhausted by the time I felt solid ground under me again.  The young man agreed that the wind was too high, and I should bring the kite down.  He helped me take it back to where we started - the first of many long walks back up the beach, one arm tucked around this great flapping thing behind me, that very badly wanted to fly, with or without me.

          He went out on his kite while I packed mine up.  When I was done, I walked along the beach to see how he was doing, and met him trying to walk back, his kite way up in the air above him, pulling him up on his toes.  I asked if I could help, and he said, ”Yes, you could hold me down!”  So I hauled him back up the beach, holding onto the handle at the back of his harness (all kiting harnesses have a handle for exactly this purpose).  It was quite hard work because his feet were only occasionally on the ground.

          I decided I should have a lesson, which cost a lot of money, and only confirmed my growing sense that this was a dangerous sport and the kite had a mind of its own.  I was beginning to realize that it was an extremely powerful capricious toy, and it scared me.  But I knew that if all these other people could learn to control it, so could I.  I needed practice - and if I was lucky I would get away without extensive injuries.  A few injuries seemed inevitable.  One day when I was out with the kite, it picked me up and flung me back down on the ground like a rag doll.  I could barely walk for the next week.  Although I kept on practicing whenever I found a beach with a wind, it wasn’t fun.

          I went to visit a friend in Melbourne, where I found a beach that was crowded with kitesurfers.  A very sweet Spanish man, who was teaching there, quickly recognized me as someone who didn’t know what she was doing, and took me under his wing.  “This is a dangerous kite,” he said, with kind laughing eyes, pointing to my gray and black monstrosity.  “Boxers are not good kites for beginners unless the wind is very regular and steady.  Try this four meter foil, you’ll like it.”

          He was right; a third of the size of my Boxer, it felt much safer and yet still powerful enough to pull me along.  It was a different design, with no inflatable edge.  I bought the kite and had lots of fun with it over the next few weeks.  Back in the US, I went to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, which is a very famous and beautiful spot on a wide river, wellknown for its excellent winds.  It is ridiculously crowded with kiters, and I quickly discovered two things: that crowded beaches are not safe, and there is a great deal of snobbery in windsports.  Almost everyone had the inflatable type of kite, like my Boxer, and they all turned their noses up at my foil, which is a different kind of kite altogether.  None of them had ever tried it.  The only people who thought my little foil was any good were those who had one of their own, and there weren’t many of them.

          But one of the real problems with learning to kite is that if you don’t have adequate power and speed, you will not be able to stand on the board.  You have to be moving fast to get the board to skim over the surface of the water.  Although my little foil was a safe toy to learn about kite control, it didn’t really have the power I needed.  So I returned to using my Boxer.  I usually took it out on the water in the mornings when the wind was lower.  One day, I was lying back in the water with the board on my feet, thinking that it was time to go back to shore, when all of a sudden a gust caught me.  Without any warning I found myself standing on the board as it shot towards the beach, where two people were sitting watching.  I just had time to register the alarm on their faces, when I figured out I was going to miss them by a foot or so.  Then the board hit the sand, and somehow I was able to remove my feet from the straps, leaving the board lying there by the water.  The kite didn’t stop.  I continued on my trajectory, leaning backward so that my feet led the way, digging grooves in the sand in front of me.  Two kitesurfers were standing nearby; as I passed them, one said, “Need some help?”

          “Yes!” I replied, and he grabbed that oh-so-convenient handle on the back of my harness.  Between the two of us we brought it to a stop, and he held on to me while I eased the kite down to the ground so that his friend could get hold of it.

          The power of the kite is very exhilarating, and by this time I was learning how to control it, but that incident brought home how easy it would be to hurt someone else.  It certainly wasn’t my fault that my board hadn’t removed the onlookers’ heads.  There are two other ways that innocent bystanders can be injured: as a result of the kite smashing down hard on top of them, or getting tangled in the lines, which are very thin, and act like razors when the kite is moving fast.  Although I was willing to take risks on my own behalf, I was terrified of hurting someone else.  From then on I endeavoured not to kite on crowded beaches.   The kite does have a safety release - a little red ball you can pull that lets the kite go - and I had pulled it several times, but accidents happen so fast that you can’t always respond quickly enough.

          I had another interesting experience at the Gorge.  After packing my kite up early one afternoon, I was walking along the beach when a smiling young man accosted me.  He pointed to the kite laid out beside him.  “Do you know how to put these things up?”

          I nodded.  “Yes, I know how to rig them.”

          “Well, I just bought this, would you help me get it up?”

          I was a little nonplussed.  “Um . . .you’ve never flown a kite before?”

          “No, but I’ve been watching these guys out here, I think I know what they’re doing.”  He was still smiling, with a slightly pleading look on his face. 

          I hesitated.   Well, I can sympathize with your desire to be flying over the water, and your frustration at not being able to figure out how to rig the kite, but no one can possibly learn this sport by watching others - the movements that the rider is constantly making are far too minute and subtle.  You’re probably going to kill yourself, or someone else.   “You need to take a lesson.”

          “They’re so expensive.  I can see what these guys are doing, I’ve watched them for hours.”

          I know they’re expensive, but how much do you value your life?  You’re deluded.   What the hell, it would be a good experience for me to play around with a different kite.

          “OK, I’ll help you get it up.”  I put down my own kite and within fifteen minutes I had his kite ready to go.  I instructed him how to hold it while I launched it.  Once it was in the air, I played around for a minute or two and then handed it to him. 

          “What do I do now?  What do I do now?“  He shouted excitedly, with a death grip on the bar.  Then he did what beginners usually do - pulled the bar down towards his body, which powers up the kite.  It looped around in the air before crashing to the ground.  Only the fact that I was holding onto his harness stopped him from being dragged.  I took the bar, and re-launched it.  That was my mistake - I should have checked the lines weren’t twisted.  As soon as the kite was in the air above me, I saw that they were, but before I could do anything, the kite took off.  He was holding onto my harness.  It dragged us, on our bellies, about twenty feet over the sand before it hit the ground and stopped.  I jumped up, handing him the bar, and ran to catch it.  As soon as I had secured it safely, I walked back to the would-be kiter.  To my surprise, he was shaking.  “It just dragged both of us, it just dragged both of us,” he kept repeating. 

          I shrugged.  “You’ll have to get used to being dragged if you want to learn to kite.  That’s one reason to wear a wetsuit.  Maybe you‘ll have a lesson now?”

          He nodded vociferously.  “Yes, yes, I’ll have a lesson!”

          I walked off, looking back once to see him hurriedly deflating the kite and folding it up.  I wondered if it would ever see the light of day again.

          I was slowly learning how to get up on the board.  My next stop was Hawaii, where I had heard there are very reliable winds, and several kite schools.  I discovered some problems as soon as I got to Kite Beach on Maui.  The beach is the size of a postage stamp, so there is no room for mistakes when launching the kite, or bringing it down.  The wind inshore is quite low, whereas further out, it’s very high.  There are lots of rocks around.  None of that spells well for beginners. 

          But I had planned to be there for a week, and stay for a week I did.  I got my lines tangled in a tree and bust them on a fence; I lost my board when I was out on the water, it just came off my feet, and disappeared in the swells while I struggled with the kite; worst of all, I was dragged over some big rocks when my kite took off unexpectedly.   I already had some scars down my right side from similar, less spectacular episodes, but this time I was bloody for several days.  By now I was seriously addicted to this exciting sport, so these misadventures didn’t stop me going out.  I found a man who gave lessons, had a long talk with him, and on his advice bought another smaller C-kite and a new board.

          A couple of months later I was on the west coast of Australia, near a town called Geraldton, famous for its winds.  I was easily the most inexperienced person on this beach, and a lot of the macho young kiters were looking at me askance.  Like every beginner, I made a fool of myself through my lack of experience, and perhaps more so because I was nervous of kiting in crowds.  Being that kind of person, I am often asking questions, and I had been in the habit of pumping other kiters for information.  I was learning that many of them simply wanted to sound like they were knowledgeable, and I shouldn‘t assume they actually knew anything.   Kitesurfing is a new sport: there are plenty of things a kite could do that these young men had no idea about, and there were many different kinds of equipment that they had never heard of.   I asked one man which of the several different line connections to use on my kite, and then discovered - to my cost - that he’d told me to use the ones that gave me maximum power.  Another person told me authoritatively that I had my safety leash attached the wrong way round, and I only found out that was rubbish when it released abruptly, so that I almost lost my kite altogether.  Both these people were well paid teachers.   

          I was determined to learn anyway; in the end it was just a matter of whether I survived the process.  In Geraldton I took out my new smaller kite, an eight meter.  Smaller kites, for use in higher winds, typically move very fast, which makes them more dangerous.  This innocent looking little kite ‘tea-bagged’ me several times.  Tea bagging is a phenomenon where the kite swings from side to side in the air, picking you up and dunking you in the water, often three times in quick succession.  It doesn’t occur gently.  Broken ribs are a fairly common injury, as a result of being slammed hard into the water.  I don’t think I actually fractured my ribs, but I certainly bruised them.  Eighteen months later, I still had the mark on my breast.  After that, I seldom used that kite; rarely forgiving enough for a beginner, it was downright evil for anyone in a gusty wind.  

          An experienced kiter can go upwind, and therefore return to where she started without setting foot on the ground.  Beginners are notorious for being blown downwind, which means they have to walk back to their starting point.  They also have a tendency to go out when the wind is not really high enough, and then you cannot get enough speed to be able to stay upwind.  Controlling a kite well in low winds actually requires more skill than in high winds - although high winds are potentially more dangerous.  As I became braver, and went out in higher winds, I was able to get on the board and fly over the water.  Kitesurfers will tell you never to go out alone, but twice I had the experience of getting my lines tangled with another kite.  I did better when I found a great little bay, north of Geraldton, with no one else around. 

          Some time later I spent a month in Thailand, at a place called Hua Hin, where there was a beach used by kiters, mostly westerners.  The wind was a little low, but the water was flat, so you didn’t have to contend with waves knocking you off your board, and during the week there was plenty of space on the beach.  I hung out with two other kiters less experienced than me, which was new and different.  I was delighted to pass on a few of the pearls I had picked up on my educational journey.  After watching Hans trying to get up on the board, I said to him, “Don’t try to get up on the board.  Just put it on your feet, lie back in the water, and work the kite to get some power.  When there’s enough power, the wind will pick you up and you’ll just find yourself standing, flying over the surface.  No matter how much you try, you’ll never get up on it until there is enough wind.”

          He did as I suggested, and came back looking pleased with himself.  “That was good advice, thank you,” he said.

          I nodded, smiling.  “Yes, I wish someone had said that to me when I was learning!” 

          By now, I had been kiting for a year.  Kite designers had come out with a new style of inflatable that could be used in a much broader wind range than the old C-kites, which meant they were considerably safer.  I bought one of these new ‘bow’ kites, a Crossbow.  It was yellow and green, much more pleasing to the eye than my old Boxer.  Sadly, the guy I bought it from, a teacher, who should have known better, did not have it rigged correctly - the back lines were too short, which made it fly a little oddly.  I was experienced enough to know that it wasn’t flying that well, but I didn’t know why.  I played with it for a whole month before some very helpful and knowledgeable person pointed out that problem.   By then I’d met a Frenchman on the beach who had a foil kite, much bigger than the one I owned, with a huge wind range.  He let me try it, and I was hooked.

          In California, I investigated buying a foil kite.  I already knew that many of the kites have ridiculous names, which presumably appeal to young men: Boxer was bad enough but Psycho was terrible.  I swore I would never buy a kite called a Psycho - a promise I later broke when I found out they were amongst the best foil kites on the market.  In the meantime, I ordered a Pulse, recommended because of its safety features, from a dealer on the East Coast.  I went to a beach in the San Francisco Bay Area where there were other kiters, to look for someone who knew about foil kites to help me.  The day it arrived I still hadn’t found anybody who had ever used one, so I put it up by myself.  The instructions in the booklet that came with it were incomprehensible to someone who had only seen a kite like this once before, so I had it upside down and the wrong way round when I launched it, but it still went up.  Soon I was zipping across the water on it. 

          When you’ve learned good kite control you can jump off the water, sometimes up to twenty or thirty feet, hanging in the air for several seconds.  I’d seen a video of people kiting on snow, where you can get up very high speeds because there is no friction.  They were jumping over houses.  I wanted to do that.  I’d spent months learning how to stop the kite from picking me up; now I was learning how to make it pick me up.  I soon discovered that the tricky part was landing.  Whenever I found myself up in the air I got so excited that I forgot to control the kite, and ended up crashing into the water.

          I went to Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast, one of the best places in the world for wind.  Again, the delightfully wide and empty beaches are primarily frequented by westerners.  Like Hawaii and northern Australia, the water was warm enough to go out without a wetsuit.  I spent three weeks improving my skills in winds that once would have terrified me.  I was lucky enough to meet a Swedish guy who had a foil kite - a Psycho, in fact.  He was helpful and understanding.  I began to get bolder, although I spent too much time picking weed off the strings of my kite after it dropped in the water as I was trying to get out beyond the waves.  You had to be very confident and aggressive to get beyond the waves fast enough, and, once in the water, those strings were incredibly efficient weed collectors.  Moreover, they didn‘t let go of the weed easily or quickly.  Nevertheless, I was beginning to look and feel good with the kite.  I was going fast enough that I’d find myself a long way from the beach in no time at all.  A few times I dropped the kite when I was all the way out there, couldn’t re-launch it, and had a rather agonizing swim back.  But on the whole I was actually having fun.

          One day, coming back in to shore, I slid through the last few feet of shallow surf on my butt, a fairly normal procedure to slow myself down.  Suddenly I felt a very sharp jab in my left buttock.  I leapt up, the kite went out of control, smashing down onto the ground, and I was jerked off my feet.  Finding myself lying on the sand, I reached round to see what was jabbing me.  Whatever it was didn’t seem to be letting go.  I twisted my body round, to see a small catfish attached to me.  They have sharp spikes, and one had impaled itself on my butt, through the thick material of my harness.  I pulled it off.  “Damn, that hurt!” I said.  It looked at me with a very sorrowful, frightened eye, and I threw it back in the water.  Another thing to add to my list of potential kitesurfing hazards.

          In northern California, the average man is less macho than other parts of the world, and beach goers are usually friendly.  That made it one of my favorite places to be, in spite of the cold water.  Kitesurfing is a spectacular sport.  People recognize you by the color of your kite, and often make comments to you when you come in.  One old lady, walking along the beach with a stick, said to me, “You were having fun out there!  You know what you’re doing with that kite. Now him over there -” she pointed with her stick- “he doesn’t know how to control that thing.” 

          I was particularly conspicuous because, again, I had a different kind of kite from almost everyone else.  One older man, who was learning to kite, introduced himself as Mad Max. “I live in an apartment right here on the beach, and I watch you a lot, you‘re always the first one out and you can stay upwind when no one else can even keep their kite in the air,” he said.

          I grinned.  “That’s because I have a better kite than everyone else.”

          Even though I was pretty good with the kite by this time, I still dropped it on the water now and again, or lost my board and couldn’t retrieve it, so that I had to swim in.  One evening as I was packing up, Mad Max came up to me and said, “I heard you had a bit of trouble out there today.”

          I shrugged.  “No, not really, I had to swim in because I lost my board, but I got it back, it was washed up along the beach.”  I was much more concerned about losing my board than I was with having to swim in.
          “Well, I was having a nap and my wife woke me up, said I should get out there and help you, you were in trouble.”

          I laughed.  “Well, it’s a good job you didn’t, because you’d have been wasting your time!”

          He nodded, laughing.  “That’s what I told her, I said, Mikaya knows what she’s doing!”

          I’d never met his wife but she evidently knew which kites were mine.  A few days later there was a fierce wind, and although I had a small kite, I was overpowered.  When I launched it, I asked another kiter to hold onto my harness.  Between the two of us, we probably weighed 350 pounds.  I brought the kite up carefully and slowly, but when it was directly above my head, I felt my feet leave the ground.  I assumed the other kiter had let go of me.  When I came back down to the ground - on my feet - I discovered he was still holding on.  It had lifted us both.  

          The next day Mad Max told me his wife had woken him up from his nap again, telling him to go and help me.

          Now that I was more confident, I enjoyed the idea of entertaining people on the shore.  This really came home to me when one of the local kiters told me, “The guys on the beach were asking who was that guy catching all that air out there today.”  He was using kiter slang for jumping.  “I told them, that’s no guy, that’s a woman.”  He grinned.

          Now I just have to get really good.

                     *******************