Kiting is an amazing sport. I first started my journey Kiting back in 2017 — at a time when I wanted to brighten up my world a little bit.

Despite taking 10 lessons over six weeks to learn how to kite however, I still managed to experience several kite-mares in my first year of kiting.

Fortunately for me, only two of my kite-mares caused injuries – 😀

I’ll briefly describe my first kite-mare, then I will recommend a video for you to watch if you are interested in learning how to avoid them.

It was a gusty day…

I was in Squamish late in the day, around 4pm, but wanted to get just one kite session in before the wind died. Not many kiters were still in the water — so that should have been my first warning. As mentioned, it was a bit gusty, but I thought I could handle it, so decided to go out anyway.

What I forgot to remember however, was that the night before, I had made a change to my kite gear.

I added two inner line extensions which I thought belonged to my kite. Unfortunately, they did not — and by adding them to my kite — I managed to inadvertently configure it to a state it should NOT be in.

The very ‘over-powered’ what-the-heck-have-I-done-state.

So, after walking down to the edge of the rocky Squamish shore-line, I turned around, and gave the thumbs up to a friend, who was launching my kite. Suddenly, the kite jetted up into the air high above me like a chicken in a rocket —

And that’s when the gust hit.

Pow!

Suddenly I was off my feet, flying about 4 feet off the ground — like superman.

Its amazing when things like this happen, suddenly a shot of adrenaline fills your body, and everything moves in slow-motion.

I remember very clearly seeing the rocks two inches from my face, as my head (in my helmet) bounced off the shore like I was the shell of a Russian nesting doll.

Fortunately, after summer-salting a few more times, and being pulled into the water I finally yanked my safety release and the pulling stopped — yay!

The Lesson learned that day:

Always have one hand on the safety as soon as possible before, or just after launch.

I do apologize folks that I don’t have any video footage. The Garmin Virb was powered down that day :/

Kite Surf College Video on Kite-mares

Moving forward, I have since done some research on Kite-mares and how to avoid future ones — here is a great video from Kite Surf College I recommend to you if you are a kiter, or interested in learning, and or you want to brush up your knowledge.

I hope you won’t have to share a kite-mare story with me!