Naish House 2…

California Tripping…

We are up at Lake Nitnaht kiteboarding this weekend…enjoy some kite porn and get out of your bike/kite/board/feet for some fun body rocking action…=-)

Naish Cult

I’m starting to plan my winter trip to Baja.  I came across this video and it got me super stoked to get out on the water with my kiteboard.  I want to get more skilled with my kiteboarding and learn how to ride a surfboard with my kite.  I’m not sure why, but surfing holds an almost mythological significance in our culture.  I’m keen to find out why.

Baja Kiteboarding Gear 2011

Viva Mexico!

For the kiteboarders out there here is what I am taking to La Ventana, Baja Sur, Mexico this winter for gear:

• 12m Naish Code [2008] + bar
• 10m Ocean Rodeo Rise [2010] + bar
• 8m Ocean Rodeo Rise [2011] + bar
• 6m Naish Cult [2009] + bar
• Ocean Rodeo Mako 140 [2010]
• Slingshot Tyrant 6’2″ surfboard [2011]
• Dakine Nitrous shorts harness w/ leash
• 2 pumps
• Kitefix repair kit

For Sharon I’ll bring:

• 9m Naish Code [2008] + bar
• RRD 144 [2010] w/ Ocean Rodeo GoJoe
• Airush Switch 130 [2008]

For wearing in the water:

• 3/2mm shortie
• impact vest
• helmet
• surf sunglasses w/ strap
• vibram five fingers KSO

Another Nihtnat Weekend…

Kite launched walking to the water...

Sadly Ken broke his arm [paintball not kiteboarding!] so no more awesome photos from him for a while…=-(  [Heal fast Ken!]

Time to ride...

Got out on my 6m kite Saturday and on my 9m kite Sunday since it wasn’t quite as windy.

Body dragging away from shore a bit...

Sharon came up and got her first taste of Lake Nihtnat.  She’s booked lessons for next weekend.  Hopefully she’ll be up and riding after a bit more training….=-)

Cruising the lake...

Well as you can see kiteboarding and my Canon point & shoot aren’t a great combo.  You really need an SLR with a telephoto lens to capture any action.

Looking for waves to jump...

I’m super happy to be living near this lake.  Great kiting, scenic location, lots of quiet high quality camping at the end of a tough logging road on an island means never any real crowds.  Sweet!

Kite Repair

Two small tears in my 12m kite canopy near the leading edge...

It was inevitable that one day when packing up my kites I would find some damage that needed fixing.  Although my kites are well made and surprisingly durable, eventually long hours of hard use takes its toll.  Especially since this was my first year of kiteboarding and my kites got abused more than it would typically when not subjected to the learning process.

My fix everything repair kit!

I could have and probably should have taken my kite to a professional to fix.  I didn’t because the damage was minor and I didn’t want to lose my kite for a week while it was repaired.  I figured I needed to see how well I can deal with this level of damage since it will happen again and again over the years – especially as my gear gets older. Since we often kiteboard in remote spots being able to resolve issues on your own could be the difference between riding and driving home.

My kite repair studio...aka...Sharon's room!

Since Sharon hasn’t made it out to Victoria yet I let my 12m Naish Code kite dry in her room using a fan to speed up the process.  Although I haven’t unpacked I was able to find my universal repair kit.  This consists of some ripstop nylon fabric tape, seam seal and scissors.  With these items I’ve repaired goretex shells, tents, bags, etc…  I have 15yrs+ old repairs still going strong.

Cutting a patch...

You’ll need sharp scissors which is why I ditched the office scissors and found this little guy in my repair kit.  I cut two patches and rounded the edges for better durability.  I stuck the first patch on the underside of the kite canopy.  This patch’s only job is to keep the seam seal from flowing through the tears and making a mess of the rest of the kite.  I only stuck it on using the weak adhesive that comes on this tape.  If it peels off in a week I don’t care and this part of the repair is not visible when the kite is being used.

Seam seal time...

I then applied a liberal amount of seam seal on the top surface.  I used enough to coat an area slightly larger than the patch.  Ideally if you can use some fine brushes you can do a neater job than I did.  I’m too lazy to bother so I spread it around using the edge of the tube.  Seam seal is ideal for many repairs because it provides a strong bond to most surfaces and stays flexible so it can move with the fabric rather then breaking or peeling off.

Top patch applied...

I applied the top patch with more care then the bottom one since this is the one that will bond to the torn area and avoid further damage.  This is also the patch that someone will see when handling the kite.  The seam seal is sticky, but takes a long time to dry so you can slide the patch around until you have it where you want.  Once in place I run a bead of seam seal around the edges and smooth it down to secure them well and avoid and chance of an edge lifting.  Once that’s done I left the repair as flat as possible [seam seal stays runny for a while] to dry overnight.

The repair in context...

Here is the repair a day later viewed from standing height.  The tear was in the left corner of the vertical black section of fabric in the lower middle of this shot.  The repair tape happily matches quite well.  You can see the repair easily up close, but from any distance it blends in nicely.

Ken’s Nihtnat Kite Porn…

Cruising at La Ventana Baja.

I met Ken up at Nihtnat Lake a couple weeks ago and was stoked to receive these excellent action shots of folks kiteboarding there.  Taking good kiteboarding shots is hard due to the speeds, distance between camera and rider as well as the need to get the proper angle of the kite, rider and camera sorted.

Riding toe side...

Ken’s got a great portfolio over at his Ken Thorne Photography site…definitely worth a visit.

Ready to launch again...

Hopefully our paths will cross again and I can get him to snap a few shots of me on the water.  If not I’ll just keep posting photos of my tiny speck of a body way out there and let your imagination fill in the details…hahaha….probably for the best!

A Naish kiter...

I’m glad I live so close to this lake or these photos would make me really jealous…=-)

Jumping time...

Not that I’m great at it, but being able to jump off the water easily is one of the bonuses of kiteboarding.

That huge fallen over tree is a Nihtnat landmark...

Life and nearly death at Lake Nihtnat BC…

My secondary safety release on my Naish control bar...

I had an epic kiteboarding moment Friday out at Nihtnat Lake.  My first real emergency that could have resulted in serious injury or death.  I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially one of my control lines got wrapped around the control bar after a crash.  This meant the kite wanted to loop hard in one direction generating lots of uncontrolled power. Imagine me flying like superman 20′ in the air before crashing into the water…repeat a few times!  I tried to sort out my lines, but the kite kept hurling me through the air and slamming me into the water like I was in a UFC cage match.  I also realized I was getting close to shore and many hard objects awfully fast.

I used my primary safety release to separate the kite from my harness.  This should have depowered it enough to allow me to gain control, but the way the lines were wrapped the depower system didn’t activate.  So kept getting flung around like a rag doll and with the shore close at hand I went for my secondary safety release pictured above.  That totally disconnected me from the kite ending my pummeling.  Of course having an uncontrolled kite heading for the beach isn’t ideal, but this location is quite remote and only frequented by wind sports fanatics.  Someone grabbed my kite and secured it for me.

By the time I swam to shore and got my bearings my board washed up and I collected my gear without any actual damage or injury.

I’ve had over 100 safe hours on the water so there is no real message here other then know what to do when things go sideways whatever sports you pursue.  Kiteboarding isn’t what I’d call a particularly dangerous sport, but problems can occur.  The key is knowing what to do and doing it.  It’s also critical to check your gear periodically and ensure your safety releases aren’t rusted or jammed with sand.  I’ll tell you I was totally stoked when my second safety worked properly.

This is a GPS track log from my session that day...

Click on the track log above to see more stats from my session.  Interestingly the GPS recorded a max speed of 74kph [46mph]…that’s how fast I was going through the air during my incident!

My Kiteboard Quiver…

I love my Naish kites...

Here’s an outline of the kiteboarding kites and boards I use and why.

Kites:

Your kite provides you the power to move around on the water and how it handles is critical for your kiteboarding experience.  If you are on a budget and have to cut corners do it anywhere, but here.  A poor quality kite is going to make your life hard and unpleasant.  Don’t buy junk!

I ride only Naish kites simply because they are the highest quality kites I’ve ever seen. The craftsmanship and thought that goes into these kites is clear and once you own one you won’t want to ride anything else. They are stable and easy to relaunch if you put them down on the water.  Their beginner kites are docile and as you move up their line up you get faster handling and more power.

2010 Naish Cult...

My Naish kites:

• 12m Code 2008 [16-23 knots]
• 9m Code 2008 [23-30 knots]
• 6m Cult 2009 [30-37 knots]

The Code is a discontinued Naish model that was aimed at the new kiteboarder.  Accordingly it is safe, stable and easy to use.  The handling isn’t too sporty, but more than enough for your first couple seasons until your skills develop.

The Cult is the model that replaced the Code in Naish’s kite line up and is their beginner/intermediate kite.  It is more performance oriented than the Code, but is so stable and easy to use it’s fine for a new kiteboarder.  When I add new kites to my quiver I’ll be buying Cults as they are the perfect balance of ease of use and performance for me for the next few years.

You’ll notice I have 3 kites.  That’s pretty standard for a full quiver.  You can get by with 1 kite or 2, but you won’t always be able to kite when there is wind and you won’t always be riding a good size for the current conditions.  If you are riding a kite that’s too small for conditions you’ll be struggling to get enough power to ride.  If you are riding a kite that’s too big for conditions you’ll have too much power which is just as tough to ride and can be dangerous.  Modern kites have a broad range of usable wind speed.  Easily 10-15 knots for a lot of kites.  However, at the extreme ends of their ranges they aren’t a lot of fun to use.  That’s why I’ve listed about a 7 knot speed range for my kites above.  I can fly them outside these ranges, but I prefer not to.

A basic rule of thumb for kiting is with:

• one kite you’ll be kiting 50% of the time when it’s rideable
• two kites you’ll be kiting 75% of the time when it’s rideable
• three kites you’ll be riding 95% of the time when it’s rideable

Naish control bar and lines...

Control Bar and Lines:

You are attached to your kite via some kevlar lines that run from your kite to a control bar that you use to steer the kite.  Except for advanced riders doing wild tricks you will hook up your control bar to your harness so the kite pulls directly on your body and you don’t have to hold on for dear life while riding.  This is nice and lets you control the kite with one finger from each hand if you want.

Two important features of your control bar are:

• main safety release which lets you detach your kite from your harness in an emergency.
• secondary safety release on a flexible leash that retains your kite in a depowered state when you use the main release.  When you use this secondary safety release you are totally freed from the kite and lines when needed in an emergency.

Naish makes a great control bar designed especially for their kites.  I have 3 bars one for each kite. I tend to use just one bar and move it from kite to kite.  This gives me 2 spare bars.  That’s probably one more than I need, but bars/lines bought with a kite are much cheaper than buying separately.

Kite bag and pump...

Pump:

The kites used for water kiteboarding [vs. land or snow kiting] are inflatable.  This keeps the floating when they hit the water and provides an extra measure of safety if things go wrong as you can turn your kite into a raft and float in to shore.

Every time you use your kite you’ll be pumping it up and for a large kite like my 12m it takes a lot of pumping to put enough air inside.  To make matters worse the sand and grit typically found at kiting beaches loves to get in your pump and wear out the seals.

I’ve got 2 Naish pumps which are very efficient and easy to use.  Definitely the best kite pumps I’ve seen.  You always want a spare pump as your are dead in the water if you can’t pump up your kite.

Repair Kit:

My Naish kites came with a repair kit including:

• patches for the inflatable kite bladder
• spare air valves
• patches for the kite canopy

I haven’t had to use any of these yet, but if you are far from a repair shop an emergency kit could be the difference between kiting or driving home.

Ocean Rodeo Mako...

Boards:

After your kites your boards are the next most critical items in your quiver.  I’d recommend buying a quality name brand board, but since technology doesn’t change that fast in this area you can save $$$ by getting a used board or a new board that’s a couple years old.

My boards:

• Ocean Rodeo Mako Freeride [40cm x 140cm]
• Roberto Ricci Designs Placebo [ 47xm x 144cm]

RRD Placebo...

The OR Mako is my everyday board.  It rides upwind really well and due to the rounded tail is very smooth on the choppy water that occurs when it gets really windy.  This board features a lot of rocker [tip to tip curvature] as well as a ton of concave [edge to edge curvature] which combined with only one fin on each end makes it handle very differently from a more typical kite board like the RRD Placebo.  The Mako is loose and easy to spin/maneuver when you don’t dig in an edge making it a lot of fun to play around on.  When you do push the edge into the water the concave really helps it bite and drive upwind.

The RRD Placebo is a big board and although the measurements seem not a lot greater than the Mako the more rectangular outline, lack of any concave and much less rocker give it more surface area in the water at any given time.  This means you need less power from the kite to ride.  This board is easy to ride and great for light wind conditions where the Mako would just sink.  The downside is the weight and size make it less fun to play on than the Mako.

If I was going to do it all over again I’d probably buy a Mako King which is OR’s bigger light wind board.  That would give me the benefits of having a big board combined with the same handling and feel as my smaller Mako.

Besides having a spare in case you damage your main board the benefit of two boards is that the size of your board determines how big a kite you need to use to generate enough power to ride.  Having a smaller and a larger board essentially gives you two “gears” for any one kite. This means you can fine tune your ride very easily.  Rigging up a kite takes 15-20mins, but swapping a board takes only 2 mins.  So if you are out on a small kite and need more power the easy thing to do is come in and grab your bigger board.  Since boards are much cheaper than kites you can also make do with less kites by having a few boards at your disposal saving a lot of $$$.

Bindings...

Bindings:

You need a set of two foot pads and two straps to attach your board to your feet.  These bindings are quite important for an enjoyable ride and there are lots of designs out there.  When you are buying a board pay attention to the bindings.  If they aren’t going to work for you consider that replacing them can cost $100-$200.  I’m using the stock OR and RRD bindings.  They both work well so I have no complaints.

Weekend triathlon…

Just got back from an 8hr kiteboarding marathon weekend…okay so 8hrs over two days isn’t really overly hardcore, but my last day of kiting was in early January and my kiting fitness has declined!  I’m looking forward to being able to crank out 5hrs+ a day on the water day after day.  For now I’ll have to be happy just being on the water with some solid steady thermal winds.  As a bonus I had a great SUP session Saturday AM and got to crank around on my MTB all weekend in the campground at Lake Nihtnat on Vancouver Island.  Life is good…

Light wind trainer kite fun...

Sand Everywhere….

You can't escape the sand living at the beach...

Kite Rigging

Hanna and Salvatore rigging a Naish Cult

Placebo….

Adrian walks past a pile of my wet gear...

KBing Baja

Launching on the busy beach...

Getting wet!

Surfboards for Kiting

Kiteboarding the surf....

If you are looking for a surfboard to use with your kites you’ll find this article handy.  With the speed and power kites can generate you’ll want something built to take a lot of abuse.  With strap inserts and sized for your weight.  If you are going to ride powered up all the time you can go for a shorter board, but if you want to ride unpowered you’ll need something bigger.

Naish has some great options for kite specific surfboards.

A shortboard with straps designed for kiting....

Easy Riders Edmonton SUP

Winter SUP

I’m up in Edmonton Alberta Canada for a day to visit my friends Jeff and Jo-Ann.  Since I had some time to kill before I met up with them I decided to check out Easy Rider.  Easy Rider is a board sports store that sells stand up paddle boards and related gear as well as the more common snowboard gear.  I had a hard time finding them on Google so I figured I’d post about them to make them an easier target for others searching for stand up paddle boards and gear in the Edmonton area.

Easy Rider stocks Naish and Starboard SUPs as well as paddles and accessories from Dakine, C4, Naish, etc…

The staff was super friendly and they are clearly stoked about SUP which is great.  They have regular paddle sessions so I’ll definitely have to come up to Edmonton next summer a couple times to paddle with their crew.  They have a sister site documenting their SUP exploits at Canada SUP.  It’s cool to see that cold water and our cooler climate aren’t getting in the way of having some fun outdoors on SUPs.

Airtime Boardsports

Kite Porn

This past spring when I decided to jump into the sport of kiteboarding I didn’t know a whole lot about it other than it looked like a ton of fun.  I called up Philippe @ Airtime Boardsports in Vancouver and asked him what gear I should get.  He spent a lot of time with me working out a package that meet all my needs. Since I didn’t have the experience to second guess him I just ordered everything on faith.

After ordering the gear I spoke with some other folks who were suggesting different gear choices and I had a crisis of faith.  I was worried I’d just blown a bunch of money on the wrong stuff.  So I called Philippe up again [actually several times] to discuss what the other folks had told me.  He very patiently went over each issue explaining why the gear I had bought was the right choice to start with and why it would see me through my first couple years in the sport.

Looking back on things now that I have spent a good chunk of my free time in 2009 learning to kiteboard he was 100% right.  Everything he told me was bang on and the gear he sold me was well matched to my needs.

Sharon is keen on learning how to kiteboard this winter in Baja so I called Philippe up to order her a harness.  He recommended a different one than I was initially going to buy.  Naturally I went with what he suggested…=-)

Naish Porn PT2

Naish Secrets

Adios Amigos – PT2

Most likely not what I'll be doing....=-)

Kurt and I are off kiteboarding in Hood River, OR for a couple weeks.  I’ll have a laptop with me and continue to post trip reports from the GDR as well as some *gasp* kiteboarding content….=-)

More my style!