Re: surfing influence in wave riding
Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:27 am
Interesting. Kind of what I thought.......I don't hear a lot of surfers saying they lean towards not using the kite.
I did not mean to imply in my original post that there's any right or wrong way to do it in the waves. I'm thinking that guys that have surfed in the past will have an initial advantage in the waves due to wave knowledge, etc, but I think it's pretty obvious that the learning curve for waves is much shorter for somebody with a kite even if they have zero surfing experience......surfing if you're in the wrong position, you're done. Kiting you can boost out of bad positions, and you get zillions of more waves.
I'm not trying to get anybody new excited about going out in the waves. Please remember, there are sharks and horrible horrible other things, currents etc. I'm joking but I'm serious.
But......
My own thing is the joy of carving. You don't even need a wave to carve when you've got a kite to supply the power. So much fun, and the wave is a multiplier. Since I'm personally not into doing the handlepass/wakeboard style stuff, I really don't do much unhooked. And since I'm kind of a wimp about putting my kite down in the waves, I try to avoid being unhooked in the waves. One more thing to go wrong......
That being said, as Ramsey points out, unhooked forces you to minimize the use of the power of the kite in many ways. And I suppose that you could lean towards Ben Wilson's idea of trying to promote the "purity" of using just the wave as much as possible.
But from observation and extrapolating from my own experience, it looks like it's difficult to resist "the dark side" of the force of the kite. We all know some guys that surf.....maybe even they windsurf, too.......that resist the idea of taking up kiting, SUPing or whatever because they don't want to be untrue to their first love and id of surfing.
Their loss. For most of us, it's an incomprehensible divide.
I did not mean to imply in my original post that there's any right or wrong way to do it in the waves. I'm thinking that guys that have surfed in the past will have an initial advantage in the waves due to wave knowledge, etc, but I think it's pretty obvious that the learning curve for waves is much shorter for somebody with a kite even if they have zero surfing experience......surfing if you're in the wrong position, you're done. Kiting you can boost out of bad positions, and you get zillions of more waves.
I'm not trying to get anybody new excited about going out in the waves. Please remember, there are sharks and horrible horrible other things, currents etc. I'm joking but I'm serious.
But......
My own thing is the joy of carving. You don't even need a wave to carve when you've got a kite to supply the power. So much fun, and the wave is a multiplier. Since I'm personally not into doing the handlepass/wakeboard style stuff, I really don't do much unhooked. And since I'm kind of a wimp about putting my kite down in the waves, I try to avoid being unhooked in the waves. One more thing to go wrong......
That being said, as Ramsey points out, unhooked forces you to minimize the use of the power of the kite in many ways. And I suppose that you could lean towards Ben Wilson's idea of trying to promote the "purity" of using just the wave as much as possible.
But from observation and extrapolating from my own experience, it looks like it's difficult to resist "the dark side" of the force of the kite. We all know some guys that surf.....maybe even they windsurf, too.......that resist the idea of taking up kiting, SUPing or whatever because they don't want to be untrue to their first love and id of surfing.
Their loss. For most of us, it's an incomprehensible divide.