Glorious Windsurfing, Disgusting Kite Injury

Saturday was perfect for windsports. Blue sky, blue water, 80 degrees, 20 knots, and a beach shared with good friends. I got a great windsurf session on a 5.5 sail and 106 liter board. My buddies Brandon and Mike windsurfed, as well, with Brandon dialing in the not-too-shabby gear he got for free at Florida Windfest last weekend, and Mike trying and liking my Starboard Evo 83. My kite buddies Marc and Ben were also there, cruising.

We spotted some interesting marine species in the clear, blue waters. I accidentally ran through a massive school of jacks (big, tuna-like gamefish), Ben saw a manta ray, and we all saw loads of sea turtles. If you look closely and don't blink you can see the jacks splashing around in the boom-mount video I took (below).

Windsurfing's on Fi-yur from James Douglass on Vimeo.

Right when I was about to leave, two of my friends from work arrived at the beach. I didn't want them to go un-entertained, so I took out my trainer kite and we did some reckless fooling around with it on the beach and body dragging in the ocean. We managed to avoid any serious trouble, until I had to go for that one last show-off run. Of course I lost control of the kite while body-dragging through the shorebreak and had to let go of the control bar, which ripped through my hands at an angle such that a line sliced half the skin off my right pinky finger. Ouch! Fortunately, my friend had a first aid kit in her car so we were able to clean and bandage the wound. Looks like I'm gonna have to stay off the water for a while to let this heal. There are pictures of the wound at the bottom of this post, but DON'T SCROLL DOWN IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED OUT.

Lessons learned:

1. A 4m^2 foil kite is no longer a "trainer kite" when its windy- it's a dangerously powered two-line kite with no safety system.
2. It's hard to control a kite when you're body dragging through shorebreak unhooked.
3. If the pads where the lines attach to your control bar are worn through it puts narrow, tensioned line near your fingers.
4. Long lines on a trainer kite make it dangerous, because it can loop through the power zone bigger and harder before crashing. Today I realized the lines on my trainer were about 20 feet longer than on my big kites, so I shortened them drastically and added thicker leader lines on the bar that should be less likely to slice fingers.

Here's the wound from when I was re-dressing it this morning. I should probably go to the doctor tomorrow.



Here's the end of the bar where the thin exposed line sliced me. The sand-covered pork-rind looking thing is actually the skin from my finger. Eww.