Kitesurfing Harnesses
Kitesurfing or windsurfing?
I don’t know which to do! Will you help? Which sport will suit me better, and why? And which do you think is best?
To give a bit of background on me and my abilities, I’m a very capable swimmer, skiier and runner, but I’m fairly small and only around 50 kilos. I really enjoy adrenaline-packed, exciting sports that can be done solo or in a group, competitively or just for fun. I really, really love feeling free; soaring above everyone else like a bird, or something like that.
I want something that’s relatively easy to learn and hard to forrget. I want to know WHICH OUT OF THOSE TWO SPORTS (KITESURFING/ WINDSURFING) would suit me better, is fun, is easy to use/transport/harness myself to, and WHY? Please give me PROS and CONS!
And please don’t suggest any other sports.
Thankyou for your help (:
If you want easy to learn, don’t bother with windsurfing. It is BY FAR the hardest sport to learn I’ve ever experienced, and I can’t imagine a harder sport (makes learning surfing, snowboarding, or wakeboarding seem like a cakewalk)
Kiteboarding is quite a bit simpler. You’re just making 90 degree angles with the wind, jumping, and being held in the air while you do whatever tricks you want. As a great windsurfer once said, “anything you can do on a kiteboard I can do on a rope hanging from a tree”
Kitesurfing is also quite a bit easier to transport and harness into (your first couple times windsurfing you won’t even think of using the harness as you won’t be planing), as you just need a kite with everything in the bag and the small board. With windsurfing, you need a sail, mast, boom, board, fin, harness, mast extension, mast foot, screwdriver to screw in the fin… The list goes on.
So what it comes down to, if ease is what you want, go kitesurfing.
Now, if you want a challenge and freedom, take up windsurfing. Its a lot harder to learn, but so much more rewarding. Windsurfers can easily go upwind and downwind (something kiters can’t really say, they’re stuck to back and forthing) and have a much more intimate relationship with the wind due to the fact that the sail is right there and not on a line a hundred feet away. On the water, windsurfers also get along easier with other people because they don’t have their lines going way downwind and people don’t get pissed at you when you’re learning. Once your method of propulsion hits the water, windsurfers also have a much easier time getting it back up, beginning kiteboarders can struggle for hours getting their kite back in the air while a beginning windsurfer will just pull the sail up again.
Back to the control aspect, while windsurfers are in control at all times, kiteboarders do two things. Go in a straight line/turn 180 degrees around, and jump. They invariably get blown downwind and have to walk back upwind at that. Windsurfers, as previously stated, get to roam wherever they wish and can point more than 45 degrees upwind in good conditions. The differences are even more pronounced in the air. Once you just on a kiteboard, you’re at the mercy of the kite. Kiters get picked up and not let down for very long times and distances quite frequently when they hit the wrong puff. This is dangerous, not any fun, and takes no skill. Windsurf jumps, on the other hand, are works of art that require TONS of skill but is that much more rewarding.
Windsurfing also requires more boards/sails than kiteboarding could ever imagine due to specialized gear for different conditions.
Advection Kite Surfing harnesses.m4v
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