Kiteboarding in San Diego

I haven't always been obsessed with wind. Now I'm unknowingly drawn to it in all it's forms, even in my casual reading.

I picked up "Ruling Your World" by Sakyong Mipham, an excellent (so far) presentation of his meditation experiences and training. He describes the energy of the basic goodness of the world as "lungta", which translates from Tibetan directly as "Windhorse". Having wanted to kiteboard for some time now and finally taking my introductory course I can say that's exact what the kite feels like when you do a power stroke: a Windhorse.

I took my girls to the beach yesterday. It was an ideal southern California beach day: warm, sunny, surfers and boarders of all kinds playing in the open waters. We call Trinity our sea turtle because she is drawn to the water like a baby Olive Ridley. When I went with her into the surf I experienced the beauty of the clear water under my feet, the smell of salt air and the gentle draw of the breaking waves returning to sea. On a board you lose the stability of land. You need to work with the currents and the waves. You can fight it I suppose, but you won't do that long. If you're going to have fun boarding you need to get in sync with the flow of the water.

Similarly, Sakyong Mipham explains how solidity is an illusion in this world, and the primary illusion, the cause of all our experiences and suffering, is the illusion of "me". I may well be obsessed with wind and water, or perhaps I'm obsessed with losing solidity.
Kiteboarding adds another dimension to my love of the elements and especially the wind. On a basic level kiteboarding is water skiing without a boat: you use a kite in the wind in its place. There's enough appeal there to keep my interest. As a teenager I was a water skiing instructor in the Poconos. I loved it. I skied every morning. I had no money of course so getting that experience in took some ingenuity. I worked on a gas dock at the White Beauty View resort on Lake Wallenpaupack most days. We kept a tank on that dock for "extras" sometime just the drip left in the nozzle from the end of filling a tank – that can add up when you're filling tanks all day – sometimes late at night we'd siphon a gallon here and there from boats docked in the slips.

Water skiing is noisy and polluting. Even as a 13-year-old in 1973 I sensed there was something fundamentally wrong with what I was doing. I remember the anger of fishermen as we went whizzing by their boats, 90% of them tanked at the crack of dawn. I felt these issues all resolved today as I got up on a kiteboard for the first time. Let me back up and give the basic information.

I googled for kiteboard instructors in San Diego and came up with a few options. This isn't exactly as easy as you may think. "Kiteboard" brings up a lot of crap in google – it looks more like the result of a myspace search. I narrowed it down to 2 options and sent both an email. Paul Lang of West Coast Kiteboarding reponded. I'm lucky he did. When I showed up at Fiesta Island in Mission Bay, the primary spot for kiteboard training, the other guy was there. I didn't know who was who and drove right up to him and offered a cheery "Hi! I'm Kris." He spotted the West Coast Kiteboarding email on my passenger seat and dismissed me. He was a real dick. When I asked what was up he pointed to a black truck as said, "You're with Paul." My luck.

I signed up for the "New Rider Package" which promises a day of kiting and all the essentials you need to get started. It makes no promises about being able to get up by the end of the day, in fact, it lowers expectations.

Paul was happy to greet me and did so in a relaxed SoCal way then pulled a small whiteboard from the back of his truck. His calm presence was welcoming. Enchanted Cove at Fiesta Island is a beautiful place. Fish were jumping out of the water so frequently it was hard not to be distracted. Paul went right into the basics. Safety, site selection, the fundamentals of the "window". I'll describe a bit of what I learned.

You can only kiteboard when the wind is cross to your shore. When the wind is coming straght in or straight out you're in too much danger. This is perfect as there are many strong days where the wind is cross at Torrey. On those days I'll kiteboard. The lines on the kite are 100 meters (and everything is in meters). The basic rule is never allow anything to get between you and your kite. Too many kiteboarders use too little care and end up hitting people on the beach or obstacles which end up shutting down beaches for kiteboarding.

Some of the best local sites are Belmont Shore and Seal Beach, Enchanted Cove (aka: Stinkies), Sail Bay , Silver Strand State Beach and Tourmaline. Paul has a place in San Quintin, Baja where he says there's 13 miles of kiteable beach. Cool.

The "window" is a quarter of a sphere with all the possible places where the kite can fly. At the zenith of this window the kite has the least pulling power and has maximum pulling directly downwind at the water (or sand if you're practicing on the beach). The manuver that gives you all your moving power, the power stroke, goes like this: You position the kite almost directly overhead at the window edge, turn hard to one side making the kite go straight down, then turn hard the other way so the kite makes a hard U-turn. It may look like a figure-8 as well.

We took our equipment over the ridge to a large sandy area on Fiesta Island and practiced these moves, first with short lines on a small wing, then with full-length lines on a big wing. The wing connects to your body with a harness that looks like something a professional wrestler would wear. The center line that connects to the harness is attached to the upper edges of the kite and the control bar to the lower edges. This enables it to steer much like a paraglider though it's much more crude. You can adjust the wing's angle of attack with the control bar by sliding it forward and back. The line where you slide the line back and forth is called the "chicken loop" as the further forward you hold the bar the weaker the power – you chicken!

After mastering these control skills (it really wasn't that hard at all) we went into the water to body drag.
Body dragging is to kiteboarding what kiting is to paragliding: it's how you develop your kiting skills. You launch on land, take the kite to the window edge, position it over the water, then start doing power strokes. You get pulled right into the water. In the water you maneuver the kite.

Paul brings a little boat to recover you from the other side of the bay. The big deal here is keeping the wing in the air. It's difficult to re-launch from the water. To the way I think about these things the kites need A-risers. Paul mentioned that some wings have a 5th line to aid launching from the water. I'm sure it's in the A-position of a paragliding wing.
After 2 drags I'd made a lot of progress in keeping the wing up and fully powered. A few times I jumped right out of the water like the fish I was admiring when I arrived.

Then it was time to put on the board. A kiteboard is a lot like a wakeboard. It's much easier to get up on these than a water ski which is a quarter of its width. I launched the wing, walked a few feet to the water, sat my ass down and put my feet in the board. Then, a power stroke to the left. Bang – I got right up. Of course, then I went right back down.
I got that experience a few more times. It was really mellow, not at all the kind of thing I'd put to a Rancid soundtrack which is pretty much all you see on TV of kiteboarding. When I mentioned this to Paul he said my wing was a 12m and I really need a 19m or 20m. I suppose the Speedcore soundtrack is coming.

At the end of that run the wind really died. We tried for 20 or so minutes to relaunch. The wing keep collapsing on itself from lack of pressure. Paul said it was time to call it quits. I looked at my watch. It was 5. We were there from 11 to 5. What a day. I had the impression this was a 3-hour gig. My guess is Paul pretty much does what he likes and he made a day of our lesson. I'm grateful.

I really got to know Paul on this lesson. I can't express enough how much he reminds me of my older brother: very calm, patient and with a lot to say.

I'm eyeballing new wings now. You can't rent these things. I like the Cabrinha Crossbow with the seat harness.

One more thing, you might think this sport is for kids. There wasn't one dude under 40 at Fiesta island when I was there. I think it's more about who's got the time and the money. Paul is an editor for Kiteboarder magazine and was proudly handing out a few copies. I was looking at some of the pictures of the kiteboarding women with one of the older guys there who said, "Women that age look my way look my way, but they don't see me!"