Hi all,
Looking for a little advice from you experts out there. Im new to kiting and love it. Im slowly progressing in skill, can go up wind, small jumps etc. The problem I sometimes have is with speed. When Im powered up as soon as I start picking up speed I start going very fast and to some degree out of control. Ive been told to keep the kite lower, stick my butt in the water and edge as hard as possible to slow down. This kind of works. A couple of times I threw the kite back in the other direction and got launched into the air which was fun, except mostly out of control again. I think my board is a little long at 147. So my question is whats the best way to slow down, stop, handle gusts etc?

Maybe a smaller board might help....sounds like you a re at times a little overpowered - not too badly, but it can be a bit tricky to manage to begin with. A 147 is a pretty big board...

Hi Kalman,

The advice you mentioned, fly the kite low, edge hard, butt in the water, a smaller board etc. are good tips. Anything that will slow your board down and get your kite more to the edge of the window works.

YOu can also shorten the front lines (using the adjuster) as much as you can so that the kite flys off the frontlines mainly and there is hardly any tension on the back lines. Just enough tension on the backlines to give your kite some stability and for stearing. But you probably do this already.
You can experiment with extending the backlines a bit to increase the windrange of your kite.

Of course you can go down to a smaller kite, but that is probably not the advice you are looking for.

If you look at the water surface ahead of you, you can see when you are heading towards a strong gust of wind. The water goes darker and ripples more. Before you ride into the gust get your kite more to the edge of the window by edge-ing hard, slowing your board down and riding upwind as much as you can. That way you have everything under control when the gust hits. If the gust still blow you off your socks, it might be time to pack up your kite and go home.

Happy kiting.

Cheers, for the help. 90% of the time I'm fine, just sometimes I get hit with a gust and all of a sudden I'm trying to break 40 knots. Well not quite that fast but it feels a little out of control. I'll keep working on it and saving $ for a smaller board.

Sounds like you're doing suicide runs....

Some usefull tips;

Keep your speed down. If you can't edge, slide the board sideways - you will slide downwind of the kite & this releases some line tension. Edging across the wind means you are generating apparent wind so sometimes it just makes you power yourself more & more - Practice a combination of edging & sliding to put the kite into the windows edge... Don't put the kite too low - it's much harder to edge you'll just butt-slide or get pulled forward.

Carve a toeside edge turn downwind to realease line tension, when you turn back to heelside check your speed - don't let it get out of control by using the method mentioned above- slide / edge /slide /edge slow, slow, slow.

Practice 'S'ing - going from heelside to toeside while dipping the kite down & up in sync (slightly ahead) with your turns.

Your edge is your best means of controlling your kite ....

NOT YOUR BACK LINE LENGTH !!!!

Unhook you chooks...