Kitesurfing. Part 1

Kitesurf­ing Safe­ty

You already have a lit­tle idea about this sport from our arti­cle “Kite­ing. First meet­ing”. It so hap­pened that of all the vari­ety of kit­ing, it was kitesurf­ing that won the most pop­u­lar­i­ty. This young sport is becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar all over the world for many rea­sons. You can do it all year round, you don’t need strong wind or high waves, the equip­ment is quite com­pact, but the main thing is those emo­tions and impres­sions that last a life­time.

Like? Learn­ing to kitesurf is very easy. You can mas­ter the kite con­trol tech­nique in half an hour, in a few hours you will be able to con­trol it your­self, and in a few days you will feel con­fi­dent in your abil­i­ties and you will undoubt­ed­ly be drawn to exploits. But for all its sim­plic­i­ty, it is not for noth­ing that kitesurf­ing is an extreme sport. There are safe­ty pre­cau­tions in it and they came up with this small list of rules for a rea­son. Kites are very pow­er­ful and can be very dan­ger­ous, thin and strong lines are very sharp, and the wind is very unpre­dictable. Almost all kiters were injured. This has been the case since the birth of kitesurf­ing as a sport, when the first ama­teurs were only test­ing equip­ment and tech­niques and gain­ing expe­ri­ence. It remains so until now, when the safest and most mod­ern equip­ment and pro­tec­tion does not save begin­ners from their own stu­pid­i­ty. There­fore, in order for your most seri­ous injury to be abra­sions and bruis­es, do not learn kitesurf­ing on your own. Only an expe­ri­enced instruc­tor will be able to pro­fes­sion­al­ly train you, tell you the basics of the­o­ry and safe­ty, show all the nuances in prac­tice. Kitesurf­ing is an excit­ing and absolute­ly safe sport with the right approach to its devel­op­ment from the very begin­ning.

Kitesurf­ing and kit­ing in Ukrain­ian

The main con­di­tion for kit­ing is, of course, the wind, and at a speed of 5 m/s. You can ride com­fort­ably with 7–10 m / s of sta­ble wind. For rid­ing on hard sur­faces, the wind may be slight­ly lighter. The geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion of Ukraine is such that one can only dream of sta­ble winds from 5 m/s. The wind here is very unpre­dictable and var­i­ous weath­er fore­casts only con­firm this. A lit­tle opti­mism for kitesurfers inspires only the off-sea­son, when the wind is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly stronger. But again, dur­ing this peri­od of the year, unsta­ble weath­er very often makes adjust­ments. You can’t ride imme­di­ate­ly before, dur­ing and after a thun­der­storm, because. the wind is very unsta­ble and its strong gusts can eas­i­ly injure you. All this brings up in our kitesurfers willpow­er, endurance and mil­i­tary readi­ness to go out lit­er­al­ly every day. These are the extreme con­di­tions in Ukraine for lovers of this extreme sport.

Places of kitesurf­ing in Ukraine

Because of all of the above, kitesurfers in Ukraine can be found in spe­cial places. These are the Kiev Sea, the Dnieper, the coast of the Black and Azov Seas (Odessa, Mar­i­upol, Skadovsk, Kok­tebel, Azure, Kir­illov­ka, Popov­ka, Berdyan­sk). Also, espe­cial­ly stub­born Ukrain­ian kiters are engaged in land­kit­ing. To do this, you need a sol­id, flat and large area, with­out dirt and prefer­ably out­side the city. Oth­er­wise, you can meet our valiant defend­ers of order and enjoy the rest of the day with them. There­fore, the ide­al option for land­kit­ing in Ukraine is the run­ways of an aban­doned air­field :).

Snowk­it­ing in Ukraine is not par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, again, because of our cli­mate. For nor­mal snowk­it­ing, a snow height of 50 cm is suit­able, which sounds unre­al­is­tic not only for Kyiv, but even for our moun­tains. And rivers and lakes do not freeze enough in win­ter to be able to ride and jump on them with­out the risk of drown­ing or falling through the ice.

Kitesurf­ing. Part 2. Train­ing

Author: Vladimir Seli­v­anov

Arti­cle pro­tect­ed by copy­right and relat­ed rights. When using and reprint­ing the mate­r­i­al, an active link to the healthy lifestyle por­tal hnb.com.ua is required!