What is it really like to kitesurf? You experience the thrill of maneuvering with tremendous power, the rush from sliding across water, the excitement of weightlessness while flying in the air, and pure joy while immersed in nature for hours. You feel honored by these incredible times, and you’re hooked on the activity and way of life.
While the overall mood is one of enthusiasm and pleasure, you experience a variety of emotions and attitudes while learning to kitesurf and later master the sport. In this post, I’ll describe the various mental states I – and most kitesurfers – experienced throughout my journey.
What does it feel to initially fly a power kite?
As you’re standing on the beach learning to fly a kitesurf kite for the first time, your initial feeling is one of surprise and awe as you realize the kite’s enormous strength and how quickly it can sweep you off your feet or haul you at high speed.
Until you learn to fly your kite well, depower it and return it to neutral, you’ll experience a little anxiety and dread as you understand how bad things might get if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Take a look at how some learners go into shock as their kite flies out of control due to an incorrect maneuver. Despite the instructor’s many instructions telling them to let go with the bar to depower the kite, they will frequently cling to it helplessly unable to think straight, actually generating their kite even more.
How does it feel to stand up and start riding?
The first time you pull your kite into the power zone, get pulled upright on your board, and start sliding in the water for the first time may well be one of the most unforgettable feelings you experience throughout your entire kiteboarding career. The sense of power from having traction in your harness and controlling it is indescribable.
Unfortunately, this fantastic sensation is generally short-lived, since after getting up on your board you will typically lose power and speed and sink back into the water. The kite will go back to neutral position if you do things correctly, but many times you’ll have your bar tilted, causing the kite to fall straight into the water.
When this happens, you’ll return to the unpleasant experience of helplessly drifting downwind in the water with your board floating away from you. In a few minutes, you went from sheer delight to uncertainty, anxiety, and occasionally discouragement as you tried to figure out how to relaunch or where to go.
How does it feel to kitesurf upwind?
That’s where the real fun begins! You’ve gone through the whole painful learning curve and spent countless hours walking back upwind on the beach with your kite pulling you hard. You’ve paid your dues. Then one day, wham! You suddenly find yourself returning to the same position from which you launched – or even further upwind.
The feeling of slicing your board downhill is tough to describe, much more than a technical accomplishment; it’s the real thing. You can now lean into your harness and rely on the wind to keep you from falling backward. You’re no longer only standing upright; you’re dangling above the water diagonally above your harness.
Once you’ve mastered holding the bar with one hand, you may drag your other hand into the water and feel the water and speed. Everything falls into place: your kite, your board, and the wind. The ultimate payoff for all of this hard study effort.
You’re in the present, not thinking about anything else, with a burning sensation of happiness in your belly.
How does it feel to freeride kitesurfing?
You begin counting the days until your next kitesurf session as you become more and more comfortable riding your kiteboard. You’ve probably got a few friends now to go kitesurfing with, so the thrill of kitesurfing combines with the joy of being together with buddies who share your enthusiasm for it.
After you reach the beach, you must proceed with the whole setup ritual: laying out the lines on the beach, inflate your kite, don a wetsuit and harness, and launch the kite with someone’s help.
It takes new kitesurfers a long time to master, but with practice, it gets easier.
As you finally enter the water and begin riding again, you immediately seek your fix of adrenaline and pleasure, this ultimate sensation of power and gliding across the water at high speed.
The first time you windsurf, you concentrate on regulating your speed so that you don’t lose control and smash into the water (which is painful). However, as your skill increases, your confidence grows tremendously. All you care about now is riding faster and faster.
You don’t need to look at your kite for it to be in the right position. As you speed across the bay, your board cuts through the water like an inboard. You sense the raw power of the wind. You don’t look at your kite any more to ensure its location; rather, you feel it instinctively.
How does it feel to get air with your kite?
Jumping is a major component of how it feels to kitesurf. You begin by doing tiny leaps simply to see how much pulling on your bar can lift you and your board off the water. It appears as if you’re many feet in the air, but most of the time, you merely got a few inches out of the water.
As you continue to hone your skill, you may really edge upwind and pop your board while throwing your kite hard into the power zone, propelling you high into the air. This gives you a brand new sensation of weightlessness and flying.
This is something you’ve always wanted to do as a youngster — fly off a roof with an umbrella in your hands.
As you rise in the sky, gravity and noises fade away. You get a lot of noise from the water splashing about as you board your kite at high speed and the strong wind in your ears. Silence, on the other hand, soon falls once you take off. Time stops moving; seconds seem like minutes or hours.
As you fall, the excitement may shift into anxiety as you anticipate a soft landing – you know how an unsuccessful landing might get you to the hospital!
How does it feel to ride a wave when kitesurfing?
When riding waves is another major thrill kitesurfing will provide.
You must first confront the challenge of going over the waves as you ride out to sea when learning to kitesurf, which is a difficult ability to master as a novice. Jumping waves isn’t simple; it’s all about board speed and angle, and having just enough kite power at the right time.
The thrill you get from surfing a wave will add to your adrenaline rush. The objective is to reach a position where you’re depowering your kite and surfing the top of the wave with little or no pull. This might provide you with a tremendous sense of awe and liberation.
However, with your kite dropping into the waves and getting too much slack in your lines, you might end up having disastrous results. You can go from pure heaven to hell in a matter of minutes with kitesurfing.
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Conclusion
Describing how it feels to kitesurf is difficult, but you can probably get an idea of how wonderful they feel by seeing and talking to kitesurfers. Kitesurfing gives you a sense of wonderment at the power of the wind and the capacity to control it and produce tremendous speed.
Some people claim that kitesurfing is a meditative experience since there’s no place you’d rather be when kitesurfing, and you usually forget about everything else, focusing on your kite, your body position, and your board.
The thrill of kitesurfing comes from the force, speed, lack of gravity when flying, and the seas and nature that surround you. Kitesurfing has a unique combination of elements that no other sport does. As a result, kitesurfing is highly addictive.