The many meetings with the Marine Safety and Parks Victoria continue...

Matt from Flexifoil put his hand up to help out at one of the workshops, and had this to report.

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I attended the Boating review last night in Portalington. This was the first of five reviews being held to help give feedback to Marine Safety and Parks Victoria on there proposals for regulating boating zones in Port Phillip and Western Bays. Some sites have been identifed to work on immediately and it was some of those that were proposed last night.

The region covered lst night was basically the bellarine peninsular from indented head to Geelong.

The issue that we have is there is a marine law stating that all vessels must go slower than 5 knots with 200m of the shore. Kiteboarders are a vessel and hence are included in this restriction. This means that at the moment we are all effectively breaking the law by kitesurfing within 200m of the shore.

The Review has considered this and in all honesty I don't think we can get exemption from this law globally (I would like to and it is something that we will work towards) but what has been offered is kiteboarding zones which allow kiteboarder to be exempt from the 5 knots rule in these specific areas. This is not ideal but it is a good compromise. It means that we can still kite anywhere where boating is allowed but must be 200m offshore to do so at speed. we still need to keep to the minimum distances of 50m from boats and swimmers (and hard objects such as piers / groynes) and 100m from divers.

What we need to do is to identify as many kitesurfable sites within the bay that we use, so these kitesurf exemption zones can be included. We need to ensure that they are at least 50m from any popular swim zones or 100m away from dive zones but that is pretty much it. The more sites we can identify and get on the plan the better our chances of getting the 5 knot rule a global exemption as it would cost too much in signage and buoys.

So let start making a list of all areas that we want to kite / do kite in the bays and post up a satellite image of the area marked up with wind direction and general area that is used. They have already accepted the areas on the KBV site it is other areas that we need to know. I realise that this may disclose your secret spots but I will make it legal to kite there and ensure that Kiteboarding as a sport can grow as we wont be forced into crowded small areas.

The guys proposing the plans are receptive to the idea of adding more kite zones and did not hesitate / query the two extra zones I suggested as they know we tend to go out when the rest of the other water users do not (except the windsurfers).

The meeting was really proactive and it allowed us to educate other water users of what kitesurfing is and what we do. It was definitely a positive meeting and the support from the authorities is really good. We just need to ensure that we open as much bay up to kitesurfing as possible.

So let us know what areas you kite and in what direction so that we can ensure that any signage and buoys are not in our way so that we can kite safely in the future.

Matt

If you can help, or this affects you, please contribute in the KBV topic here...

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