I've been tumbled around a thousand times after falling from my board & no harm done. On this occasion a fintip had broken during my session leaving a treacherous jagged edge and this was the result, a deep puncture to my knee. You may notice the tail fin behind is showing similar stress marks to what the broken one had prior to heading out.
I was quite shaken to see my injury and there was little more I could think of but to stem the bleeding. I'm very grateful a fellow kiter was at hand and took responsibility for my situation, running for help from the lifeguards, even packing up all my gear for me and returning with my clothes as it was clear I was heading straight to emergency. I owe you one Craig, thanks heaps!
There's 2 lessons to this experience. 1)Gear maintenance, there were signs of a tired fin with many stress marks so thorough strength testing or better still, a full set replacement would have been reasonable. Of course even a fin in good condition is a risk and keeping the edge rounded & smooth is a good idea. 2) There's obvious hazards to kiting and we need to be on constant lookout for one another, even the more experienced guys can come unstuck. I know this has been covered previously, I don't think it can be repeated too many times.
Safe kiting
Col

Certainly not the type of gash I look forward to seeing on the internet!

Yeeew yuuukkk !!!!!

COL said..
On this occasion a fintip had broken during my session leaving a treacherous jagged edge and this was the result, a deep puncture to my knee.
Safe kiting
Col







No sympathy, dude.

Am I being too cruel ?

Despite knowing the fin was damaged and dangerous sometime during your session ...

(you said that, not me)

you carried on regardless riding high on stoke and broken glass,

taking your chances and testing the risk vs reward contest.

Nice neat stitches, great job.

That was a bit too harsh too, fins slice regardless...Accidents do happen no matterf how fresh the gear is. Agree too with the very fine stitching! Heal up dude, start shopping for new fins. So much to choose from regarding build and flex.

pearl said..

waveslave said..

COL said..
On this occasion a fintip had broken during my session leaving a treacherous jagged edge and this was the result, a deep puncture to my knee.
Safe kiting
Col







No sympathy, dude.

Am I being too cruel ?

Despite knowing the fin was damaged and dangerous sometime during your session ...

(you said that, not me)

you carried on regardless riding high on stoke and broken glass,

taking your chances and testing the risk vs reward contest.

Nice neat stitches, great job.

That's a bit harsh.... He's not looking for sympathy, just trying to help.

Pearl and Dafish think I'm harsh.

Well ask yourselves, if you were surfing (not kiting),

and you had damaged your fin during the session,

leaving a treacherous jagged edge,

would you continue to surf ?

No, not if you're smart.

I'm guessing that you would take the next wave to the beach,

so that you could remove the danger from the board by replacing the fin.

And if you found you didn't have a replacement,

you would towel-off and call it a day, right ?

Some kiters have sh1t for brains.

lol.

Slave, while I enjoy your banter and thoughts on some things, sometimes you are just mean. Here is my take on surfing with a kite. If I was out somewhere with no backup fin and it was damaged as above, I would keep going. Whether or not the fin is jagged doesn't really matter. Fins cut either way. It would not effect the ride as much as if you were purely surfing and didn't have the kite as power. If I had a spare in the van I would swap it out. But if the waves and wind were good I would keep going. I would hardly call that foolish. Your mileage may vary.

waveslave said..

Some kiters have sh1t for brains.

lol.

Way off the mark here buddy

Thanks for sharing COL, all the best for a speedy recovery.

Sh!t happens when kiting and in life in general, we all take risks and in hindsight some of the decisions we make are better than others.

If you were to treat this like a paid job and fill out a risk assessment/JSA/take 5 you'd still end up kiting.

The children on seabreeze are being a little bit hypercritical on this one, I guess we all need something to do when not kiting

Thanks for the well wishes. It's good to have the conversation. I just want to clear up one important point as some may have misunderstood. Perhaps my fault.
If you look at the tail fin you will see it's stressed condition. How many of you will discard their fin at that point. I myself wouldn't have. Until now.
That was the condition of the thruster, as far as I knew.
The 1st I knew that the fin was actually broken was as I was fumbling around on the beach, after the event, a bit dazed and confused.
cheers
Col

I don't think i would be as concerned about kiting along side someone with a fatigued fin as i would someone that doesn't wear a leash

techtonic said..
I don't think i would be as concerned about kiting along side someone with a fatigued fin as i would someone that doesn't wear a leash

Spot on, the safety of others obviously doesn't matter as long as I'm safe lol!