WOOPS

Hey, let's all go of half cocked and crucify schools and instructors based on anonymous posts !!!

What's with seabreezers???

Get a life!

Bigwavedave said...

Hey, let's all go of half cocked and crucify schools and instructors based on anonymous posts !!!

What's with seabreezers???

Get a life!

no wind so this is it had it with xbox so lets seabreeze ..sounds like a sore head for a while , ha ha but this is the sport they picked ...

This is our everyday business in Leighton

I'm sick of helping people like these guys simply because they are too cheap to pay for the instruction.

The only solution to keep our beach safe is to limit it to WAKSA members only and to become a WAKSA member we should provide a letter or confirmation from an AKA instructor.

It's good for us, good for waksa and safer for these cheap noobs.

I'm confused.
When you say "instructor" do you mean qualified instructor, or just someone who was (loosely speaking) instructing ?

Idiot said...


The only solution to keep our beach safe is to limit it to WAKSA members only and to become a WAKSA member we should provide a letter or confirmation from an AKA instructor.

It's good for us, good for waksa and safer for these cheap noobs.

Looks like it's heading that way.

I second that. Just need to make sure it's a road to keeping spots open... not closing them down!

^Kitehard / AKS, thanks for clarifying. Perhaps wavehogger would care to edit his original post?

**EDIT: He has.

Instructing 10-20m upwind of others with any learner is crazy, especially if they were there first.

...and now for something completely different

...we are fortunate in Perth that we can kite almost anywhere...which is strange because for everything else we have restrictions in place to govern whatever we do. Everybody is looking at closing kitespots down...why I wonder?

I have to say that at least at Pinarroo we have a controlled environment which is nonexistant at Scarborough.

Also, the school at Pinarroo consists of a great bunch of competent people, all friendly and very helpful and I have never, since kiting at the spot the past year seen any serious accident (kiting over weekends mostly)...so it was not to create sensation or tell an incorrect version of what happened right in front of my eyes.

Accidents do happen and nobody will close down a break like Pipeline if a surfer injures himself. The problem with kiting however is that a portion of that learning curve consists of an element that must be conducted on the beach where unfortunateley the same space is shared by other kiters and more importantly non-kiters.

Since kitesurfing is an extreme sport most kiters can tell of a few incidents where they came second best. When you learn to kite you are all over the place and buying plots of land now and again is common...and mostly self inflicted due to lack of skill or making mistakes.

So, even if we are the best in the world and have trained 1000+ people how to kite, it only takes one moment of complacency for something to go wrong and a bystander to get the council to close down the beach.

We can only improve and I am sure that the school will improve even more on their good safety record and ensure that we can all keep kiting at Pinarroo

My apology with my initial post if I put the school in a bad light - I was just thinking that if that guy had collided with my child then he would not have simply had a concussion or fractured cheekbone.

...and lastly about statements regarding half truths...the kite was a 6m and not a 8m and the guy was maybe 9 or 11 meters from the guy who got injured and not 10.

Why bring it up here wavehogger?

Why not approach the instructor/school with your concerns??

What does placing an inaccurate post on seabreeze actually accomplish?? besides stirring up the locals....

Did you offer assistance? In what way was the instructor complacent? Why say it would have been a fatality if a child was involved?? Lots of loose comments in your post mate.

Easy to chuck rocks and make judgements..... report the facts, leave editorials to somewhere else.

Non kiters and govt officials who read this forum (yes they do) must think this sport is jammed full of accidents, whingers and bitchers.

Does anyone have a positive experience to relate???

Hi Dave,

Yep, I'd like to post some positive stuff to come of this. I have just had an hour long meeting with all our staff to discuss yesterdays incident. A lot of positive things came out of that meeting.

Our findings are that there were, as is often the case, a string of occurances which all combined which resulted in the incident. Much of the problem can be pin pointed crowding at the spot we teach. Our school and instructors are pushed into situations where people are too close to each other and we lose our safety buffer zone.

Few people give way to newbies or the instructors that are training them. Kiters are constantly rigging in the wind windows of students flying their kites, or are launching kites with the student directly downwind and in the kill zone of their wind window.

Kiters entering the water or exiting the water within the wind windows of students or inside their own wind windows, and riding/jumping close to student body dragging in the water are a regular occurance. I myself, when freeriding, sometimes ride to within a line length of a body dragging student before cutting away. This isn't a good enough situation!

All our newbies are flying blood Airush DNA kites. They only come in red as it is a colour of warning. Our newbies are also obvious by their shorter line length than everyone else so as we take up less beach space and reduce power from a smaller wind window. All of this and we still have newbies colliding with general kiters almost every other day. This can only happen if you are within a line length of a newbie. It is not the students fault, nor that of the instructor.

Students are often apprehensive when they see other kiters up close and deserve a certain amount of leeway and respect from more experienced kiters. As this has not happened from the majority of kiters at Pinnaroo, we are now forced to introduce the following measures.

AKS are experimenting today with reducing our line lengths further, down from 15m to 10m until the instructor feels they are 100% confident the students are in perfect control. There are also many other smaller changes to our teaching pokicy to further reduce the possibility of incidences. However, we are also fully aware that the sport is always going to have an element of risk associated to it that can never be fully controlled. This leads us to our other major change.....

In accordance with the Joondalup city council requirements of our Trading in Public Places license, we will now be cordoning off a 150m long section of the beach from the waterline, to the edge of the dunes. We will leave a 3m wide public access corridor to allow beach users to walk animals and such around the point. This area will be marked out with traffic cones as soon as we purchase them. There will be no rigging, no flying and no walking through this area under any circumstances.

If this is still not enough, we will also drop marker buoys delineating an exclusion zone from the waters edge out to 50m from the shore. This will be a newbie/school area only. You will not be able to ride in this area for any reason other than to return to the beach in an emergency.

We apologise for having to take these measures as we understand it will be an inconvenience to some. We have put this off for more than 3 years, however, we know you'll all support us in our efforts to make the beach a safer place to be for everyone involved.

Kindest regards,

KH

Kitehard said...

This area will be marked out with traffic cones as soon as we purchase them.

Please buy the hemispherical 'cones' not pointy ones!!

pfr said...

kitehard i'm not from pinno but if instructors came to my beach with your attitude about kiters showing more respect for newbies, i would kill you all. Australia is a big place so why not take your students somewhere else away from competent kiters. even if it means travelling for a bit to a less crowded spot who cares, shortening your lines 5m won't do ****. When I teach mates I have the decency to go for a drive away from kiters and crowds. Your meeting with your instructors was a stupid waste of time.

I just read this topic and I was thinking exactly the same ,half of my local beach is unsailable due to too many instructors/schools and too many noobs out of control ,not whinging but recently it took me 15mins to even get on my board cos the were lessons everywhere and half a dozen noobs stacking it all over the joint like spazzes.I've nearly come to blows with ****heads nearly running into me.

wavehogger said...

...I have to say that at least at Pinarroo we have a controlled environment which is nonexistant at Scarborough.

Elaborate please! I've kited Scarborough for 8 years and find your statement confusing!

I'm not a fan of the idea of having the beach cordoned off but before I jump to conclusions it would be good to see a google earth layout of what is actually being planned.

I am regularly recommending people to speak to AKS about their lessons because of how good the location is for learning and the fact that they are a proper school, not some turo operating out of the back of his car. I regularly have people asking if there is a school closer to the city because it is 'so far' to drive to pinnaroo.

I completely disagree that it is too far for 3 lessons but this is a common though for learners. If, as someone suggested, the instructors pack up and go somewhere else where will that be and will students still go for a lesson or simply not bother driving 25mins then wipe out a kid at leighton/scarborough/floreat.

Lessons have to happen somewhere, good on AKS for concentrating it at one location.

Yes, I do kite at pinnaroo, this does effect me.