Gearing up..

You phrase your question strangely young Frenchy. 'if I shold get a board or to get a seat or waist harness'? I'll give you the tip, you'll want a board AND a harness to kite with. As to whether you want a seat harness or a waist harness, that's entirely up to you. Without giving us a bit more information it's a bit hard for us to make experienced recommendations, except that you're a 20yo male and based on the kiting poplulation will probably end up with a waist harness.

The best thing for you to do is to go and get those lessons, learn the difference between a seat and a waist harness, realise that you will need a board to go with it, and ask your instructor these same questions.

Then come back here, ask again, and/or use a bit of the search function, I'm sure the difference between seat and waist has been addressed a few times already.

You also asked for pointers on kites, the options are 'C' style, bow, hybrid (a combination of C and bow, sort of), bridled foil (Flysurfer) or non-bridled foil (Peter Lynn). There are pros and cons for all of them. Again ask your instructor, use the search function, then come back and ask again armed with a bit more specific knowledge and we can help out a bit better. At a guess for your weight if you were to go for a C kite and kite mostly Pinnas and Mullas you'd probably aim for maybe a 10m for your primary kite? The more experience I get in kiting the less I realise I know. I know that at 110kg my combination of 9m, 13m and 16m C kites keeps me going pretty well all around Perth, but that's a lot of kites. Apparently bow or hybrid kites have a bigger wind range, so you can get out on more days for each that you have. I couldn't tell you for sure though, I've ridden a few but never owned one, and that would be the real test.

You said you want to spend some money. Is it a limiting factor? Is there a maximum amount you want to drop at it? Keep in mind that most people do nasty things to their first kite, so are often better off learning on a second hand one that doesn't cost too much, and put the savings towards a nice one once you're solidly upwind and not crashing the kite on every other transition. It's a whole lot less painful watching a $500 kite bearing down on a barbed wire fence than a $1500 one.

That's probably enough for a start. Go get those lessons on kite school gear and then you'll know a whole heap more about how much you want to spend on what.

One last word of advice. You may become hopelessly addicted and modify entire life to accommodate your kiteboarding. You may forget what you did for fun before it and find what used to be exhilarating thoroughly boring in comparison. You might become chained to the beach because of it and if required to go any more than a couple of hours inland for any length of time go thorougly nuts. Just a friendly warning, have fun.

Pat

Hi Frenchy,

I was in a similar situation as you few weeks ago. The only difference is that i've flown foil land kites with a landboard for couple of years, and finally managed to transition into kitesurfing. As the other guys said, you won't regret taking some lessons where you'll figure out answers to most of your questions. I've personally flown Hybrid kites while doing the lessons, but afterwards i bought a 13m fuel C (slingshot) kite iwth 5th fully depowerable line. The 5th line can be very useful if you loose control or crash your kite downwind because you can fully depower and reach your kite without it turning in circles endlessly and twisting your lines. So far i'm totally impressed with the kite. Also, most kiters use waist harness, but as a beginner i found seat harness easier, because until you are more experienced, you can end up with the kite pulling your waist harness up and it can get uncomfortable around the chest area. I've picked up a new one for $200, but i suppose once you move to a waist harness you can just sell the old one on ebay.

And finally, I don't think getting fully addicted is avoidable

youl want a 9m or 10m SLE/hybrid or C kite to start with.. this will get you going in the majority of the wind we get at pinnaroo and mullaloo. good brands to check out is Slingshot, Airush, North, maybe even best..

lessons first though, go see darrent at australian Kite school at pinaroo