Learning at Pinnaroo Point

Mate of mine is currently learning at Pinnaroo Point, I got him going up to the stage of going into the water to do body draging,

Hes ok to go on his own and spends cosiderable time on the beach at Pinnaroo to practice. I ask him yesterday how hes progressing and if hes getting to know anyone down there, he says no one but the the guys from the school, they told him to go some where else to learn.

Its a public beach and the school probably pays to teach there, but its not right to take space from others by sticking little flags into the sand all over the place to stop others using the area.

I presume the problem is, my mate didnt spend any money at the shop or take lessons with the school there, so now the guy running the school thinks he can tell people who can and cant use the beach

The good old "mate teaching mate"....

I used to teach @ Pinna a few years back so I know the guy running the school pretty well. It would be good to have the whole story and know whether you have taught your mate to be "independent" (i.e self rescue techniques, launch and the kite. etc....)

Mind that the guys over there are running a business and when you have someone trolling around with no clue it can be dangerous for the other ones around him.

Of course the beach is public but if someone gets in the way of the students paying for a professional lesson, I can certainly understand the instructor frustration. Pretty sure the first approach from them would have been to suggest your mate to take a lesson.

As I said, he didnt buy the gear off the shop, otherwise no one would have told him to leave, didnt endanger any one else or cause a problem

So you are trying to tell me Im not telling the truth Darren ? cause thats what I gather from your long winded sales spiel.

You know there was a crew at Pinnaroo long before you moved in to claim the beach,

I remember you tried to stop kiting on Saturdays when the cats where still sailing, didnt work out so well, but you have been trying to take more than what is fair at Pinaroo,

I hear you run the Mullaz school too now, Considdering a lot of people stood up to retain that beach for kiting maybe tell your teachers to back off.

Those flags you have sticking in the sand every where are basicaly going to bust a bladder, or hurt some one if they land on them

Thanks Darren, never saw it than way, you saved us from the bad Euro mob, even though its cost you money, wouldnt want any one else taking a slice of the pie would we?

Time to explain what happened Ray, by the sounds of it you were not even there.
I was on the beach that day and recall seeing one incident, if it was that incident then everything said was deserved.

Instead of attacking the school and those trying to get an understanding of what happened why don't you lay all the cards in the table.

Your responses so far while derogatory towards some are baseless and lack any substance. If your mate has the same attitude as yours it goes a long way to justifying why he got a serve on the beach.

Hi RayQ,

As the school manager I've been keeping a eye on this learner since you started to teach him on Day 1. In his first ''lessons'' there has been many occasions where the (under-inflated) kite crashed hard on the beach from poor kite control and the student was shown techniques such as tethered self-launching ??!! at a very early stage (first lesson) when he clearly wasn't ready for it, all this using long lines of course. Since no one was in the area most of the times when you taught him I turned a blind eye to those questionable teaching techniques and those crashes.

I also clearly remember him struggling to perform a self-rescue while you were trying to teach him how to do it. I went close to him in the water and helped him by giving him some advice on how to flip the kite correctly and how to create a good sail. Doing so, I drifted 200 meters downwind and took 10 minutes off my only time of the day to kite before sunset. Never have I heard a simple ''thank you'' either from you or your student.... When I see you, you simply walk passed me without even making eye contact.

Your student then came many times on the beach sitting down, on his own, next to our main teaching area watching all my lessons and never talked to anyone on the beach...

Then yesterday he finally decided to have a go on his own and proceeded to try to perform a tethered self-launch from the dog beach sign post. At this stage the beach was busier than any other times he came down with plenty of other kiters downwind and cross wind of him.

We had two lessons going on at that time and our other instructor Michael was the one who was teaching a lesson next to your student.

Michael noticed he was struggling to setup his tethered launch and had clearly no idea what he was doing, while obviously there were plenty of people to help for launching and landing.

He then went to talk to him for the first time and calmly and politely told him he was concerned about his safety as well as the safety of other people and the safety of his own student.

Michael noticed he decided to continue on trying to self-launch from the post and went to see him a second time. He asked if he could move downwind as he was again struggling to self-launch and was a danger to himself and people around. Since he didn't say anything and didn't move Michael decided to move his lesson further downwind to keep his student out of harms way. Your student didn't say much apart from '' I think something is wrong with my setup, I don't know...'' Michael actually helped him untangle his lines as there was clearly something wrong with his setup.

Your student then managed to get the kite up in the air after about 25 minutes of the kite being attached to the post with the kite in the power zone and the lines tangled. Obviously the kite launched out of control and crashed hard on the beach.

This is when Michael came down for the third time and asked him to move somewhere else as he clearly had no idea what he was doing and was dangerous for everyone around.

These are the facts. I don't know your student nor have I ever spoken to him other than the advice I gave him about self-rescue. Michael is a new instructor and handled the situation politely and professionally, the same way I would've handled it myself.

We rarely have to get involved with other kiters while we are teaching unless there is something very dangerous. Two days ago I spoke to Darren and told him I've never seen that many friend teaching their friends and that was becoming more of a concern for the safety of everyone around.

Simply because you're good kiter doesn't make you a good instructor. Kiting is a dangerous sport and newbies need professional instruction. It's great to see you want to help your friend and share your passion but you're clearly not doing it right. If it's something you really want to get into then take an instructors course and start watching how we run lessons. You may think your friend is ready to go out on his own, but he's not, especially with the amount of hesitation I've seen from him. His kite control need improvement and he needs to learn how to launch and land safely with an assistant. If we had him in a lesson it would be a matter of going back to basic and using very small kites on very short lines.

As said in above posts, we are here to help and we want people to be safe and do everything we can to avoid accidents. It's no surprise that the vast majority of beach accidents we have at Pinnas come from friends teaching friend or ever worse: people learning on their own...

Your friend really needs professional training. While writing this, I have decided to offer him a two hour lesson for FREE at any time that doesn't conflict with my regular schedule. You're welcome to come along to watch the lesson and hopefully learn a thing or two about teaching kitesurfing.

Please come see me at the school or give me a call 0407 012 220.

Christian

I was a dick head at pinners for 2 years. No one from the school gave me any hassle. Or anyone for that matter.

I was down kiting at pinaroo when this all went down.

A mate of mine who is thinking about getting into kiting was down at the beach. Guy in red and white kite whose kites was totally under-inflated nearly took me out when I went to shore, followed later by dude in green / blue kite nearly taking out Christian and student when he took off from beach (kite went awol). Once it happened Christian went app **** which was totally understandable, a few day previous to this I saw Christan and a student again getting a kite swiped by another learner (dangerous job being a teacher - guys need danger money)

It was a very strange session down there, told my mate its not normally like this.

Hahaha.... U sure