Forums > Kitesurfing General

Safeties, wrist leashes and suicide setups

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Created by orb74 > 9 months ago, 2 Feb 2008
orb74
QLD, 89 posts
2 Feb 2008 5:36PM
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Spoke to a bloke who had used a wrist leash a couple years ago; turns out it has a nasty habit of wrapping around the bar when you do backflips (or spin the bar in any other way. His chicken loop came free one day while the leash was wrapped on the bar; the kite fully powered up, snapped his humerus and ulna clean through, and dragged him about a hundred meters down the beach til he hit some trees... all with the kite still attached to his snapped arm

I now make sure whatever kite I buy has the safety connected on the body side of the bar and not past the bar anywhere. A lot of people think their kites saftey is designed this way but it is actually a "suicide set up" in a lot of cases; I found this out first hand after taking a big stack with my last kite.

A suicide set up is when you attach your safety line to your depower pulley. This is ok in light wind as it will eventually drop the kite in the water, but after dumping my kite in 25knots plus with the suicide setup I realised that the kite just sits on two front lines and keeps flying and pulling you down wind! Make sure you check your safetyy is attached to the correct line for you kite to provide TOTAL depower when you dump the chicken loop!

Garth
WA, 67 posts
2 Feb 2008 6:39PM
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I attach my suicide leash from the back of my harness to my chicken loop.

Yesterday out at Scarborough bottom turning on a wave, the spreader bar hook snapped off and the kite flew off. The suicide saved it and all I did was pull it back in, flew un hooked to the beach and was landed.

If I was hooked to one of my outer lines as my safety, I wouldn't have lost my kite but it would have gone in the drink, in the way of everyone and eventually over the swimmers.

The point is, when is the unforseen going to happen? have all the safety, be as safe as, but **** happens!

Poida
WA, 1921 posts
2 Feb 2008 7:39PM
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the safety leash connected to your wrist is a joke of a safety, imo

very hard to disconnect from it if the primary safety dont work properly, because you get dragged by the arm ( i saw it happen this week)

waveslave
WA, 4263 posts
2 Feb 2008 8:05PM
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Poida said...

the safety leash connected to your wrist is a joke of a safety, imo



The wrist-leash was a throw-back from the 2-liner kite days.
When kites became 4-liners, the wrist-leash remained for a little while...
but it was transformed into a flagging leash instead.
The velcro wrist-band sometimes came unstuck.....
and it was bye bye kite.
Sometimes the leash itself would snap.....
and it was bye bye kite. lol.
I don't use kite-leashes.

atomic
WA, 94 posts
2 Feb 2008 9:43PM
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Ctrl+V from another topic

wrist leash is something they must have thought of while drunk...
1, it comes off
2, the emergency release would be impossible to get to in most if not all the situations where it would be needed
3, the release is too hard to use as it has to have tension against it to work
4, you can't spin the bar
5, have i said dislocated shoulder yet?
6, can't ride suicide cus of reason 5 so what makes the kite an attractive option over 5 line ones is lost
7, easy to loose because you usually would take it off from the bar to wind your lines up and then who wants a leash hanging on your arm so you take that off as well and it becomes another thing to forget.



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"Safeties, wrist leashes and suicide setups" started by orb74