Watching youtube videos its amazing what guys are doing on kites, most of us would of seen Ben Wilson at cloudbreak, so the question begs to be answered. How long before its common place to see kite surfers in big heavy, shipsterns, jaws, Teahupoo??? 2 years?? 5??? 10???
It would be good to see a big heavy tow day and somone just flies a kite out there and gets barrelled?? It took me to long to get interested in this sport and I've many surfing mates who wont have a bar of it. Where can it go??
onshore waves become sloppy and hard to ride, and when cross/offshore all you can do is edge against the wall???
who wants to see that??? current big wave surfing is already a yawn fest.
long live the jet ski???
I think the problem is the world of danger you could get into with the kite and tangled lines in a wipeout. Once the kite falls out of the sky in big surf things can go horribly wrong. Also when you are riding the kite will not always let you go where you want to on the wave. Not that I've really experienced much of this but enough to know I wouldn't want to risk it.
Pretty sure that Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama used kites to "tow" onto waves int the late 90's.
They just ditched the kite once on the wave. Maybe a jet ski picked the kite up after.
There is a video of some guys kiting one of the famous breaks in the last 12-18 months (Jaws or Mavericks, can't remember which) where a kiter just releases the kite and continues to surf the wave. Seeing as you'd need boat support anyway, combined with all the stuff around with resetting the kite lines (not to mention the risk of just losing the kite). You may as well just cut out all the extraneous crap and just run with a jet ski. Don't forget the guy riding the jet ski also is there to assist post wipe out, something that a kite can't replace.
Would you sit on the beach and wait for the wind while clean perfect waves roll through???? I don't think so.. but check this out.
