I see the new cabrinha kites are out and available for demo...
They advertising the drifter as a wave kite, shape seems similar to the Park so i was thinking it should be decent for unhooked freestyle too.
anyone had a demo yet?
I took a 9m out for a couple of hours in gusty 20-30 knot winds on the bay. No surf but lots of wind blown short, steep chop to play with. Lots of carving S-turns and general blasting around on a 5'4" surfboard.
Good
It feels like the kite is on the end of rigid rods instead of lines. It goes where you put it when you want it to. There's very little lag and no moments when you are waiting for the kite or for the kite to power up after riding at it for several turns.
Easy to do lots of linked, powered turns without having to worry about the lines going slack (the wind was quite strong at times so it would have been not too hard to do this on most kites).
Excellent upwind performance. I was able to do several runs downwind carving on chops then just nip upwind to start again.
Only three struts. Excellent Cabrinha inflation system and the bar with the springy stopper thing, that I really like. Typical Cabrinha bar (the best on the market in my opinion) with all sorts of refinements to bar ends and stuff.
Good bag (I like to neatly fold my kites and put them away. You kite stuffers would probably think it was too small).
Bad
The fluoro colours look like a faded kite from 10 years ago. People asked me where I got such an old kite from.
Other
In the winds I was riding in on the top knot the kite was a little prone to stalling. I moved to the middle knot and it was fine.
Possibly not the most grunty kite I've ever used. It was ok during the lulls and I could stay upwind ok.
The quick release systems have been redesigned and cleaned up. They look good but I found the primary release a bit confusing to reassemble. It's not that hard but you would need to practice it a dozen times to make it easy.
The secondary release (completely eject the kite) works really well but would be impossible to reassemble in the water (not that you would because you have completely ejected the kite.)
Will I buy one? If I wanted a surf kite then definitely. I like my current quiver of kites and I need to decide whether I want to have more kites in the cupboard or get rid of some of my current kites.
PS. The Drifter has 4 pulleys (2 each side) and the usual IDS sliding ring things.
The rear lines go straight to the tips via two longish straight pig tail lines.
The bridles are very simple and quite short. I actually like a longer bridle because I can fly the kite upside down from the bridles and walk it over bushes and crap. These bridles are too short for that so you have to carry the kite from the leading edge.
If you have the kite set on the top knot you can see quite clearly that the tips are squishing in and it is going to stall. You would have to be very heavy handed to not notice and stop it.
Not knocking Cabrinha, but why do kite brands put so many knots everywhere? Ride a kite in its given wind range and use those depower systems if it's getting too much. Too many riders choke their kite and wonder why turns are jolty or their kite "falls out of the sky".
Cabrinha keep the knots to a minimum and have a very easy to understand attachment point system, even for newbies. Front lines = only 1 option attachment point.
Rear lines = 3 knot attachment points. Having 3 attachment points on the rear line in my opinion is good for getting the setting you want based on the wind conditions, and the riding style.
I would guess Cabrinha have kept this streamlined system for 2012.
Dont want people dying Mr Float do we :-) I heard Cabrinha is working on a seatbelt system to replace their current leash and a Rubix Cube may replace their current safety, only 12 moves to release and 47 to reset.
Mr Float,
Well in some ways, I am sure manufactures want to design kook proof systems so that riders don't incorrectly setup the kite for both safety and performance reasons. The less likely a rider will incorrectly setup up their kite, the more likely they will have a better session as the kite will be flying the way is was designed.
