205. Three Levels of Safety

Kites can create tons of power yet sometimes we may find ourselves in a situation where this excessive power is not needed, or maybe your kite is pulling you in the direction where you don’t want to go, or maybe your kite starts to spin out of control, one way or another you may need to pull those emergency breaks. Luckily, we have three types of breaks in kitesurfing. Let’s have a look.

The first level of safety is on your control bar. Just slide the bar away to depower your kite. Yeap, as simple as this: depower your kite. This is the first thing you do when you fall into the water, lose sight of the horizon or become disoriented otherwise, just slide that bar away from yourself. Keep your hand on it and steer the kite, but seize its pull.

Next level is the “safety release system”. Every kite has it in one form or another. This is that either opens up a chicken loop or disconnects kite from chicken loop. This system makes a kite to flat out, sometimes to turn upside down and depower down to less than 10% of its full power. We resort to this safety level when something rather unusual or unexpected happens. Let’s say your kite lines crossed with someone’s kite and both kites started to spin out of control. Bad situation! Releasing your safety system could be the thing to do. Another scenario: your kite started to spin out of control on its own. Same safety release could be a solution. Or maybe your kite line or part of the bridal system got stuck somewhere and you cannot steer your kite – safety release.