Setting off an explosion of industry-specific vacations, schools and resorts worldwide, kite surfing is officially one of the fastest growing sports in the world… It’s popularity was helped along by Cory Roeseler from the U.S.A. circa 1993, he designed the kiteski; allowing re-launching from the water using a flat kite with carbon spars and a control bar with brake reel.
These days the majority of kites used in this sport feature an inflatable leading edge and ribs, enabling the kite to float while you fidget it back into the wind from nearly any misfortune.
One of our readers was kind enough to send us this:
“Listen, I was at the Kite surfing competition in Islamorada, FL last month and took some decent pics and a couple of mini-movies on my digi-cam (quicktime) I was going to keep them just for me but spoke with a guy at the AVP tournament in Ft. Lauderdale about your magazine and thought you might want to look at them. I don’t even know the surfers names but I can tell you its all from the women’s heat as best I can recall. I don’t kite surf (yet), it does look intense though.”
Joel Harris
Here are a couple of discussion articles from past issue of Kitelife, as well as another fairly comprehensive site which has links and information.
- https://www.kitelife.com/magazine/issue21/wetand/content.php
- https://www.kitelife.com/magazine/issue27/the_phil_zone/content.php
- http://sportsvl.com/water/kitesurfing.htm
The pictures below are also from Joel, who came upon this exciting sport for the very first time… And you can just click the play button to watch the video, provided you have a plugin for WMV files (most Internet Explorers are pre-equipped).
