Media Credit: Michael Del Rosso

7/7/2008

On a windy Thursday afternoon at Nahant Beach, Adam Gordon kneels down to draw a curved line in the sand. He's not making a point, but illustrating the concept of what he calls a "wind window."

He marks 80 degrees by both ends of the curve and asks toward which should he launch the kite. This time he is trying to make a point.

"You can choose either side of the window to launch. I put it here [he puts it toward the water end] because the water's here. In the other direction [towards the sand] there's traffic, baby carriages, and people," he said.

These are things to consider when kite surfing.

Gordon, an instructor at the Boston Kite School, charges $299 to prospective students for a two-day lesson in kite surfing, a water sport that uses wind power from a kite sail to tow a boarded rider.

"The reason I choose 80 degrees is so that I can make sure the kite has enough wind to fill in the sail and launches. If I get too much out of the wind, the kite can roll over into the power zone, which is called a hot launch. Today we do not want to do that with the kite," he said.

With winds reaching 30 m.p.h., Gordon, or "Captain Safety," adheres strictly to safety protocol, according to the Boston Kite School website.

"I witnessed a guy get caught up in a hot launch on a day that was too windy. He landed back on the water pretty hard and blew out his knee," Mike Vantine of Abington said.

Vantine has been making the trek up to the North Shore for five years to kite surf. He likes it better than wind surfing, which is similar, because he sees it as more of a free art form, he said.

"But," he said, "it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master."

"You have to control the kite at all times," Paul Lawrence of Malden said.

Lawrence has been kite buggying--a land version of kite surfing--for 11 years and recently switched over to kite surfing, he said. He still gets a little scared in high winds, he said.

Kite buggying was made popular by a New Zealander, Peter Lynn, in the early '90s, Lawrence said. From that came kite surfing.

Some of the differences between kite buggying and kite surfing are the inflatable leading edge on the water kites that allows them to float, Lawrence said.

The lighter the wind, the wider your kite has to be to catch more wind, Lawrence said. "They can get up to 15 meters in width."




Watch video of kite surfing on Nahant Beach...



(video filmed and edited by Doug Kyed)

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