The Sketchy times....

...most people who've been kiting a while have had a few.
I Hadn't really thought about it until yesterday. Had a few self rescues & split kites out deep before but nothing too bad.

I binned my 7m pretty hard at Rest on Sunday, split it & popped the connecting tubes between the leading edge & 2 main struts, so it went completely down apart from the 2 outer struts. No biggie. Was out of my depth, the kite was out further than me; there were some good sized lumps rolling in. Before I knew it I got munched by one & ended up tangled in my lines as the kite bin bagged its way past me towards the beach. One of the lines had looped around my neck & pulled tight as a wave hit the kite. Another wave rolled over me and I just managed to get the line from around my neck before coming back up. Times like that it's good to be familiar with where the line cutter is on your harness, closest I've come to using it. With the kite between me & the beach I surfed some waves in on my board until I could touch the bottom. Didn't really think about how sketchy it was until I got out of the water. Good to know that when things go wrong autopilot works on survival mode though. Ha.

Thanks to the guys who kept close & watched me in. Always good to have people around when it's going a bit fudge shaped.
Looks like the 7m is off to see Kitedoc, that'll be all my kite's he's seen within the past 2 months... poop.
Probably time for some new ones.

...anyone else got any experiences to share?

Way too many to share here!

Had a similar one the other week out on the point though, dropped the kite whilst wiping out on a set wave....then got dragged..did the usual and released onto mini 5th but got hit by a wave and got a few lines around me.
Then noticed kite about to relaunch and just managed to untangle myself as it took off in a death loop that blew the velcro off the dump valve..I never put the extra loop over this, preferring it to blow the velcro rather than the entire leading edge (unless I'm venturing out to sea on my race board)

Anyway all was good in the end and was back out there in short while once i'd sorted the lines etc
Always good to have a few mates hovering around checking your ok!