Hi All,
In line with a couple of other posts, I just want to send a big thank you out to Alex (pretty sure that was your name) for lending a hand today at Botany.
After a shocker of a day at work I checked the graphs and saw that it was on so headed down about 5:30 and got straight out for what was mostly a great session. After popping my biggest air ever stuffing up the landing royally and landing hard flat on my back (I guess it doesn't really count if I didn't land it, but it felt good until then), I lay in the water a couple of seconds letting the pain recede and then grabbed for my bar and just started bringing the kite back up when the power line snapped, sending the kite off doing some wonderful things, none of which I could control with only 3 lines.
The damage was not limited to the line snapping - the safety line hook / ring / attachment got pulled almost all the way through the chicken loop safety release and completely screwed it. After fighting to reel my lines in and try a self rescue, I was just about to give up as there was too much line floating around in the water before I could get to the bar and with the kite jumping off the water in 25 knots I was worried about de-gloving a leg so was seriously about to dump the kite as there was no way to get it in safely and it was dragging me the wrong way - out further (yep, has been one of those days where nothing goes right, could have at least landed on the shore side and dragged me in, but NOOO) when Alex came up and offered to tow me in to shore.
After a fairly long tow - we had to dodge first one of the swimmer areas and then got too close to the next set of rocks so had to go further down wind, we finally got to shore, where I proceeded to pack up and make the long walk of shame back up the beach - this outcome was way better than loosing my kite out in the middle and swimming back so cant complain, so one again, thanks for the help!
Cheers,
Ben
