Not two miles away from campus in Belmont Shore, you will see great, colorful kites swaying a hundred feet above the beach.
They are kites designed for a new board sport called kiteboarding. Kiteboarding, or kitesurfing as it is often called, was invented in the 1980s but gained notoriety in the 1990s, springing up here in California as well as Hawaii and Western Europe.
Since then it has gained popularity around the world and has gained quite a following here in our own Long Beach as well as Seal Beach and Huntington Beach.
This unique sport has participants ride a board that is similar to a wakeboard or surfboard while being towed by one of these magnificent kites at about ten to thirty miles per hour over the ocean surface. Most of these kites are very large measuring a whopping ten to twenty-one square meters.
While controlling the kite via a handle connected to the rider at the hip, Kiteboarders are able to surf waves and cruise along the water. But over the past few years a new style has been emerging that is much more directed at performing tricks.
These Kiteboarders jump as high as fifty feet in the air and can travel over one hundred feet in distance while performing aerial stunts similar to that of a wakeboarder or snowboarder.
Kiteboarding, like any other sport, is not without its risks however. Many accidents involve inexperienced riders attempting to control the kite with little to no professional instruction. This could lead to the rider to get pulled away by the kite and dropped over land, or hit someone else with the kite.
But the steady winds, small waves, and wide open beach of Belmont Shore make it a great place for beginners to get started according to Rob Hamilton, operator of the Huntington Beach based Kiteboard shop Kitesurfari.
The start up costs for Kiteboarding, range from about $1300 to $3000 for a kite, board, bar, and lines. Hamilton comments that because the equipment is on the expensive side, he tends to see “a good mix of people (buying equipment in his shop), but they are usually between the ages of twenty eight and forty who are established in the workforce.”
When compared to other sports like surfing, snowboarding or wakeboarding, the costs may dwarf the others initially, but the big upswing is that this is a sport that one can do by his or her self. One is not dependent on others like in snowboarding or wakeboarding to participate in the activity. All you need is the beach, a steady, breeze, and a kite to get you going.
In short, if you love sports like wakeboarding, snowboarding, or windsurfing, and have the cash to start, Belmont Shore is the perfect place to try this new and exciting activity.
Stuart Schmidt is a journalism major and contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
E-mail addresses are used only to notify you of replies and are not displayed
Comments powered by Disqus