Conditions - 18-25 knots - side on
Pinarroo - Perth
*Post Edited*
Summary: There was a kite accident at Pinarroo - the incident was posted since safety must be our no 1 priority as kiters and also to provoke possible suggestions from concerned kiters of how to improve safety for all...and 2ndly to keep our beaches open.
AKS has now shown their character and is leading the way to improve just that - thumbs up to them!
Please support their suggestions even if it means walking a bit futher north or south of the point.
I have been lead to believe, that most schools wont teach anyone unless they have had prior experience flying trainer power kited.
What goes on, or do schools get too busy or is it just compacency kicking in.
The instructors need to get new arseholes carved, letting a newb fly a big kite and not know how to handle it.
Hey, let's all go of half cocked and crucify schools and instructors based on anonymous posts !!!
What's with seabreezers???
Get a life!
** wavehogger that would have taken a while to write.....
So moral of the story is that you are telling us guys who have been kiting a while what we already know. I really don't care and have seen kooks destroy themselves many times. My interest now in hearing people whinge and post about accidents is zero. Sometimes we just sit back and watch the drama unfold.... Can be amusing!
Best thing to do is get on with your kiting... Idiots will learn the hard way- which is a valuable lesson.
The world is too touchy feely for my liking... Let them get on with it!
This is our everyday business in Leighton
I'm sick of helping people like these guys simply because they are too cheap to pay for the instruction.
The only solution to keep our beach safe is to limit it to WAKSA members only and to become a WAKSA member we should provide a letter or confirmation from an AKA instructor.
It's good for us, good for waksa and safer for these cheap noobs.
I too was at the beach, but was out on the water, and saw the aftermath, not the actual accident.
If nothing else it serves as reminder for every kiter not to get complacent, its not just your skill level but the skill level of the other kiters around you.
And with AKS being based Pinnaroo a fair number of incidents involve novice kiters, but just as many involve kiters who should know better.
Todays incident involved at least one kiter under instruction. AKS has insurance to cover any backlash from yesterdays events, and this serves as a reminder why we need to have WAKSA membership.
Whatever you think of the organisation (getting better in MHO) $65 to cover your @rse if you cause injury to another kiter, member of the public or property is not a bad deal.
And like Fooosh said if someone is clearly causing a danger to other people because they don't know what they're doing, as experienced kiters we need to step up to the plate, and get involved.
I'm confused.
When you say "instructor" do you mean qualified instructor, or just someone who was (loosely speaking) instructing ?
Hi Guys,
Yes there was an accident yesterday at Pinna's. Considering you wrote such a detailed account wavehogger, it's disappointing you only got half of the facts right. You came across like a 60 minutes report.
Here are the facts.
1/ The instructor who's student was lofted is Australia's most experienced and respected, logging well over 1200 hrs, he is also one of the highest qualified instructors in the country.
2/ The student was on his second 2hr lesson and had demonstrated competent kite control in his first lesson. There was no reason to question his kite skills. I in fact assisted a kiter with a launch a week ago who was giving me the thumbs up despite my yelling at him to turn his bar over to the right way up, so even experienced kiters
can have a brain fart and screw up.
3/ Wind was 21-24 knots and the kite he was using was a 6m, not an 8m as you suggested. The kite was appropriate for the wind and his body weight (~ 87kg). Conditions were far from extreme.
4/ The other student who was injured had a small cut on the bridge of his nose, slight bleeding from his nostrils, and a swollen cheek below his eye. He wasn't bleeding from his eye. He was knocked out momentarily and came to soon after. His condition improved rapidly from the moment he regained consciousness and he was taken to hospital, for observation and for X-Rays to ensure nothing was broken. He copped a good hit for sure but we expect him to make a complete recovery by today, although probably bruised and sore.
AKS has been teaching kiting for 10 years and this is the first time an ambulance has been called to the beach for a kitesurf injury. The student just screwed up, panicked and pulled in the bar and held it there. You cannot train people to react in a shock/panic situation. That comes from loads of experience. Ordinarily, he would have landed in the soft sand and dented his pride, unfortunately, there happened to be a person in the way.
Thankfully we had a doctor on the beach (many thanks Paul and Adi), trained and calm AKS personnel assisting, a well stocked First Aid kit, and an emergency plan in action as soon as the call went out. It all went very smoothly and by the book. Incident reports have been filed, insurance company notified, and a staff meeting was held after the incident to discuss what measures can be taken to reduce the possibility of further accidents. We will follow up with both students later today to check on their condition.
Many thanks to the people who assisted with carrying the student (120 kilo) and holding the kite to shield him from the wind/sand. Thanks to my staff who worked professionally and calmly, comforting the student and assisting the doctor. And of course, thanks Paul and also Adi, your skills and presence were much appreciated.
As others have said, this is an extreme sport and accidents can and will happen despite all the safety systems, training and precautionary measures we can implement. It's part of the sport, we cannot remove the danger from the sport entirely without compromising the fun. Just keep your wits about you when on the beach and help out if you see something about to happen.
Cheers,
KH
i wont play bye that law...as the prodigy said ...****em and there laws....
Instructing 10-20m upwind of others with any learner is crazy, especially if they were there first.
...we are fortunate in Perth that we can kite almost anywhere...which is strange because for everything else we have restrictions in place to govern whatever we do. Everybody is looking at closing kitespots down...why I wonder?
I have to say that at least at Pinarroo we have a controlled environment which is nonexistant at Scarborough.
Also, the school at Pinarroo consists of a great bunch of competent people, all friendly and very helpful and I have never, since kiting at the spot the past year seen any serious accident (kiting over weekends mostly)...so it was not to create sensation or tell an incorrect version of what happened right in front of my eyes.
Accidents do happen and nobody will close down a break like Pipeline if a surfer injures himself. The problem with kiting however is that a portion of that learning curve consists of an element that must be conducted on the beach where unfortunateley the same space is shared by other kiters and more importantly non-kiters.
Since kitesurfing is an extreme sport most kiters can tell of a few incidents where they came second best. When you learn to kite you are all over the place and buying plots of land now and again is common...and mostly self inflicted due to lack of skill or making mistakes.
So, even if we are the best in the world and have trained 1000+ people how to kite, it only takes one moment of complacency for something to go wrong and a bystander to get the council to close down the beach.
We can only improve and I am sure that the school will improve even more on their good safety record and ensure that we can all keep kiting at Pinarroo
My apology with my initial post if I put the school in a bad light - I was just thinking that if that guy had collided with my child then he would not have simply had a concussion or fractured cheekbone.
...and lastly about statements regarding half truths...the kite was a 6m and not a 8m and the guy was maybe 9 or 11 meters from the guy who got injured and not 10.
Why bring it up here wavehogger?
Why not approach the instructor/school with your concerns??
What does placing an inaccurate post on seabreeze actually accomplish?? besides stirring up the locals....
Did you offer assistance? In what way was the instructor complacent? Why say it would have been a fatality if a child was involved?? Lots of loose comments in your post mate.
Easy to chuck rocks and make judgements..... 
report the facts, leave editorials to somewhere else.
Non kiters and govt officials who read this forum (yes they do) must think this sport is jammed full of accidents, whingers and bitchers.
Does anyone have a positive experience to relate???
Hi Dave,
Yep, I'd like to post some positive stuff to come of this. I have just had an hour long meeting with all our staff to discuss yesterdays incident. A lot of positive things came out of that meeting.
Our findings are that there were, as is often the case, a string of occurances which all combined which resulted in the incident. Much of the problem can be pin pointed crowding at the spot we teach. Our school and instructors are pushed into situations where people are too close to each other and we lose our safety buffer zone.
Few people give way to newbies or the instructors that are training them. Kiters are constantly rigging in the wind windows of students flying their kites, or are launching kites with the student directly downwind and in the kill zone of their wind window.
Kiters entering the water or exiting the water within the wind windows of students or inside their own wind windows, and riding/jumping close to student body dragging in the water are a regular occurance. I myself, when freeriding, sometimes ride to within a line length of a body dragging student before cutting away. This isn't a good enough situation!
All our newbies are flying blood Airush DNA kites. They only come in red as it is a colour of warning. Our newbies are also obvious by their shorter line length than everyone else so as we take up less beach space and reduce power from a smaller wind window. All of this and we still have newbies colliding with general kiters almost every other day. This can only happen if you are within a line length of a newbie. It is not the students fault, nor that of the instructor.
Students are often apprehensive when they see other kiters up close and deserve a certain amount of leeway and respect from more experienced kiters. As this has not happened from the majority of kiters at Pinnaroo, we are now forced to introduce the following measures.
AKS are experimenting today with reducing our line lengths further, down from 15m to 10m until the instructor feels they are 100% confident the students are in perfect control. There are also many other smaller changes to our teaching pokicy to further reduce the possibility of incidences. However, we are also fully aware that the sport is always going to have an element of risk associated to it that can never be fully controlled. This leads us to our other major change.....
In accordance with the Joondalup city council requirements of our Trading in Public Places license, we will now be cordoning off a 150m long section of the beach from the waterline, to the edge of the dunes. We will leave a 3m wide public access corridor to allow beach users to walk animals and such around the point. This area will be marked out with traffic cones as soon as we purchase them. There will be no rigging, no flying and no walking through this area under any circumstances.
If this is still not enough, we will also drop marker buoys delineating an exclusion zone from the waters edge out to 50m from the shore. This will be a newbie/school area only. You will not be able to ride in this area for any reason other than to return to the beach in an emergency.
We apologise for having to take these measures as we understand it will be an inconvenience to some. We have put this off for more than 3 years, however, we know you'll all support us in our efforts to make the beach a safer place to be for everyone involved.
Kindest regards,
KH
kitehard i'm not from pinno but if instructors came to my beach with your attitude about kiters showing more respect for newbies, i would kill you all. Australia is a big place so why not take your students somewhere else away from competent kiters. even if it means travelling for a bit to a less crowded spot who cares, shortening your lines 5m won't do ****. When I teach mates I have the decency to go for a drive away from kiters and crowds. Your meeting with your instructors was a stupid waste of time.
Kitehard I believe that what your really saying is that you will own that 150m stretch of Pinnaroo . This is the same mentality that Werner adopted at Lancelin. Would you really want to follow the same path that he took. The beach is for everyone to enjoy
I'm not a fan of the idea of having the beach cordoned off but before I jump to conclusions it would be good to see a google earth layout of what is actually being planned.
I am regularly recommending people to speak to AKS about their lessons because of how good the location is for learning and the fact that they are a proper school, not some turo operating out of the back of his car. I regularly have people asking if there is a school closer to the city because it is 'so far' to drive to pinnaroo.
I completely disagree that it is too far for 3 lessons but this is a common though for learners. If, as someone suggested, the instructors pack up and go somewhere else where will that be and will students still go for a lesson or simply not bother driving 25mins then wipe out a kid at leighton/scarborough/floreat.
Lessons have to happen somewhere, good on AKS for concentrating it at one location.
Yes, I do kite at pinnaroo, this does effect me.
