Had an interesting one today, was out flying the Zephyr in wind that had gradually been increasing all day. At the time when I looked back later on the Seabreeze Wind Gauge it said it was 24kts gusting to about 27kts around the time. I felt reasonable comfortable with the power but must admit the Kite was feeling quite powered and possibly handling wise it was reaching the upper limits of what I was comfortable with holding the sucker down. I popped a trick that went wrong on the landing and found myself landing backwards with my face down to the water and my legs facing the direction of the kite. On my decent down to doing a face plant I felt my waist harness being relieved from my body and heading Southward towards my feet. This all happened very quickly and I managed to contort my body to reach and grab my harness in the nick of time as it was just about to disengage past my feet. My Zephyr was still skyward and I was now totally unhooked or better still unharnessed (excuse the pun) and I found myself continuing to control my Kite with harness in one hand and the bar in the other whilst being towed downwind minus my board which was way whoop, whoop somewhere. In the face of uncertainty I thought I had better pull my safety release and flag out the Kite as I'm going to have buckly's of trying to slow this baby down and somehow slip back into my Harness at the same time. So I hit the safety flag out and undid and jumped back into my Harness then retrieved the bar reset the safety and then a couple of long body drag tacks later, I was able to recover my board and get back underway again.
No doubt having a harness break would be a much disastrous situation but I thought it was an interesting scenario for those who may be interested. Maybe some would care to comment or share their story of their Harness disasters, consequences or remedy of the situation and any lesson learnt
Yep had a harness tear apart unexpectedly in a 30kn session years ago on an old kite with no depower. Only had 1 hand on the bar lightly... So off it went into the distance with the harness still attached to the chicken loop. The harness dragging in the water gave enough resistance to the kite to keep the lines tight...so the lot just sailed away together. hit an island about 1km away and stopped luckily.