Incident at Lancelin

Just wanted to add my weekend Lancelin story. This guy is a real serial pest, on Saturday I thought I was the only guy to be the brunt of his anger. I'm a windsurfer by trade, kiter by hobby and still a novice. My family has owned a unit in Lancelin for 20yrs now and believe me, I was at the windsurfing beach long before Werner knew where Oz was on a map, and its not the country next door! New to kitesurfing I always give everyone else in the water a wide berth, for my own safety aswell as theirs. Anyway after a few hours in the water this Werner character sailed very close on the upwind side yelling a screaming at me and thinking he was warning me of something I stopped in the water. Well not the smartest thing I have ever done on the water cause it made me an easy target. Werner gybed, pumped his sail furiously and proceeded to run straight over me, taking my lines out with his mast putting my kite into a fast dive and while I was struggling for control he jumped off his windsurfer grabbed my board and threw it away yelling that he was going to break my f###ing board and some other words that didn’t resemble “G’day”. I took that to mean get out of the water so in trying to he chased me for about 5-10mins cutting me off another 3-4 times with one other altercation in the water. Me being the non aggressive type and him having all his mates on the beach I left it at that and just gave all my mates the story 10 times over. I’m not leaving this here, as effectively being a 20yr resident in Lancelin I want that guy off the beach. Windsurfers & kiters can co-exist but this guy is just trouble. I have asked both the Council and the Local Police to look into this incident aswell as his operations on the beach aswell as reporting it to DPI – Marine Safety. If he was a rouge shark they would have it removed before it did some real damage.

werner is a right stupid bugger regarding kiters.the amount of run ins with kiters is beyond belief.
you could also phone the local council and tell them about the incident as well.
he phoned the ranger when i was pumping up and she came and had a word to me.she said she has no worries about us pumping up on lawn as long as we launch outside the bollards.
werner has a good mate on the council so that is how he gets away with a lot of this ****.I recomend laying charges against werner as a threat of loosing his business will hopefully have some affect on him.

mmmnnn, sounds like we may need to have a 3 day un-official kitesurfing regatta in Lanno, i reckon we could get 60-100 kites out for a few days.
We could sort a film crew to shoot a dvd, do shots for KBM, and promote lanno to the kiting world.

any thoughts? Dates ?

Hi Choicey and everybody else,

it would be a great idea to have a little event in Lancelin in reaction to what is happening up there. How about the first weekend in January....we might be able to tie it in with the Ocean Classic![}:)]

As some of you may know, I had a little kitesurfing school up there for one season. My experiences with Werner are many and most of them are bad.
Being Swiss myself and therefore not a "true" local to Lancelin, I was very aprehensive before starting the school. I introduced myself to some local businesses including Werner. The return I had from him was the threat that he and his windsurfing mates would come and bash me up...
I have travelled the world extensively as a pro kiteboarder and have kited in many different and difficult spots, escpecially my former home spot Tarifa, famous for having several hundred kites in the air in one day. To me, it was always hard to understand, what exactly Werner's problem is. The argument of him and many windesurfers that there is not enough room for both activities only make me laugh.

Having more people on the water, regardless if windsurfing, surfing or kitesurfing, will only be beneficial for the growth and development for Lancelin, its businesses and its residents.
Werner does a lot of damage to Tourim in general in the Lancelin area by trying to "protect" his business.
I do hope that the complaints lodged with the local police and shire will help to prevent further hostilities in the future.

For me personally, Lancelin has lost all its magic and I hardly ever return to kite there even though it used to be my favourite spot, unfortunately.
But I'd be more than happy to make an exception and get up there if anyone is up for a little kite invasion ;-)

im starting the big drive over from qld just before xmas... trying to find myself a couple of 'secret spots' on the west coast... dont worry i am discrete and definitely no euro... am i allowed to come??


name a date and i will definitely be keen. looks like an awesome spot. that guy sounds like a prize tosser and you know what goes around...

woodies has been to busy lately , who wants to go to lano kiting this week-end it shell be grand fun

I'll start studying up on how to swear in German! Sheizen housin?

swiss german

www.insultmonger.com

Iti i am in for lano for the weekend, cant do saturday as i have an fn wedding to go to. What day were you thinking? Airhead you keen? I can't believe the crap this guy is up to.

Hate to be the voice of logic but going down there in large numbers is not going to do jack shyte about this person’s attitude towards kiters. Ok so it might give some of you guys a feel good vibe on the forum and an inside joke down at the beach but that’s all it will accomplish. Unless of course you are all going to be waving swiss flags and cow bells so he gets the message.

What it will do is enhance this moron’s prejudices and insecurities and possibly result in a hernia for him.

What if a kiter comes down the following weekend, set up his kite and have it knifed or end up getting run down as has previously happened. Nothing has been solved now has it. Unless of course someone is set up with a camera….

Are you sure he is Swiss, I hope not – how embarrassing. I bet he’s Austrian.. That would explain his issues – just watch the sound of music more than once and you will end up like that too.

I still think public naming and shaming is likely to bring in a massive attitude change. Write to newspapers, tv programs etc about his attitude if you get no response from the council, and I have no doubt they will jump at the opportunity to a take someone up for acting un-australian. If the councils don't act (because he has friends), then they will be forced to respond when they have to face cameras.

You guys have a lot of incidents in writing here already which could be printed out and forwarded on to the local authorities.
If everyone backs up their stories, there are enough of you to cause this moron a lot of grief.
Good luck.

sorry guys but would have to side with werner on this one. not supporting his actions though, would probably thump him if he did the same to me.
been going to lano for 30 years surfing, windsurfing and for the last 5 kiting, own a house there now.
seen all the scarey **** kiters do, not realising they are impacting on other beach users. me, me, me, look at me i can jump!
windsurfers are **** scared being near us in the water which i understand having had kites dropped on me, been downwind of out of control kiters, having kiters staying in the break going in and out, turning without looking, etc, etc. werner is the only windsurfer saying what most of them are thinking. coming on mass will not solve anything, the opposite more likely. many incidents on council records already, they are looking for reasons to enforce the FLUMP. see gingin shire website - kites to north point and back beach only.
if you stay away from the grassed area you will not have a problem with werner.
sorry but kite schools upwind of windsurfers is not a good idea wedgie/fiona, they always end up dragging through them. i know not your students.
ps. sorry about punctuation doing this on my pda too slack to press shift.

Hilly, I respect your comments and realise that not everyone who kites is an angel but unfortunately merely staying away from the grassed area does not seem to work, not in my experience or fellow kite surfers last weekend. I have had people in the past cut me off on the road but I don’t now play chicken with everyone else on the road. If a person is not able to make educated judgements about each situation and rather reverts back to caveman attitude he has an issue. Having a bad experience in the past and taking it out randomly and excessively on others is just not cool and certainly no excuse. I am a windsurfer and when I see kites I think “I want to do that too” not “I’m going to kill that prick”. I have not looked enough into the council suggestions but forcing kiters to the backbeach that is an area more frequented by swimmers and surfers I think requires more thought and the north point is the main route of cray boats. I personally see this issue resulting from a territorial attitude.

I would like to think that the council is seriously considering some sort of action as if they do not it will more than likely only cause them more grief in the future should something serious happen and this was left to go unchecked after the number of complaints that have been made to date. The council is aware of this thread and are hopefully taking note that the weekends events were not just a one off and that this has been an ongoing issue.