Twin tips in the surf, should they be banned?

Everyone came make errors of judgment, talk about it on the beach first. If it continues, pull out the spare kite and let'em have it. I'm my experience dealing with the mess personally instead of skim reading it on the forums is the best way to learn the boundaries.

Progress is painful in this sport, always will be.

But i think your just spewing about the lack of noreasters lately.

Someone mentioned Sandgate, if you consider that a kite spot for directionals you havnt done much paddle surfing before have ya. Its in Moreton bay protected by copious islands with no swell.

Twin tip in the surf is like riding a scooter,... It's fun til someone see you doing it

AKSA has been discussing the segregation of twin tips and surf kiters. One of the proposals is to identify twin tip riders by assigning a yellow star and serial number to each rider to identify individuals that short tack, waste waves, and generally just noob around mowing. Apparently they are organising a 'camp' for the twin tip dudes and Surfingboye, Rowdy, Alex, and Leo are running master classes. It will all be filmed on head mounted go pro. Should be a gas!

The problem has also been recognised by the D.P.I in NSW. They incorporated twin tip riders into their shark tagging program.

With advanced software installed in a Commodore 64 computer, they were then able to predict patterns of behaviour. You can see by the tracking image; the total devastation this is causing to the point break in the photo.

How about a proper wave spot? A point which has solid waves and cross off winds. The twin tipper in question wasn't even catching waves and just darting around between them. Should this be frowned upon?

I'm all for people getting into the surf. TT or directional. But what does worry me is when people ride up to and jump just behind white water.
All it takes is a swimmer to dive under a broken wave, pop up and be run over.
I always try and stay in front of the wave, so I have maximum vision of the broken one ahead.

This occurred on the sunny coast recently, when 2 guys were jumping on twintips, really close to the beach.
I don't care if you like doing that, it just scared me that a swimmer was gonna get run over.

If that happens it has no positive outcomes for our sport.

I guess its just like rollerbladers and scooters in skate parks, they dont belong there but always will be there (and in the ****ing way!). Rather poleys any day.

The title for this topic can be taken very broadly or one eyed and I think people have gone off track about the reason behind the suggestion for this thread to cause discussion.
In about 2002 I was living in Sydney and kiting at Maroubra most afternoons in the nor easter or sometimes southerly. It was good then we were just starting to ride surfboards after learning on twin tips in botany bay on the flat water. There was only 3-5 of us that rode Maroubra and we all came from a surfing background so naturally knew the way we should operate around surfers and we built a relationship with the life guards by reporting and letting them know when we were about to go out. In either wind direction you can only really use half the beach which makes the area quite small and add to that flags.
By 2005 Maroubra was beginning to become popular with kiters (learners, tourists and backpackers), also a few other sydney based people who were getting into it. The life guards were quickly running out of patience with the sudden attention Maroubra was getting and the new crew of people who were riding twin tips, trying to jump or trying to learn to surf which resulted in lots of boards bouncing around in the white water. Complaints started to come in and then the bans for all riders started being talked about. The life guards tried to instigate a twin tip and jumping ban and also limit the number of riders to 5 at one time, which we tried to help enforce but it was futile as most people who came would say it was their right to ride how they liked and Australia was a free country, blah blah blah.. then go and setup anyway. So the council determined it was too risky and it all just got banned at Maroubra and other beaches in the eastern suburbs.. I moved to a place where it doesn't matter what you ride in the surf and that is the end of the story.
In this case if the twin tips had of been banned in the surf and people would have just used a bit of common sense about judging their own ability and where they are going to try acrobatics, as it is predominantly a surfing beach and also limited on space, then maybe kiting would still be tolerated there.
By the way you can still kite at Maroubra... after 7:30pm.

I rode an actual TT in the waves the other day. In fact it was ****ty onshore slop no bigger than thigh high. So Its not what I call actual waves.

It was a sweet TT but man was it average compared to my mutant.
So guess I kinda agree that a normal TT is pretty crappy for actually riding waves.

On the other side of that my mutant looks similar to a TT and most people think im riding a TT. But man its a completely different kettle of fish.

So I guess if you take surfboard at one spectrum and light wind flat rectangle tt at the other there will be boards across that spectrum that work far better in waves than others.

Yeh SB all choppy **** waves over here In all of WA....