Why only twintip or surfboard: learning to kite with waterskis or kneeboard etc.

Hi everyone,

Just got into kiting recently and I've been wondering why people arent using anything except twintips or surfboards? For the beginner without any board sport experience, learning to fly the kite and manage the board simultaneously is a difficult task. Even myself who has been surfing and wakeboarding my whole life, I still find it challenging to fly the kite and ride the board (especially learning to ride switch stance!) Regardless, wouldn't it be much easier learning with a knee board (maybe put two small fins on the back for directional stability) so that you could face the kite the entire time and lean left or right to create an edge? Or use big twin waterskiis to achieve the same effect.. and eventually use a single slalom ski to really dig an edge and go upwind. I feel this would be great not having to change between goofy or regular stance.

This surely would be worth trying, as the original boys experimented and rode lots of different boards back when kiting was in its infancy (water skiis included). But like everything in "boardsports" world, image is king and anyone not riding the latest gear or following the latest trend is seen as a kook..

And to finish, Im fairly certain that surface area and the ability to get an edge on the riding craft are the most important factors to board design. So why do we not experiment more with other designs? Im new to the sport so maybe there is something Im not aware of. yet Let me know. In the meantime, im going to give the water skiis a go.

I tried that in Port Douglas back in 2012 just for fun. Not very practical but if you wanna go old school and have a good laugh, go for it!

I'm going to say that its probably related to physics.

Kiting is closer to sailing than it is to wakeboarding IMO. The twin tips are more like a dagger board or keel on a sailboat, to help keep upwind more efficiently.

I imagine that the reason ski's didn't take off is because less surface area under the water to act against the kite and if you drop a ski, its probably going to be harder to get back to it and get it on.

I wouldn't recommend it, but good luck if you do, ensure you've got someone out there keeping an eye on you in case it turns pear shaped.

hey all - long time reader, first time poster ;)

Kiting with waterskis was tried right from the very beginning. There's a pretty decent documentary called 'UPWIND - Launch of a Sport - History of Kitesurfing' which features some of the pioneers of the sport and which shows this. Here's a segment where Cory Reeseler (I think) is jump launching a two (!) line kite off the rocks onto the water wearing waterskis off Maui. Not a lot of safety in those days...

Get out there and try some different ways. Who knows you might invent a new sport.

Kneeboarding is generally done on very flat water, where kitesurfing is generally in the chop. Few guys I've chatted to that have tried had to book in appointments with their chiros after the jarring action of it. I think it also has to do with leverage, on your feet you can lean back a lot of further to counter the pull of the kite and then come up in lulls, on your knees you lose a lot of that leverage.
As for skis, they are made to go straight, not constantly on an edge, you have a lot of ski forward and back but not in width making it hard to keep an edge in the chop. But this summer I'm going to do a big down winder on my giant pink flamingo with esky in tow, maybe we can make a race of it if any other WA kiters are keen.

Controlling one board with two legs could be called hard to do.

Controlling two boards with one leg each. Is that twice as hard, or 4 times as hard?

As for kneeboard, riding on chop with no suspension?