Day 98: Mui Ne part 2

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Kite surfing is hard! I think steph already blogged about her experience on , so I'll just recount mine.

After the first day (2 1/2 hours) of kite surfing lessons I was feeling pretty good. I pretty much had the hang of the kite, and all I had to do next was stand up on the board. It turns out that standing up AND controlling the kite at the same time is waaaaay harder than doing either one. The next day I did another 2 1/2 hours, of which I probably only spent 20 seconds standing up on the board.

One of the big difficulties is that the board is not actually attached to you. There's no bindings, like snowboarding or wakeboarding, and there is no leash like surfing. Who's idea was that? Must be a safety issue. But to me it was a pain in the arse issue, because every time I fell I lost the board. The wind is pulling away from the board, and it is a good 5 to 10 minute exercise to body-drag yourself back to the board. Usually by the time I made it back to my board, I'd been dragged so far down the beach that it was time to get out and walk back upwind.

After my 5 hours of lesson was up, I was pretty frustrated. I felt like I was close to getting it, but I just needed more time. I decided to pay extra to upgrade to a 7 hour lesson and do a third day of kitesurfing. I think my instructor wishes I just stuck with the 5 hours. My extra 2 hours basically bought me 4 trips down the beach. Each one got consecutively worse. I'll walk you through them.

trip 1: After a few successful stand-ups (maybe 10 seconds total) I crashed the kite downwind of me. Usually I crash it to one side or the other, which is easy to recover from, but this time I didn't know what to do. After some struggling, I gave up and swam to shore. Paulo (my instructor) told me what I did wrong, and we hiked back up the beach to try again.

trip 2: A few more successful stand ups, but I crashed the kite pretty good again and lost my board. This time I took his advice, and was able to get the kite back in the air after a while. BUT I still had to recover the board, which took time. End of trip 2.

trip 3: Again, standing up a few times. I was starting to the the hang of it, I think. Pulling the bar hard works to stand up, but the kite stalls if you keep it up. You have to relax the bar and work the kite back and forth through the "power zone" to keep going. Once I realized that I was doing alright... until I crashed my kite into a windsurfer. He was a beginner too, so maybe he thought it was his fault, but I'm pretty sure it was my fault. Surprisingly I was able to untangle my kite from his board, but my strings were all messed up. I made it to shore with my kite and board.

trip 4: I realized this was probably my last go at it without paying extra, so I told myself I'd make the most of it. Once I got outside the waves, I deliberately did not look towards the beach so that I wouldn't see it if Paulo was signaling me to come in. I used what I'd learned the previous trip, and I actually stayed up riding for quite a while. Probably 25 or 30 seconds. I was riding with my left foot forward, which is what I'm comfortable with from surfing/skating/snowboarding, and this resulted in me riding quite a ways out from the beach. After I fell gracefully (i.e. keeping my board with me) I decided it was time to try riding switch stance (right foot forward). And thats when everything went horribly wrong. I tried to do the mirror of what worked riding with my left foot forward, but it was just too foreign for me and I fell hard. I tried to keep the kite up, which resulted in losing my board and getting dragged underwater for about 20 feet. I panicked and released my harness (there was still a leash keeping me attached to the kite). This was probably not the right thing to do. I tried to make up for my blunder by swimming toward the kite so that I could clip it back to my harness, but the wind kept pulling it away from me. I decided to release the leash also, so that I could swim back for the board. This was definitely NOT the right thing to do. I think at the time I thought the wind would blow the kite to shore, because the wind had been at an angle towards shore earlier in the afternoon. I hadn't noticed that it had switched directions and was now blowing across shore. Anyway, I swam to the board, and then swam it to shore which took about 15 minutes. By that time the kite had blown half a mile down the beach, and even FURTHER out into the ocean. I started jogging down the beach toward the kite, holding my board. An old man on the beach saw what had happened, and told me that he'd watch my board if I left it with him. I thanked him and left my board, and kept jogging. Unfortunately I was in such a hurry that I forgot to look where I had left the board. As I ran down the beach, I saw another kite surfer somehow recover my kite and surf back to the beach while dragging it. Those guys are way too good. Paulo was there when they brought in the kite, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He lectured me on what I did wrong (NEVER abandon your kite unless absolutely necessary!!!) and we started back up the beach. Once my heart stopped beating like crazy I realized I didn't know where I'd left my board. I didn't see the old man anywhere. I let Paulo go ahead of me so I could go back to look for it. I saw a board sitting on the beach, and a man on a beach chair said it had been there for a while. I honestly didn't remember what my board looked like so I grabbed it and jogged up to Paulo. When I got to him, he told me that it was not my board. Crap! Double crap! Luckily I remembered that when I swam to shore I had to swim by a bouy, which I could see just ahead of us. When we got there, my board was sitting on the beach. No sign of the old guy. What a jerk. But at least we had everything! I jogged back down the beach AGAIN with the board I'd found, and left it where I found it. I turned around and jogged back to Paulo, and walked the rest of the way back to the place. I probably ran over a mile on the sand. By the time we got back I was pretty beat. It had been way longer than 2 hours. Paulo was in a great mood about the whole thing though, and they didn't charge me anything extra. He said it happens to everybody. I guess you need to be pretty patient to be a kite instructor.

So I've say it once and I'll say it again: kite surfing is hard. BUT it is also really fun and I think I could be ok at it with a few more (hundred?) hours of practice. I might just have to buy a kite and a board when we get back. Don't hold me to it though.

After the last day of kitesurfing lessons we headed up to Da Lat. Beautiful bus ride. A lot colder here, especially at night. More about that in the next blog.

Here's a few pictures from the kitesurfing days:

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