History of Kite Surfing
Since the 13th century the Chinese used kites to help them move things about, but the first records of kites being used to move stuff about on land was in the 1800's when a guy called George Pocock used kites of "increased size to propel carts on land and water". It's recorded that he used a used a 4-line control system - the same system in common use today, some things just never can be bettered can they!
These wind powered vehicles were designed and built to avoid to reliance on horsepower, they main method of moving trade goods about at the time. It is also believed that the kite powered vehicles were built to avoid the much hated "horse tax" that was levied at that time.
Early in the next century Samual Cody, an aviation pioneer, was reported to have crossed the English channel in a small boat powered by a kite, rather than sail. This is the first records of a kite being used to lift a man from the se into the air as a form of transport.
Later in the same century, around 1970's, we see the development of Kevlar, a light weight robust material, then light weight polyethylene Spectra flying lines. These advancments in technology help in the development of more controllable kite and improved their efficiency. (Yawn!!!!!)
From the mid 1970's through the 1980's there were many attempts to combine these technolgically advanced kits with anything that would or could be moved, canoes, ice skates, snow skis, water skis and even roller skates were all tried as new types of sports. During this period of trial and error one man from Germany, Dieter Strasilla, was developing different methods of parachuting mixed with sking and did come up with the idea of kiteskiing. This allowed him to kitesail upwind and uphill but more importanty he could also take off into the air at will.
Later on Dieter and his friend from Switzerland, Andrea Kuhn, took this idea of skikiting and tried it with a few different other sports such as surfboards
At the same time when Dieter was playing about with kites and skies Bruno & Dominique Legaignoux, 2 brothers from the west coast of France, were producing some high tech kite designs for kitesurfing and in November 1984 the first patent was filed for an inflatable kite design. Luckily for the brothers this design has been used by many companies to develop their own products.
Stick with me, we're nearly up to modern times :-)
In 1990 kite buggying, developed by Peter Lynn in New Zealand, was taking off as a popular beach sport with over 14,000 buggies sold during the decade. In the underground during this period of popular kite sport the Legaignoux in France as well as the father-son combination in America of Bill Roeseler, a Boeing aerodynamicist, and Corey Roeseler worked on their Kite Surfing inventions. Father & Son patented the "KiteSki" system in 1993 which basically was a set of water skis powered by a two line kite controlled by a a winch/brake combination mounted on a bar.
Things in the Kite Surfing world were about to move a lot faster now. The Roeseler's KiteSki system was commercially available by 1994 and in 1995 Corey Roeseler met up with Peter Lynn, developer of kite bugging. This meeting began the devlopment of the single board, similar to a surfboard. 1996 was a hugh year for the advancement of Kite Surfing when the surfing stars Laird Hamilton and Manu Bertin demonstrated the system and made Kite Surfing take off the Hawaiian coast of Maui.
On a roll now, with the new interest from regular surfers beach buggy enthusiastist and the like, Kite Surfing Gear was about to see some major changes. The Legaignoux brothers, in 1997, came out with the breakthrough "Wipika" kite design which greatly assisted in water re-launch techniques. In the same year a specialist kiteboard was developed by Salles&Ness.
By the following year Kite Surfing had become a mainstream sport with Kite Surfing Schools opening up in a variety of global locations and the first every compototion, which was held on Maui in the September of that (the winner was Flash Austin if you ever get that in a quizz question!) Not be left out of the development of Kite Surfing Gear the uni-direction boards derived from windsurfing and surfing seen a change as well. After some playing about with the boards in 2001 most, if not all, Kite Surfers change to the new bi-directional boards.
