Kite Surfing

We had a bumper turnout for training last week. The reason: we were told that it was a kite surfing session. Only mild disappointment then that it was a presentation, rather than a chance to get wet.

To be fair, the presentation was very good, and I'm not just saying that because it was delivered by Tom, our colleague from the Ops Room (MRCC Portland). Tom's also a volunteer Coastguard Rescue Officer himself (ie. when he's not being a full time coastguard), and he's also pretty good at kite surfing, being a BKSA qualified instructor, which brings us back to the subject.

The talk discussed the kinds of difficulties kite surfers are likely to face and what we as Coastguard Rescue Officers should do if we are tasked to a kite surfing incident, particularly how to bring the kite under control and how to prevent it from taking off again unexpectedly (no....no knives involved!) Matt and Darren from the lifeboat crew came along as this knowledge is useful to the RNLI too.

Afterwards we went outside to practice stopping a runaway kite and turning it upside down and into the wind to prevent it from flying away again, and I can honestly say there are no photographs anywhere of the Station Officer wrestling the kite and the kite winning. No, seriously, there aren't. Are there?

By the way, that 10 square metre kite behind Tom in the photo is worth about £1000, and if you want to know whose hand is just creeping into the shot far right, look here. The hand is probably worth about £30.

Thanks to Tom, not only for a thoroughly useful and enjoyable evening, but also for writing us a manual to keep on station so we don't have to pretend to remember everything he said.