Kiteboarders Grab Wind, Waves From Angry Windsurfers in Baja

From: Chwee Chua (chwee.chua@businessobjects.com-DeleteThis.com)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2002 - 10:58:11 PST


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From: Chwee Chua <chwee.chua@businessobjects.com-DeleteThis.com>
To: "'wind_talk@opus.labs.agilent.com-DeleteThis.com'" <wind_talk@opus.labs.agilent.com-DeleteThis.com>
Subject: Kiteboarders Grab Wind, Waves From Angry Windsurfers in Baja
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 10:58:11 -0800
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Seems like just a puff piece on kiteboarding...
-chwee
**********************************************************

By JOE BARRETT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

LA VENTANA, Mexico -- Just feet off the shore of this dusty Baja fishing
village 1,000 miles south of the order, windsurfer Travis Brownwood recently
collided with the future.

Actually, it landed on top of him.

"I didn't see the guy," says the 25-year-old native of Bend, Ore., who has
camped here for the past eight winters. "It came right down on me. It hit me
and my gear right into the water."

Mr. Brownwood had been struck by a half-moon-shaped kite attached by
100-foot lines to a young man who was about to step onto something that
looks like a snowboard. It's called a kiteboard, and it's the latest thing
in wind-powered water sports.

Though he was unhurt and the student kiter was apologetic, Mr. Brownwood
says he ranted at the student's instructor. "It's a big lake out there," he
says. "It's a big ocean. That there are problems like this, it's just
disrespectful."

Kiteboarders are landing on the world's best windsurfing beaches, setting up
a big water fight. About two years ago, two kiters briefly closed down a
busy windsurfing spot in Hood River, Ore., by stretching out their lines end
to end as they prepared to
launch themselves. After that, local authorities limited where the kiters
can launch.

Similar tussles in Maui resulted in Hawaiian kiteboarders relocating to a
beach by an airport. On the Caribbean island of Aruba, the heads of the four
local windsurfing centers got together last year to lay down the law:
Kiteboarders are allowed on the
water only before 10 a.m. and after 5 in the afternoon, except at one beach.
"You can't mix them, and that's all," says Roger Jurrien, owner of Roger's
Windsurf Place on Aruba.

It isn't just that the kiteboarders' long lines take up more space at launch
sites and on the water. Or that the kiteboarders can be dangerous to
themselves and others.

What really galls windsurfers is how easy everything seems to come for
kiters. It takes years to become proficient at windsurfing. That sport,
which involves sailing on a modified surfboard, requires strength and great
skill because the boards are unstable at low speeds and the sails are heavy.
In less than a season, kiters can be flying five to 10 feet above the water,
twisting, turning and flipping -- and sometimes even landing back on the
boards strapped to their feet. Experts can soar 50 feet into the air, glide
gently back down to the water and head out for more.

Windsurfers have spent years finding beaches, negotiating for launch sites
and cleaning up trash to create campgrounds. Now the kiters are moving in,
with their odd contraptions and gut-wrenching moves.

"Kiteboarding is mainly just to get some air, just to do some jumps," says
Mr. Jurrien. The sport lacks the technical expertise, the years of
knowledge, required of windsurfing, he says. "You're hanging onto a kite.
That's the bottom line. Guys that do it a long time, they'll get bored with
it."

The kiters see things differently. "It's the pinnacle of board sports,"
combining elements of skateboarding, snowboarding, windsurfing and surfing,
says David Tyburski, director of New Wind Kiteboarding Schools here and in
Hood River. "It's the culmination of everything good from every sport,
blended with a whole new dimension."

Invented in France about 10 years ago, kiteboarding made it to North
American shores about five years later. Like snowboarding for the ski
industry more than a decade ago, it is being hailed as the key to
reinvigorating an industry that had aging demographics.

But here in Southern Baja -- a string of small windsurfing and sport-fishing
resorts and campgrounds running down the coast of the Sea of Cortez from La
Paz to Cabo San Lucas -- some windsurfers feel that they are being
sacrificed for the industry's resurrection.

While kiteboarders generally launch themselves above and below the
long-established windsurfing campground where Mr. Brownwood stays, the two
sports share the same water. "It's too anarchic for me," says Christine
Knowles, 56, of Hood River, who has spent the last four winters here and has
been windsurfing for 20 years. "You look at those lines and you know you
could lose a nose or an ear."

The most serious accidents -- or "kitemares" -- have involved kiters hurting
themselves. Last month, a kiter just above La Ventana was lifted into the
air and slammed onto a rocky beach, seriously injuring his back. Last
winter, another kiter was dragged across the beach in front of the
campground, striking a boulder and shattering his nose. Both accidents
involved inexperienced kiters in situations they couldn't handle, says Mr.
Tyburski.

Windsurfers are keeping a wary eye on the newcomers. Art and Judy Phemister
sat one recent afternoon sipping Dos Equis beer on their beachfront
campsite. They drove 2,000 miles from their home in Underwood, Wash., to
winter here. With potluck dinners, volleyball and windsurfing, "it's like
summer camp for adults," says Mr. Phemister, 60, who works part time at
Northwave Sails in Hood River.

Initially, the kiters didn't pose a problem, says Mrs. Phemister, 58. They
sailed only in light winds and tended to launch downwind of the campground
-- and they stayed downwind. Now, as kiters get better at working against
the wind -- and sailing in higher winds -- they are making their way up to
the campground and heading out on days when windsurfers once had the water
to themselves. "As they get better, they'll want more and more challenges,"
she says.

While a few kiters have stayed in camp, and even some of the old windsurfing
hands have tried kiting, an undercurrent of tension prevails. "There's a
kind of proselytizing attitude," says Mr. Phemister. "Kiters want everyone
to be kiters."

He'll get no argument from Keith Adams and Rondi Ballard, staying down the
beach at Baja Joe's, a small hotel that has become a haven for kiteboarders.
One recent afternoon, they sat, toes in the sand, by an open-air bar that
has a "Got Tequila?" sign, while they waited for a good wind.

Mr. Adams, 42, is taking a year off from serving as chief financial officer
of a string of high-tech companies in San Francisco. He had been a
windsurfer for eight years when he tried kiting last May during a trip to
Sonora Bay, Mexico.

"I got hooked the second day," he says. "I was out in the water with no
board. And pretty soon, I'm 15 feet in the air. How many sports can a
42-year-old say on the second day, 'I felt like a teenager'?"

He has made his windsurfing friends an offer: He will arrange a weekend of
kiteboard training. By Monday, he figures, they will be ready to sell their
windsurfing equipment -- most have several boards, booms, masts and a
complement of sails for various winds. On Tuesday, they can sell their SUVs,
because they won't need a big rig to haul their kiteboards around. They are
still considering the proposal.

"I drive a BMW 323," says Ms. Ballard, a 32-year-old digital artist from Los
Angeles. "It's this little sports car, and I can get all my gear in the
trunk."

Two seasons ago, windsurfer Michelle Koff, 50, of Sebastopol, Calif., came
close to losing an ear when she helped a kiter relaunch near her winter
beach house just south of here. As she struggled to untangle the lines, the
kite suddenly surged to life, ripping off an earring and leaving her
bleeding. The retired telecommunications and computer-science specialist,
who windsurfs about 10 months a year at various spots between Hood River and
Baja, was put off by the sport after that. "That was the first time I felt
the power of the kite," she says.

She has steered clear of kites on the water. Until, that is, a few weeks
ago, when a kiteboarder offered her a ride on his back, just to give her a
taste of the sport.

And so she found herself wading into the water and hooking her belt-like
windsurfing harness into the kiteboarder's gear, holding onto his shoulders
and wrapping her legs around his waist. Almost instantly, the kite pulled
the pair out of the water and sent them skittering across the surface of the
sea.

"It was a hoot," she says. She isn't selling her windsurfing gear, but now
she can see kiting in her future.

"I called my husband and said, 'I've gone to the dark side.' "

Write to Joe Barrett at joseph.barrett@wsj.com-DeleteThis.com

Updated March 11, 2002 10:11 a.m. EST

* Chwee Chua
Staff Consultant
Western Region

* Business Objects Americas
Phone: 408-953-6089
Mobile: 408-464-4716
Email: cchua@businessobjects.com-DeleteThis.com



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