How kitesurfing dreams come true. The dummy crash test (part 3)

by Emilie Marx
(Part 3/4)

My harness saved my precious bottom but didn’t save the back of my thigh, in which I spotted (but mostly felt) a whole family of spikes.

I’ve never managed to get them out and they are still happily living in my upper leg as I type (me and my sea urchins, a never ending love story….).
They kept me walking funny and making weird sounds when sitting for couple of weeks…

“Page 3: pick a big school of sea urchins and fully depower your kite just as your arse is on top of them.”
-Note that there are plenty of variables in terms of body parts and painful creatures….

I do feel the need though, after this awesome demonstration of my stupidity, to mention that the shot of the shark did come out…

Now, to go back to my “Kitesurfing for dummies” future publication, another good one I’ve done would be the one on page 57:
“Launch your kite just as a squall line shows on the horizon…”

Not very smart uh.

I forgot we were in the middle of hurricane season and that the fronts coming through no longer were the winter ones; our winter fronts are honestly quite gentle.

I remember how badly I would get blasted back in Sydney, I never had anything that violent over here.
In a year, I have not had to open my safety once because I was no longer touching the water. Our Caribbean fronts are quite nice and usually pretty short. They’re showers; you hang on two minutes and it’s done and over with….

I rarely come in if something is showing on the horizon: I usually go to safety far away from the shore in a place there’s nothing downwind from me, and then I hang on. I keep plenty of space to react should something go wrong, and so far, it never has….
Until the other day…

A magnificent squall line covering the whole horizon….
It did look evil and I did think I should put my kite down, but I was a bit too slow at making my mind up and by the time I got close to the shore, I felt the first gust; it was too late for me to self land safely…
So I went back to the deep, having a bit of a weird gut feeling; it was real dark under that cloud, and the first gusts I had felt where really strong….

I had zero time to think further: I suddenly felt my sail pulling me forward and up and went like a rocket, in a quite remarkable superman position, flying parallel with the water’s surface -some ten meters below.

I went airborne like a dummy as the wind rose to some 30 knots in half a second.

It happened so fast that the fishermen sitting on the shore almost had a heart attack watching me get slammed like a skimming stone across the bay.
I released right away, under tonnes of pouring rain.

Squall 1, Em 0.

Wondered afterwards if my guts were still up in my brain or if things had finally gone back to the right place….

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