new thread, skim kiting help?

Portland Pete · Since 08 Mar 2005 145 Posts HR Stoked

any kite skimmers out there ?
I am now addicted, less than 10 sessions on skim
and would like to learn how to do more than go back and forth

Forrest gave me good tips on jibing/jumping
see other thread (near bottom)
http://www.nwkite.com/forums/t-4867.html

any other resources out there ?
or what a good progression of tricks would be for beginners.
I watched Tybo this winter in LaVentana and the Shinn Videos online.

I have zero skateboarding background so all the lingo is new to me
Thanks

OK, back to work
Pete

forrest · Tue Jun 12, 07 8:57 am

I think the first thing you want to learn to do is learn how to move your feet around on the board. I do this by twisting my feet back and forth quickly to reduce friction and slide my feet.

Then I would focus on toeside riding. Next you should focus on turns (heelside to toeside, and toeside to heelside) which I still struggle with.

I have a ton of skateboarding and wakeskating background so the more technical stuff is easier for me but the turns are hard. I should get another wake skate.

gabe · Since 16 May 2005 475 Posts Obsessed

You’ll probably find a lot of info doing a search of “skim” here or on kiteforum, because it’s discussed every time someone gets into it. There are a couple different directions you can take skimming. Light wind cruising is the common way, but that’s kind of an insult to it. My take has always been more of a surfy freeride in high wind and big swells, which the gorge is great for. Most high level skimming is the flat water skim and skate tricks that Forrest is talking about. Tyberski is really good to watch for that. If you kite at the sandbar a lot, that makes sense because the flat water works with that style. And with the shallow water you can ride underpowered and fall a lot without much hassle. People with a skating background always seem to get the most into this.

10 sessions skimming is already a lot of water time so you may already have really solid fundamentals. I think my ~6th time on a skim I went to rufus on one of the classic 7m days (in the c kite era) and had one of the most inspiring and influential (but challenging) sessions of my life. I think the best way to get better fundamentals is to kite in stronger and stronger wind and some of the big nasty chop/vertical swell stuff. 1-2 days of that and you get totally comfortable on the board. I’m a big believer in just learning good fundamentals, even if it delays learning some tricks.

Heelside/toeside carves are a lot of fun on a skim. The whole key is to move your front foot to the new rail before you set the toeside edge. This is because the board is so wide, and with no fins. You need pressure on the rail that’s in the water. The tricky part is being able to move your foot while powered up, but you get used to it. It’s important to sweep the kite low when you do these carving transitions (so you can keep pressure on the rail.) On c kites I always used to downloop the kite for these. On SLEs, it doesn’t matter as much. Riding downwind is usually the most fun in swells. Make sure you move your back foot far back to avoid pearling the nose. In really strong wind, the key with downwind riding is to edge away from the kite in the big gusts. It’s impossible to edge it up, so you edge away to reduce the line tension. Also, if you begin outrunning the kite and the lines slacken, you can do the same thing. You will slow down, but not drop the kite. This downwind blasting is really fun on the nuker days but sometimes you go so fast that it’s impossible to set the edge at all. That’s when you crash hard.

When you aren’t at thrill capacity from the wind or swell, loop the kite for a blast of acceleration. This teaches you a lot about handling the speed and power and is really exciting at first. Later, you can loop your kite on the swell, do an unwind loop, and keep playing this way. This is one of my favorite things to do on really big glassy swells, or if you just want to see how much wind you can loop in without blowing up. Just make sure you always complete the loop, even when flying off the board. It was more exciting with c kites. With small flat kites I tend to do a lot of sissy pivot loops now, but that way you can do a lot of them, even in stronger wind, and just incorporate them into your normal riding technique. It’s not really a trick anymore.

Jumping. It’s much easier to learn this with a strapless board with fins rather than a skim. Learning to air off chop/ramps and keep the board with you is probably the first step. Later you can try doing the pure ollies in flat water but that’s a lot harder. With all the ramps in the gorge I don’t bother. I think ollies with a kite involve a lot of edge/pop like a twintip and aren’t all about pressing the tail. My sense is that grabbing the board is more of light wind technique, because in high winds it isn’t necessary and wouldn’t really do much anyways. Depends what you’re after. I avoided jumping for a long time because my boards didn’t seem wells suited to it and I didn’t believe decent jumps were possible, but this is now my favorite thing in the right conditions. But it’s way harder on a real skim.

Jibing. Lots of ways to do it. I personally jibe it just like a surfboard, which is good because it all builds to a common skill. But I don’t know if I could have learned it on a skim at first—much better on a surfboard at first. Lots of people seem to like the spin technique. I’ve heard it mentioned more than I’ve seen it in person, so don’t really know how well it’s working for them, but this video shows a very good execution of a pop shuvit, and this is a technique that I would like to learn: http://www.skyte.co.uk/D2D/mov/infoL29MOV/Skim_Labouir2.wmv It’s fluid and he maintains speed the whole way.

Here are some other nice videos of the skim pioneers from Oahu.
http://www.kiteforum.tv/index.php?option=com_videos&task=download&id=952&Itemid=31
http://www.kiteforum.tv/index.php?option=com_videos&task=download&id=951&Itemid=31

I actually don’t ride my skim that often anymore, but I really liked the learning process when I got into it, and the skills made learning other boards really easy.

forrest · Tue Jun 12, 07 3:35 pm

gabe · Since 16 May 2005 475 Posts Obsessed

here's another video. he's gotten almost too good to actually learn from.
http://www.kiteforum.tv/component/option,com_videos/task,show/id,1456/Itemid,30/

for strapless surfboard: http://www.kiteforum.tv/component/option,com_videos/task,show/id,1457/Itemid,30/ it's quicktime. the jump at the very very end is incredible.

forrest · Thu Jun 14, 07 9:17 am

So yesterday I spent some time learning transitions from heal to toeside and toeside to heal side. Pretty fun and it's all about moving your foot before you turn just like Gabe said.

Also tried some kick flips and pop shovits but my Victoria foamie just flies away when the wind hits it.

If there are any board builders out there that would like to build a skimboard wakeskate combo out of Maple or Birch, I have a pretty good idea of what I want:

http://www.wakeskating.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2317

Only less rocker...