A Guide To Kitesurfing Gear

Hello, I'm Thomas from the Kitesurf Centre. Today, I'm just going to show you a couple of tips on how to fly a kite and how to get into these brilliant sports of kite flying. This is a guide to kitesurfing gear and what you need to get into the sports or the equipment that's going to take you out to kitesurfing.

So first of all, we need to get our body sorted out so we're going to need a wetsuit for the UK. So, you get two different thicker suits, something like this, a bit thinner, 2-millimetre, 3-millimetere on the arm, or a nice thick suit like this one or this one where you got 5 mil on the body, really nice and warm, good all-around suit for most of the year and it's going to see you through the winter and the colder months. Next thing we're going to need is a harness to take the kite at par.

So we got two types, we've got a waist harness and we've got a seat harness with these leg straps. So, it's personal preference. It's usually in the beginning, you might want the seat harness so it's not going to ride up so much but it's up to you.

You really go there to go and try those on in your local shop, so is the wetsuit, try and get a nice fit with those. Next thing, we need some kites. So, here are some kites here.

We've got loads of different sizes, loads of different types. Good ones to go for, nothing too old because the kites have changed a lot in the last few years. So we're in 2011 nearly, with the kites equipment, we don't want to get anything really 2008, 2009, stay within two years.

Yearly, the kite's going to start to get worn, so get something newish if you look in second hand, otherwise you can get something new. We've got a lot of different sizes of kites. So, try and pick the kite size for your body weight and your average wind strength.

So in the UK, a good average sized kite is a 10-meter or if you're lighter, perhaps a 9-meter or even an 8-meter if you're really small. The other important bit about our kite is our bar lines. So usually if you buy a kite package brand new, you're going to get your bar lines.

If you're looking for some second-hand stuff, try and get one with bar lines. It's much and much easier in trying to find something set. But if not, most four-line kites will fly up on most four-line bars.

It might be a little bit of tweaky but you can always go to your local kite shop and I'm sure they'd be happy to have a look at that sort of style for you. The other really important thing is our board. This is your basic kitesurf board.

Really nice outline, so that's going to get going well, wide shaped, and we've got these fins on the base. So they just help with the grip and stop it being too slidy. We've got the feather straps here to put your feet in and a nice handle to carry the board and put it on our feet.

So you see here, we've got a load of different types of boards, all different types for the surfboard, the skim board, the wake style boards with these boots, but when you're starting out, stick with something like this. It's a perfect all-rounder. It's going to take you a few years including all conditions really.

Apart from that, some safety things perhaps, so a good thing to look at for when you're learning, perhaps a helmet to keep you out of danger and maybe some buoyancy, so perhaps a buoyancy aid or you might want to look into an impact vest a little more slim-lined, a bit more manoeuvrability, but you still got that buoyancy there. So, that's pretty much it for our kitesurfing gear and that's a quick guide to it. .