I went to a site www.kiteship.com (it was mentioned in another thread)
I wanted to start a thread specifically on this topic. (not necessarily that brand)
Anybody tried it on a beachcat say an 18 foot bigger or smaller boat?
I haven't, but there is some guy who has tried every combination imaginable, including Stacks, i.e. many kites on one tether.
I'll try to find his link.
You are talking about Dave Culp, Speedsailing
http:/
He went to Speedweek in UK years ago.
There are stories about stacks of older-style power kites attached to cats and early kites to water skiis.
There is even an action photo of a mastless Tornado, "Jacob's Ladder" being pulled heavenward by a stack of power kites: the crew abandoned ship at about 20 feet (up).
I'm part of the regular crew onboard Afterburner...a 58 ft Blade Runner catamaran (New Zealand designed/built). We are expecting to recieve a kite from KiteShip 1st week of March and will be trying for the first time a week or so later. This is all in anticipation of the Newport to Ensenda Mx race later in April.
Should be a hoot!
Mike.
I wanted to start a thread specifically on this topic. (not necessarily that brand)
Anybody tried it on a beachcat say an 18 foot bigger or smaller boat?
Dave Culp is really getting his message trough I see..
The Farrier boat guys are testing them out now, and the term "chicken kite" has already ben used about a 30 square meters kite..
Would you care to tell us how big Afterburners kite will be ? I guess this is Bill Gibbs secret weapon against that 'new' ORMA 60 tri that has come to California 
Not sure of the size the kite will be...will post when I learn more. Bill has had a 8 sq.Meter practice kite for more than 1 year now...but has never had a practice session with it 😉 He did offer it to me to put on my Tornado...
Mike.
Dont think it will do you much good on your Tornado round the cans, but it would scare the bejesus out of the competition 
Looking forward to hear about your experiences with the big kite on Afterburner!
A. Outleader kites are designed for fully crewed boats. Their ability to fly without specialized custom winches and additional gear for [color] launch/recovery relies on the ability of the crew to handle 3 winches . On the other hand, we are learning tips and tricks to fly on fewer winches, and even on no winches at all. Under some conditions we fly with a single crew plus the helmsman. We are learning as much from our customers as we teach them. KiteShip Corporation represents OutLeader [color] kites as solutions for fully crewed boats.
This is from the FAQ page of the www.kiteship.com web site.
Surely this is the killer blow for these kites on a beachcat at the moment.
Ok, Bill stated this weekend the kite will be 2400 sq.ft. on Afterburner. Kite arrives today (3/1). Practice weekend will be 3/20.
Would you care to tell us how big Afterburners kite will be ? I guess this is Bill Gibbs secret weapon against that 'new' ORMA 60 tri that has come to California
Whow, that is a whopping 223 square meters if I'm not wrong.
It will be awesome if you release that beast in a breeze! I can just vizualise Afterburner getting airborne, flying 30 meters and then calmly lands before the gawking monohullers
I have done some kite skiing with a 6.4 square meters kite, and traction kites are really strong pullers.
Wonder what the jury and regatta people will say tough ? It sure measures in as a spinnaker, but I think they will have some comments about flying it in an 'unconventional' manner and kinetics.
Looking forward to hear more about Afterburners new gadget!
I saw some guys kite skiing on the St. Lawrence River outside Quebec City, Canada last week. I have no idea what speed they were doing but it looked like somewhere around fifty miles per hour.
Looked like a good thing for the cat!
I think there is a kite for kayaks, gotta be something in between.
We were by Dillon Lake, Colorado last week and watched 3 different people kite snow-boarding on Lake Dillon. The winds were fairly light and shifting. They spent lots of time on their butts, then would be jerked upright for a short run, only to fall back on their backside, waiting for the next gust to lift the kite off the snow. This would be a real pain on a boat, unless you have a nice steady breeze that an ocean might provide.
When we were in Hawaii a couple years ago, we watched a guy trying to get into the water (on his board) while hovering his kite above him. Either a gust came along or he mis-steered the kite, but he was dragged face-down up the beach, through some low brush and into someones back yard.
Maybe the versions for boating will require less skill to use??
Jack
kiteboarding is darwinism in effect. I'd know, my roommate is big into kiteboarding, and has "recruited" me on several occassions to follow him on the H17 in case he douses his kite and can't get it going again. I've picked him and his worthless kite crap up many many many times.
Then theres the picture of the kiteboarder who did a face plant into the front of a dodge van... thats amuzing.
I once heard a tale (second hand) about a guy in Charleston who was bound and determined to learn kiteboarding the hard way. Having found a great deal on a monster kite he decided that he needed to be cautious at first. He tied his harness to a big rock on the jetti so he could practice flying the kite without getting out of hand (this was before the modern safety release kits too). To people like us, the proper thing here would have been to get a small practice kite to start with. After getting things going, he had the kite down low and really pulling hard...guess what...string to rock breaks and he is launched down the beach.
Not bleeding too profusely yet (darwinism) he decided that his brusing and scrapes were a direct result of the rope being too weak, so this time he doubled it up. Because the single line to the front of his harness also tended to make him rotate, he tied the double lines from the jetti to the front of his harness - one around his left side, one around his right. The wind is honking now. As soon as the kite gets flying and POOF it yanks him up off the ground with the two strings holding him firmly to the jetti. The strings he tied around either side of him are now squeezing him terribly threatening to disembowl him. He's screaming for mercy when some good sumaritan puts a knife to the lines on the jetti....BOING! Down the beach, over the dune, and across the street he goes screaming the whole way.
The guy doing the kite sailing was telling this story to a friend of mine a day latter - I suppose he was trying to explain why he appeared so beat up.
I know I come off as a yahoo of sorts from time to time on here, but really, Jake's story is the kind I've come to know about kiteboarders and their relative risk/safety ratio calculations. To me it just seems like most of them don't have a respect or fear of the power of wind. Ironically, all the kiteboarders I've run across were wake boarders / getting dragged behind a motorboaters before dabbling in wind-powered devices.
Actually,, I have seen some skilled kite-boarders do some remarkable things. What mainly interests me is the technology though, and how that might trickle into our sport, eventually. I made that suggestion to some of our local sailors, as a part of a recent spinnaker seminar, just a month or so ago. There is some interesting footage on the aforementioned website, www.kiteship.com , worth checking out. It is only a matter of time until it has some impact, probably in open class distance racing.
It was not that long ago (well,, maybe 17 years ago), that an outstanding multi-hull sailor (who I respect very much) told me that spinnakers simply do not work on catamarans. They were a radical idea then. So, of course, I rushed right out and had my first chute cut !!
New idea's just take time,,,
Keep at least one hull in the air,,
Alan Maguire 
I have no doubt that it will impact catamarans eventually.
I just don't want to end up looking like the poor saps who have no idea what they're getting into 
Just found this on http://www.wetasschronicles.com (tim zim's website for those of you that read "The Race")
Reminded me of this thread. Story of a kiteboarder that hit the beach, and kept on going 😛
Big ole no thanks on the kites 
Maugan, if nobody ever wanted to be the poor sap trying something new, nothing new would ever happen.
I would love to get a kite to try with my Wave (as long as it is attached to the boat and not to me).
But one thing I don't understand is how do you launch it from the boat and get it to go up in the air? I have never had much luck with flying normal kites on land.
Mary,
From what I understand, that's the tricky part. The current 'boat type' kite sails have to be reeled in and out. If they drop the kite into the water while it's flying, they have to reel it back and relaunch it. The kiteboarders have some kites that are inflated with air and I believe they can be more easily water launched but getting them properly oriented without swiming to it can be difficult.
Just for the record there is a couple of Yahoo groups that discuss constructing these kites and a free program you can download for designing your own kite. (www.foilmaker.co.uk)
I am thinking about making one at some point.
The kites used on water for the guys with the surfboard, wakeboards etc., generally have a leading edge spar which is pumped up like a bicycle tube. This is so they stay afloat if they touch down. Normally they use a kite which is proportionately too large so they are a bit overpowered. A friend has one and he tells me that after a session of kiteboarding your Abs are pretty exhausted.
There are lots of kite makers out there. Ozone I hear is one of the better and Naish (Robby Naish of windsurfing fame) makes them. (his company) His dad was pretty heavily into Hobie Cats in his younger days.
Anyways the web is full of info on them.
I am buying a cat or I would be buying a kite for kitesking and or boarding. Can't have everything! Am buying some new living room furniture. Gotta be fair!
This saturday is first test/practice on 'burner with the 2400 sqft kite.
I will also be bringing my on-board tracking system (Ham radio hooked to a gps) to transmit our position in real time to the internet. To monitor our track, use the following link:
To see an aerial view of the region, use this link and click on the "Acme Map" link at the bottom of the page:
Expect to start seeing signals around 10 AM.
I should also mention that the tracking system is NOT reliable as an emergency locator as many things need to go right to get the signals out to the internet. Please don't hit the panic button if you see us "stop" and never move again...it's almost always a loss of the uplink for whatever reason.
Another kite incident.
(I know this thread has little to do with kitesurfing, I just don't want to start a whole new thread about it)
http:/
blown into a fish and chips restaurant no less.
I still wasn't totally turned off from the kite thing and was still willing to give it a whirl...but naaahhhh...on a cat or windsurfer, you only get wet if a gust like that grabs you. I'll leave the flying to birds and airplanes.
I note Mark Michaelson did not mention anything about using the power kite on the 52 foot cat Afterburner on their way to Ensenada last weeekend.
Following our kite test some weeks ago, we decided we needed more time to work our a few problems we had trying to get it to fly out in front of the boat. We were unable to get it out from the shadow of the huge mainsail, so it was not as stable as it needed to be. Owner (Bill Gibbs) will be testing more in the future...
Mike.
I've been helping our local einstein with his kite powered cat project. Can't reveal any design details but we had a lot of fun on the maiden voyage - here is what I posted on texascitydike.com
The kite-cat was dropped of the trailer on the sand at the water's edge, and the giant kite was stretched out in the sand with the help of all the curious spectators (which by this time inluded Tommy, his son Chris, Todd Gardener and John Warner). As soon as the kite was inflated we shot of the beach into the water like a drag racer! I got to steer whilst Paul controlled the kite. We made it out close to the range marker in less than 3 minutes! Every time we headed up and the kite hit the power zone it was like turning on the nitrous. Paul adjusted the kite and called orders to head up or down wind.
We then attempted the first jibe. This kinda went ok, but I didn't turn quick enough and the kite got very low to the water. When I headed up and the kite hit the power zone it buried the hulls and flung both of us into the water. As I was leaving the boat I grabbed the sea anchor - just as well cause with the kite not yet fully deflated the boat began to take off without us. We clambered aboard the turtled craft and began whooping and exchanging high-fives. The whole voyage was recorded on video by Paul's friend.
At this point I should point out that the chase boat hadn't shown up because the skipper was indisposed, so we were now reliant on my Hobie 18 SX for rescue and recovery - crewed by Todd G, Tommy and John Warner. They recovering the two of us and the kite. We left the kite-boat to drift while we off loaded folk back on the beach. Todd, Tommy and I then headed back out to right the stricken craft and tow it back. Well we never got it righted, and we found out the hard way that Hobie 18's make crap tow boats - it took around 3 hours to crab in against the wind to Curl's. Absolute top work by all involved in the recovery - especially Tommy who got a few knock's and bruises in the process.
Wow! Can't wait to see some details! I never thought about it but I bet it is nearly impossible to right a turtled catamaran without a mast on it. Perhaps some sort of system could be used to flood and sink one hull and then refill it by pumping in air? Perhaps this pumping capability would only be on the chase boat?
I was thinking the same thing about the two guys who went out unprepared in an off-shore gale on a Nacra 5.5 only to crash and burn and require coast-guard rescue (see previous thread).
Kite sailing is actually a lot of fun. Once you master control of the kite, which is best done on land with a smaller model, it adds a whole new dimension to wind-powered sports. Harder, to be sure, but really exciting. It also translates to winter use with skis or a snowboard. Of course you need to be proficient with this gear, too, so you don't end up crashing into stationary objects, but the potential is there to keep you into wind-powered activities year 'round with a minimum of extra gear.