First kitesurfing lesson! My friend is a kitesurfer and offered to teach me, today we were lucky to get some acceptable conditions however it was quite gusty at times.

It is a very hard sport to begin, most other sports you can start by doing basic things that are easy to do before working on skills to develop the sport; rock climbing you climb a wall, kayaking you sit in a kayak and you're floating, badminton you swing your arm and hit something.. but in kite surfing the basic level needs you to understand how to harness the wind to give you power and combine that with standing on a board in the water.

It's a steep learning curve.

Today I spent my time learning how to control the kite and how to get power from it. I was under the impression of you did nothing the kite would lose power and fall to the ground, meaning that it was pretty simple to make the situation safe should something go wrong, not the case. Even as a beginner you have to do certain actions or risk getting yanked into the air and sideways, it's quite powerful.

Later in the session we did body drags on land and in the water, a type of self recuse technique. Next lesson would be the refresher and then hopefully trying to stand on a board!