Serious Incident

[ricki]

I just heard about a serious incident involving a bystander. No one was severely injured or booked into a hospital but still it was pretty scary. Really don't want to go into more detail than that.

Point is we need to be very careful about flying kites near others. If your kite skills aren't all that solid or if your control is challenged by conditions, DON'T HAVE bystanders in the likely impact area downwind. If these means taking more quality lessons, waiting, moving, getting offshore and staying there or even driving to another launch, DO IT. If you see someone with bad practices like this, grab some friends and have as effective talk with him as you can.

Too often guys don't pay attention to this opening the door to problems. Stupid things like walking upwind of bystanders when you can just as easily pass on the downwind side, launching or landing with bystanders close to and downwind of lines, etc.. Human nature may have us ignore these simple precautions, don't fall into that trap. Have a care for the sake of our access.