1998
I
t was the summer of ‘98, at the ripe age
of eight, that I first discovered
kiteboarding. I had been flipping through
the pages of Windsurf Magazine when
an article caught my eye. A new sport,
kiteboarding, the latest and greatest sister
sport of windsurfing. It wasn’t long after that
when my dad (known to most as Dano) and
I got our first kites, Concept Air Traction X
foil kites with handles. For our board, we
moved the foot straps around on one of
our windsurfing boards to create something
like a directional kiteboard. Except it was
massive at 7’0”.
Everyday came baby steps of progression
and I guess that’s what kept us going at
it. Even getting to ride a couple extra feet
each day was enough to stoke us out. In
the beginning we didn’t know how to jibe,
so Dano and I would take turns ripping way
out until we crashed and then swam back
to shore, wet and crumpled foil kite in hand.
After a season of drowning kites, we
invested in our first inflatable, an 8.5m
Wipika Classic. A two-line beast. There
were no instructional kiteboarding VHS
tapes for this thing so, after some trial and