Sensi Graves taking her lingo literally. Photo: Vincent Bergeron.
This is a guest post by Dirtbag Darling Ambassador Sensi Graves. Check out her profile and get to know her!
Learning a new sport can be intimidating, especially when you aren’t even vaguely familiar with the terms being thrown around. Before you take your first kiteboarding lesson (yes, you need a qualified lesson from an instructor!), you have to know some lingo. Trust me—you’ll have enough on your mind to think about once you get a kite in your hands.
Body Dragging: Being pulled through the water without your board. This lets you retrieve your board and move through the water to reposition yourself.
Boosting: Sending the kite across the wind window so that it pulls you off the water and enables you to jump high!
Bridle: The lines on the kite that enable you to control the entire thing with the bar.
Chicken bone/donkey dick/safety pin: The “stick” that secures your chicken loop to your harness hook.
Chicken loop: The loop on the bar of the kite that you secures you to your kite via the hook on your harness.
Downwind: The direction that the wind is going to. Travel with the wind (wind at your back).
Badass (noun): This professional kiteboarder who owns her own swimwear company. Photo: Vincent Bergeron.
Freestyle: A type of kiteboarding that involves jumps, handle passes and utilizing the power of the kite to generate lift.
Gusty: Momentary increases and/or decreases of the wind that makes for less smooth riding.
Harness: Worn around the waist. Your connection to the kite that takes all the power and keeps you in control.
Jacked/Lit/Over-Powered: When you have plenty of power in the kite—it can be too much.
Kiteloop: A powered circular kite move that generates a lot of forward pull.
Kitemare: A kiteboarding situation that has gone wrong and involves an accident or mishap. Always kite with a buddy!
Kook: A kiteboarder that approaches the support with overconfidence and earnest and often hinders the safety of himself or those around him.
Lull: A drop in the wind.
Pump: Inflates your kite.
Nuking: Strong winds.
Slogging/Under-powered: Not having enough power in your kite, and having to move your kite a lot to generate board speed.
Sensi Graves says the first step in kiteboarding is knowing how to talk the talk. Photo: Vincent Bergeron.
Tacking: How you maneuver back and forth across the water. The wind is always at your back.
Tea-bagging: Skipping across the water, out of control.
Twin-tip: The most common board that allows you to kite back and forth without having to spin your board around
Un-hooked: How in-air maneuvers, such as handle passes and flips, are done.
Upwind: The direction that the wind is coming from. Travel against the wind.
Wind Window: The area that the kite is able to fly. The window is a half of a sphere with your back as the edge of the window. The kite can’t fly behind you.
Want to learn more? Look for our “how to get into kiteboarding” article coming soon!
The post All the Words You Need To Know To Try Kiteboarding appeared first on Dirtbag Darling.