ASNews Thurs: Do It or Lose It — Act Now to Preserve Access

This Week:

Last week, a bill went before the Hawaiian Senate (no kiters or windsurfers within 200 feet of any surfer or swimmer) which could have been devastating to local and visiting kiteboarders and windsurfers to Oahu and Maui, not to mention the entire windsports industry. Simultaneously, kiteboarding was just banned at Pompano Beach in Florida, and Fort Lauderdale is currently under jeopardy too. Sites that have been closed or are under scrutiny typically share one common theme: irresponsible riding or lack of respect for other water users by a single rider or very small group.

Our guests on this week’s ASNews.net and The Kiteboarder podcast are Martin Kirk from Maui and Neil Hutchinson from Florida. Both are passionate advocates of safe kiteboarding practices who have worked hard to open, save and preserve access in their respective areas. Both also have some very strong feelings about what we as kiteboarders, both individually and collectively, need to do to so we and others can enjoy kiteboarding for many years to come.

Neil went as far as to propose the following:

1. Any of my sponsored riders breaking rules will lose their sponsorship or hook up.
2. Any of my existing customers breaking rules, I will no longer sell to them.
3. Any known rider breaking rules will not buy a kite from me and I will discourage my dealers to sell to them also.
4. I have not and will not sell a kite to anyone that has not taken lessons and does not know how to kite.
5. Any known rider breaking rules will not be allowed at my beach (no violence of course but we all know that if we take a hardline backed by our peers, most reasonable people will get the picture)

Hopefully other dealers and companies will do the same.

This is what I think we should all do:
1. Everyone needs to be a policeman in our their own community.
2. Set a strict example to new people coming into the sport.
3. Do not just try to police it on the beach — if all else fails after trying to reasonably deal with irresponsible riding or lack of consideration for others, let’s name names on the forums and make examples of people, letting everyone know who is responsible for getting us all shut down. If you are breaking rules or got somewhere banned, you deserve to be publicly exposed everywhere.

On all forums, kiters worldwide are very fast at criticizing company’s products for all to read, why do we not criticize kiters who are screwing it up for all of us?

Sponsors: ASNews.net, SlingShot Kiteboarding, fubar.com

Show #104

(1:32:14Min. – 21.2MB)