History of Kiteboarding

Kiteboarding is a surface water sport that employs the use of a kite and a board to propel a rider across the water. The development of Kiteboarding gear, and the use of kites as propulsion traces back to the 13th century.

Kiteboarding refers to one style of riding known as freestyle or wake style that makes use of a board that can be with or without foot straps that is combined with the power of the kite to propel the rider across the water. The board used for Kiteboarding is similar to a wakeboard.

During the early 1800s, George Pocock, an English teacher and inventor of the Charvolant, a kite-drawn carriage became dearly interested in kites at a very young age. So he developed a way to use large kites of different shapes and sizes, to propel carts on land and ships on water. Pocock made use of a famous 4-line control system, the one that is also used today.

His intention of creating this innovative means of propelling carts and ships, was to come up with an alternative to horsepower, to avoid the horse tax that was levied during that time. His invention was successful and enabled all sorts of carts and ships to be transported from one destination to the other.

In 1903, Samuel Cody, an early pioneer of aviation, became famous for creating the largest kites that were used in World War I. He developed “man-lifting kites” that he used successfully to cross the English channel in a small canvas boat.

Throughout the years, the use of kites as propelling force, as well as in sports and leisure has been brought to the limelight. More and more people thought of ways on how to make kites ever more useful.

In 1990, Peter Lynn pioneered the practical kite buggy, a light, purpose-built vehicle powered by a traction kite or power kite. It can seat one person and has a steering wheel. Kite buggying became very popular worldwide, selling over 14,000 different types of kite buggies in the year 1999 alone.

In the succeeding years, another type of vehicle powered by a kite was introduced by father and son Bill and Corey Rooseler. The two introduced the system of the KiteSki that consisted of water skis powered by a two line delta style kite controlled via a bar mounted wind brake. The KiteSki became available in 1994 and became even more famous because of its ability to go upwind.

In the year 1996, Laird Hamilton, an American big-wave surfer, together with Manu Bertin, one of the pioneers of kite surfing demonstrated and popularized kitesurfing off the Hawaiian coast of Maui. Since then, several specialist kite developers came up with their own versions of kites that are widely used at present.

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