The Kiteboarding Handlebar

Video Transcript

"In this clip, we're going to talk about the basic evolution of the kite surfing bar and how to properly maintain the ones that we use today. Back in the day, they used to use two line bars, which actually pretty much just attached straight to the wingtips and once you're hooked in that was pretty much it. You were attached to a loaded gun. There was no way to de-power that kite. Now that we've actually created ways to de-power the kite and, you know, it's created just a much more user-friendly atmosphere and a much safer atmosphere around the entire sport. There's a phrase we use nowadays with the new bars, it's just "when in doubt, let it out." The bars feature a 100% de-power, so it's got a huge amount of sheeting kind of like a sail. If there's too much pocket in the kite, you can pretty much just push out on the bar and you know it's going to dump all that wind. The thing is with the bar though, because you have that sheeting capability now, you have a line that goes through the center of your bar here because you're constantly pushing in and out on it, it's going to experience a good amount of wear and tear. So one sort of general thing that you can use to, you know, make sure that your bar and mainly this line right here, which is called the chicken loop line, is going to stay solid is if you just take some surf wax, rub it on before you actually go out for a session. It's going to make sure that these fibers stay all together and it's just going to protect them a little bit better. I personally ride my kites every day it's windy and, thank God, I live in a windy spot. But I need to change these out pretty much about every three to four months. You know, it's kind of unfortunate and it's a bit of a hassle, but I'd rather do that than find myself out there and all of a sudden it comes apart and kitemare, boom, deal with it. So, you know, general bar maintenance, any time you are going out you want to check your lines, you want to make sure there's not any kind of knot in here. These lines are actually 800 and 600 pound test, but one single knot in these lines can reduce the strength of it by 60%. So all of a sudden, you're dangling from sixty feet up and one line snaps, boom, that kite's just going to drop you like a brick. So, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Check your gear, because if you don't it will fail on you and you will not be a happy camper. So, bar maintenance, keep it up."