KITE TRACTION, THE FUTURE

My purpose in publishing this account is threefold.
*       To give the field of Kitesailing (land and water) the beginnings of a
        theoretical framework as an assistance and focus for other
        designers.
*       To encourage new designers to take up the excitement and
        challenge of kitesailing research by depicting some of the
        evolutionary processes through which some current designs have
        come.
*       To give current and future kite buggy and kitesailer users some
        basic equipment and technique data.

The future for kite traction, buggies and boats is now more secure.  The
great problems of inadequate kite performance, inadvertant kite crashes
and (boats only) lack of an on-the-water kite launching system look like
being solved before the world gets bored and finds some new more
exciting recreation.  Buggying has a secure future, I can already detect
that, as a sport, it is developing a life of its own.
A worldwide organisation will be necessary but will no doubt get itself
formed at the right and proper time.
Kitesailing is less secure, at present it can be a fairly difficult and
unsatisfactory activity - kite launching and getting started problems,
kites falling out of the sky with no way to relaunch except by paddling
back to land, inadequate speed (relative to potential).  Still,
developments already in the pipeline from myself and others look like
making these problems of the past. We have at least good starting point
and if progress continues as rapidly for the next few years as it has for
the last few, kitesailing will become the new water/wind recreation.

See you in the sky.

Peter Lynn, Ashburton, New Zealand
September 1992