Kitesurfing Glossary: Every Term a Beginner Actually Needs

Kitesurfing has its own language, and most of it is thrown at you in your first hour on the beach. This glossary collects the terms that actually come up — grouped by topic rather than alphabetically, so you can find the one you half-heard your instructor say. Beginner or returning rider, it should make the jargon stop getting in the way.

Directions and points of sail

Beach start — starting from the shore, using the kite's power to get moving from standing on land.

Boost — being lifted into the air, either deliberately as a jump or unintentionally in a gust.

Upwind — the direction the wind is coming from. Riding upwind means gaining ground towards it.

Downwind — the direction the wind is going. Easy to drift there, hard to come back.

Crosswind — travelling roughly perpendicular to the wind. This is where most riding happens.

Port tack — riding with the wind on your left side, left foot forward.

Starboard tack — riding with the wind on your right side, right foot forward.

Tacking — working upwind in a zigzag, since you cannot ride directly into the wind.

Controlling the kite and the board

Riding upwind — the skill of gaining ground against the wind. It is the dividing line between a beginner and an independent rider: until you have it, someone has to walk you back up the beach.

Depower — reducing the kite's pull by pushing the bar away from you. Your primary tool for handling gusts, and the one beginners forget under pressure.

Sheeting in — pulling the bar towards you to increase power. The opposite of depowering.

Planing — the point at which the board lifts and skims on the surface instead of ploughing through the water.

Edging — tilting the board onto its edge to resist the kite's pull and hold a line upwind.

Grab — taking hold of the board with your hand during a jump.

Death loop — an uncontrolled, repeating kite loop that keeps generating power. This is what the safety release exists for.

Overpowered — riding with too much kite for the wind strength. Uncomfortable at best, dangerous at worst; the fix is a smaller kite, not more courage.

Underpowered — not enough power to plane. Frustrating, but harmless.

Riding styles

Body dragging — moving through the water with the kite but no board. It is how you retrieve a lost board, and skipping it is the most common gap in self-taught riders.

Freeride — riding for the pleasure of it, no competition format, no rules. What most people do most of the time.

Freestyle — unhooked tricks, rotations and board-offs, usually on flat water.

Big air — going as high as possible. Its own discipline, with its own competitions.

Wave riding / strapless — surfing waves with a directional board, often without foot straps.

Foiling — riding a hydrofoil board that lifts clear of the water. Works in far less wind than a twintip.

Wind

Wind window — the area of sky, roughly a quarter-sphere downwind of you, in which the kite can fly. Everything about kite control comes back to this.

Power zone — the part of the window directly downwind where the kite generates the most pull. Fly the kite through it to accelerate.

Edge of the window — the boundary of the window, where the kite sits with almost no pull. Your parking space.

Zenith — the top of the window, directly overhead. The neutral position you return to when in doubt.

Apparent wind — the wind you actually feel, combining true wind with the wind created by your own movement. It is why a kite pulls harder once you are moving.

Wind shadow — a zone of weakened, turbulent wind behind an obstacle such as a building, headland or tree line.

Gust and lull — a temporary increase and decrease in wind strength. Gusts, not average wind speed, are what decide whether a day is comfortable.

Onshore — wind blowing from the sea towards the beach.

Offshore — wind blowing from the land out to sea. Never learn in offshore wind — equipment failure means being blown out to sea, and it is the single most dangerous configuration in the sport.

Cross-shore — wind blowing parallel to the beach. Cross-onshore — the safest common configuration and the one good schools teach in.

Light wind — marginal conditions, typically under 12 knots, where you need a big kite or a foil.

Knot — the unit wind is measured in. One knot is 1.85 km/h. Kitesurfing thinks in knots, so learn to as well — see our guide to reading a wind forecast.

Water

Flat water — smooth, wave-free water, usually in a lagoon or a sheltered bay. Ideal for learning and for freestyle.

Chop — small, short wind-driven waves. Normal riding conditions at most spots.

Swell — organised waves generated by distant weather, as opposed to local chop.

Shore break — waves breaking directly onto the beach. The tricky part of launching and landing at some spots.

Equipment

Kite — the inflatable wing that converts wind into lift and pull, letting you ride, jump and glide.

Bar — the control bar you steer with, connecting you to the lines.

Bridle — the web of short lines on the kite that holds its shape and distributes load.

Leading edge (LE) — the inflated front tube of the kite that gives it structure.

Trailing edge — the rear edge of the canopy.

Struts — the inflated ribs running from leading edge to trailing edge. Fewer struts means lighter; more means stiffer.

Power lines / front lines — the two lines carrying most of the load, connected to the leading edge.

Steering lines / back lines — the lines that turn the kite when you rotate the bar.

Chicken loop — the loop on the bar that hooks into your harness, taking the load off your arms.

Quick release — the mechanism that dumps the kite's power instantly. Practise finding it blind; you will need it eventually.

Leash — the safety line connecting you to the kite after a release, so it does not blow away.

Harness — the seat or waist harness that transfers the kite's pull to your body instead of your arms.

Twintip — a symmetrical board you can ride in either direction. The standard beginner and freeride board.

Directional — a surfboard-style board ridden in one direction, used for waves.

Pads and straps — the footbeds and foot bindings on a twintip.

Aspect ratio — the ratio of a kite's span to its chord. High aspect means more efficiency and upwind ability; low aspect means more stability and easier handling.

One-pump — an inflation system connecting all struts to the leading edge, so the whole kite inflates through one valve.

Learning and safety

IKO — the International Kiteboarding Organization, whose certification is recognised at rental centres worldwide. See IKO levels explained.

Self-rescue — packing down the kite on the water and using it as a sail to get back to shore. Taught on every proper course, and the reason to take a proper course.

Right of way — the rules of who yields to whom on the water. The starboard-tack rider has priority; the upwind rider keeps their kite low, the downwind rider keeps theirs high.

Kitemare — the community's word for an incident that went badly. Almost always traceable to wrong conditions, wrong kite size or missing training.

Knowing the vocabulary will not put you on the water, but it will stop you nodding along to instructions you have not understood — and that alone speeds up learning. Come and use it in practice: kitesurfing lessons in Mui Ne.