By Joseph Carl Ruger
Kiteboarding has been around for almost thirty years, which is a relatively short amount of time, considering that it is now an Olympic sport. Though usually done on ocean beaches, it can also be enjoyed on some rivers and lakes. A few foreign English teachers started kiteboarding in Tainan exactly twenty years ago, which inspired a few brave Taiwanese men to buy the gear and learn the sport. They opened the first legal kitesurfing center at Golden Beach in 2004, just south of Tainan city, and promoted the sport island-wide. Within the next year, another shop opened in Zhunan, followed by a shop north of Hsinchu, a shop in Da an, north of the Taichung harbor, another shop in Beimen, northern Tainan, and the newest facility, in Yunlin. The Yunlin city government custom-designed an area exclusively for the sport.
Each location has coaches available to hire and gear to purchase or rent. All of these coaches are IKO certified and are well-skilled in instructing. Hank, in Beimen, has coached several foreign learners, as his English is spot on. Lessons are not cheap, so the sooner you gain your kite skills, the sooner you can save about one to two hundred US dollars a session. A set of brand-new gear will set you back around US$2500, but the second-hand market here in Taiwan is robust, so getting set up could cost you half that.
Learning to windsurf is difficult, as you need to balance standing on the board, getting the sail up, and gaining momentum. Falling repeatedly and crawling back on the board is the price you must pay to learn this activity. Kiteboarding is much easier than windsurfing to learn. First learn to fly the kite, which is quite thrilling, and then learn how to use it to drag your body through the water. Followed by learning to get on the board, followed by learning to go upwind.
After living here for fifteen years and taking several trips to Korea to snow ski, I found the perfect replacement sport, that I could enjoy almost daily since I lived near the beach and had a flexible schedule.
I got into the sport in 2003 and encouraged anyone and everyone I met to learn how to “kite”. I was 42 at the time, relatively fit, and enthusiastic enough to learn on my own, with pointers from my two other kiteboarding friends.
I hope this article, and the videos and pictures, encourage my fellow expats to consider learning to Kite. I’ve coached many friends and acquaintances over the years and a few of them have fallen in love with kiteboarding and made it a part of their lives. I’ve also wasted a lot of time trying to teach some folks who are simply not cut out for this kind of extreme sport. For the last ten years or so, I’ll only coach people who buy their own gear and are determined to learn. My response to someone who says that they want to “try it”, is to say that when they were a child and saw a bicycle, did they say that they wanted to try it, or learn how to ride it?
