The sun is shining bright outside and once again I’m sat inside typing away at the computer, but outside my window it’s a different story. It started with one, and then two, and now dozens of them flock here most days, kite surfers flying high on their surfing kites, speeding through the waves, and back flipping through the air.

Through my window I can see their surfing kites soaring high, huge great big kites twice as big as a man towing their kite surfing passengers behind them. Why don’t you just go outside and join them? You ask, instead of watching all the fun through your window…

And that’s just what I’m considering doing.

Now I’m sure that there are a million things I should do first if I were going about this the right way before I should start checking out surfing kites to buy. But I like the surfing kites, kites have always held a certain appeal for me, and watching these huge surfing kites blazing through the sky probably holds more than half the appeal for me, as I’ve never been overly interested in the idea of water sports before, I guess I just like kites.

So even if I never ending up placing even a single toe in the sea it looks like I’m going to buy myself a surfing kite, and I’ll probably just end up flying it on the beach like a kite flying lunatic, but I feel that doing so just won’t impress the ladies in the same way.

So what kind of surfing kite should I buy?

Well a little research tells me that there are two many types of surfing kites available to me, inflatable surfing kites and foil kites, the inflatable type kites are best for on the water whilst the foil type kites are best for on the snow. Well, despite all the snow covered Victorian images that adorn our Christmas cards in England, we don’t actually get a whole lot of snow, so it look like the inflatable water type surfing kite is what I’m looking for.

Inflatable surfing kites can be water launched, whereas if you decide to use a foil kite for water use you will have to go to shore to re-launch every time your surfing kite crashes back into the sea.

Inflatable surfing kites come in 3 main categories:

• 2 lines, low aspect ratio
• 4 lines, medium aspect ratio
• 4 lines, high aspect ratio

And a little online research informs that as a beginner it would probably be best to start off with a ‘2 lines, low aspect ratio’ surfing kite, and that high aspect ratio kites should only be used by experienced kite surfers.

Surfing Kite Size:

‘It’s not the size that matters, but what you do with it that counts’, not that might be a soothing little saying for those with small willies to console themselves with, but when it comes to purchasing a surfing kite it just isn’t true. Surfing kites come in a multitude of different sizes some larger than 20 metres in length, and the size of the surf kite you I’ll need to purchase is dependant on a number of different variables.

The two main things that I’ll need to take into account when choosing my surfing kite are:

• My body weight
• Wind speed

OK, so body weight I could probably find out fairly easily, although I don’t know off hand, but wind speed, surely that’s variable, wouldn’t that change daily? Do I need a whole bunch of different kites? I know it’s pretty windy where I live which is why there are suddenly a whole posse of kite surfers hanging around just outside my window, the waves aren’t big enough for normal surfing, but the one thing we do have is wind (and not of the trapped kind).

So it seems like there’s a lot that I’m going to need to find out before I hit those waves and having given it some thought, it seem like the easiest way for me to find out all that I need to find out is to the computer off, get off my ass, put on my shades and go ask the dudes down on the beach.

Just as soon as I’ve finished checking out the surfing kites on eBay that is! ;)