Green Hat Kiteboarding FAQ - The five questions posted most recently:

When are the lessons offered?

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:47:00 GMT

Kiteboarding lessons are offered April to October (exact dates depend on the weather). Wetsuit, booties, gloves, and hoodie might be required in April, May, and October - they are not included in the lesson, but you can usually get them from any surf or a major sporting goods store. We carry a limited selection of wetsuits. It is important to have a flexible wetsuit and surf style booties as diving gear is usually not suitable for kiteboarding.
The best months for taking kiteboarding lessons are May, June and July when the water is warm and our teaching location gets on average of 4 days a week of favorable wind conditions. August and beginning of September are historically the calmest months but even then we may get a day or two of decent wind in a week.

Which lesson is for me?

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:46:00 GMT

No Experience: if you have�no kite flying experience, the first step is to buy our Intro to Kiteboarding package and then sign up for a Kite Skills lesson.

Flown stunt kites: If you have experience flying stunt kites, we recommend to buy a�Beginner Video and then sign up for a Kite Skills lesson.

4-line kite flying: If you have experience flying a 4-line inflatable kite and is proficient at body dragging upwind and downwind as well as relaunch and self-rescue, we recommend to sign up for a Board Skills lesson or a Private Lesson.*�

Getting up on the board: If you can get up on the board and ride for some time but are not staying upwind, we recommend Supervised Riding (possibly with a private lesson)

Board sports: If you have experience wakeboarding, snowboarding, windsurfing but never flown the trainer or a 2-line stunt kite, you will progress faster than an average student but you would still need to start with the Intro package and Kite Skills Lesson as kiteboarding is 80% kite skills and 20% board skills.

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* Based on our experience, a Board Skills lesson with a 2 students to 1 instructor ratio works best as the students are alternated and have a chance to rest and learn from the other student's mistakes.

Can I learn to kiteboard?

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:43:00 GMT

If you feel comfortable in the water and can swim, you can learn how to kiteboard.

Experience with wind, water, and board sports (windsurfing, surfing, wakeboarding, snowboarding, etc) will help your learning curve; however, this experience is certainly not a prerequisite. In fact you will still have to go through the same steps to learn, you are just likely to do it faster.

The first impression of most people is that one must have a strong upper body in order to kiteboard. In reality you do not need much strength as you are strapped into a harness. Age and gender are not an issue as well - we've successfully taught many men and women from teens to upper 60s how to kiteboard.

Where do we meet for a lesson?

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:20:00 GMT

Please click here for directions: http://greenhatkiteboarding.com/store/index.php?main_page=page&id=14&pos=v&chapter=2

Alternatively, If you have your own boat transportation you can meet us on the island if you so prefer. The kite island's GPS coordinates are 39�47'19"N and 74�08'33"W. If your boat has draft over a foot, it is best to dock on the north side of the island, closer to the boat channel. This section of the island is the deepest and will allow you to get closer. When docking on the east side of the island, close to our launching beach, please be considerate and try to dock your boat as close to other boats as possible, this will keep all the 'hazards' in a single point.

Which weather forecasting services do you use to make lesson scheduling decisions ?

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:06:00 GMT

We depend on several weather forecasting services in order to make a decision to post a lesson schedule. Here's a quick summary:

ikitesurf.com - local human forecast and a few localized computer model forecasts, private sensors near most kite beaches in US, as well as lots of other very useful info like tides, wind history, etc. Membership is $120 per year, or $100 for the first time members, if you go through this link http://ikitesurf.com/kiteisland

weather.com - hour-by-hour and radar functions are very useful to watch the storms. Their wind forecast is a little off , but after a while it's easy to spot the trends (for example, anything with south component is usually underestimated by at least 5 mph).

noaa marine - excellent general wind forecast - it's not localized at all. This forecast is in text format, but click here to see a graphical representation of this text.

Forecasting services are never perfect, so there is always a chance that lessons may not be carried out even if we posted a schedule. However, we try our best to avoid these situations - most of the time we succeed.

After you reserve a lesson, please always check back to see the status - it will be posted on the schedule item under the "meeting time" section.