Collision With a 35-foot Sailboat

Offshore Kiting on Lake Ontario

There was only one sailboat on the lake as far as I could see, and it looked like a tiny triangle on the horizon as it was kilometers away. How did we manage to collide half an hour later?

It was a beautiful sunny, warm day with blue skies. The wind blew offshore at 15 knots and I wanted to experiment with my self-designed Kite-Trek board. My plan was to paddle out, water-launch my kite, kitesurf to Toronto Island and back, land my kite on the water close to the beach where I started, and then paddle back to shore. This was a very ambitious plan for a few reasons. Normally, nobody kites on Lake Ontario in offshore conditions because it’s extremely dangerous. If anything goes wrong, the next stop is the USA about 50 kilometers downwind. The water is cold, survival times are relatively short, and so kitesurfing solo in such conditions is considered suicide. With my specialized board though, I believed that I could mitigate the “life threatening” aspect of this extreme kiting session and have some fun on the lake. From the kitesurfing point of view, considering all the tasks and conditions at hand, this was quite a revolutionary undertaking.

After I had paddled far enough and the wind felt a bit smoother, I stopped and prepared to launch my kite. This was not an easy feat. Just think of it: How do you launch a foil kite from a board drifting at the same speed if not faster? How do you get enough tension on the lines to be able to fill the wet kite with air and then launch it? How do you not tangle up your board with all those bridles? To fast forward my story, I finally had the kite stretched on the water, the lines unwound, and the wind was slowly filling the kite with the air. I started to feel the pull on my lines and felt that my water-launching victory was near.

All of a sudden, I heard a strange noise behind me. I turned my head and there was a sailboat about 20 meters away heading directly at me. First, I figured that the boater saw my kite on the water, thought that I was in trouble, and came to my rescue, but within a second, I knew that this wasn’t the case. From my low vantage point, I could see nobody onboard and the boat headed precisely at me as if it were some kind of a prank. The boat had its sails down and it motored downwind. While it wasn’t very fast, it was on course to hit me, tangle in my lines, shred my kite with its keel, and who knows what else. I started to shout. The boat was no further than 10 meters at this point. A guy showed up on the deck and froze in disbelief. “Steer away from me, I can’t move, I am attached to the kite!”, I shouted. With a panicked look, he sprang into action, and started to run back to the wheel. I could see his sunglasses fall in the water before he disappeared from my sight at the aft of the boat. But the boat was already too close, the only thing I could see was the front of the bow getting larger and larger. 4 meters, 3 meters, 2 meters, I stretched my arm out to dampen the impact and to push myself to the side of the hull out of its way. At that split second, just like the proper apex of an action movie, I saw the nose of the boat starting to make an abrupt turn. The front edge of the bow missed my body and I started to push on the side of the hull with my hands so as not to end up under the vessel. It seemed like a looong boat and a looong time for me to work my hands along its side pushing away but it finally passed. Not a word was spoken. The guy, to his credit, managed to stay clear of my lines, board, and the kite. I was the only object that touched his boat and possibly scratched it with the hook on my harness. We both did well; this could have been worse, much worse.

As an initiation act to get my adrenalin level up to the ‘self-preserving alertness’, which was much needed for my first ever offshore session at Humber Bay, this wasn’t a bad start. Unfortunately, the event wasn’t completely over yet.

Not even 5 minutes later, a police boat showed up, and circled around me and my kite. At that point, throughout the whole ordeal, I drifted about one half kilometer away from shore. I was sure somebody called 911. Luckily, my kite was just about ready to finally rise from the water and fly. It was almost fully inflated on the surface of the water, I needed just a few more seconds to finish draining the water out of its tips. The police boat stopped but I paid no attention to it. I needed that kite out of the water and to ride away from the “crime scene” asap. Finally, the kite went up, and under full police supervision, I rode away deeper into the lake in an offshore wind. Again, no words were spoken.

Speaking of trauma; my first offshore session at Humber Bay went well after that. The wind on the open water was nice, not so gusty, but surprisingly variable in strength from one location to another. I had fun, and I finished my “mini” adventure exactly as I had planned. I dropped my kite in the water close to my home beach, and I paddled to the shore feeling elated, victorious, and very much alive.

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