Watch out when buying used kite equipment!

Have you ever noticed how many kite-surfers are out there? Well, there are good reasons to try kitesurfing! You can do it almost on every coastline and it is such fun! Once you have understood the technique, usually you don’t want to spend more money on renting equipment. That’s why many beginners decide to buy second hand stuff. And that is an entirely legit decision. But there are some things you have to watch out for.

Do bar and kite match?

Sometimes people try to sell kites and bars separately. For a total beginner, this is usually a dangerous situation. Every brand uses slightly different mechanisms because they all have different safety systems as well as various bearing distributors. So always try to buy kite and bars as a set. In the best case, you find one bar in a set with two different sized kites.

Check for material weaknesses

Even though the equipment is ok for now – that does not mean that it will still be ok after ten more uses! You can never definitely say when something will break. But, if you see that there are, for example, already several small slices in the bar, or one of the seams starts to disintegrate first threads, you should not buy it. If the kite itself has been patched, it might also look to you like a “don’t-buy-thing”, but if the patches are sealed properly you are good to go.