Kiteboarders make mark in sailing

The first thing you notice about a kiteboard is how ridiculously small it is. It is so small, it makes a luge seem roomy. So small that what it can do — carry a grown man at speeds approaching 60 knots — seems, at first glance, impossible. Then there are the courses where kiteboard riders seek to achieve these speeds: shin-deep stretches of water no more than a few feet from shore, in places where winds routinely reach gale force. Places where success can mean traveling faster than any sailing vessel ever to knife through water, and where wiping out can mean broken bones, and worse. The windswept, sandy coastal ponds on Martha’s Vineyard provide several prime spots for kiteboarding, which has made it a magnet for the sport. Here, starting Monday, competitors from around the world will converge to vie for the best speeds in an event organized by a coterie of local enthusiasts who also happen to include some of the fastest sailors on earth. To gear up for the event, on a recent autumn day when the southwest breeze kicked up a wicked chop on Vineyard Sound, these hardies — some might say crazies — practiced their madcap sport. “Windy is better. It can also be more dangerous, but it’s more exciting,” opined Brock Callen, 33, a professional sailboat racer from Edgartown who first stepped onto a kiteboard five years ago. “We look for the storm systems and that’s what we get excited about.” Calling this sport “sailing” caused a squall of controversy in 2008. Kiteboarders had to fight for recognition when Rob Douglas, a lifelong sailor and windsurfer who had been racing a kiteboard for only three months, broke the world record for fastest time under sail. At first, the International Sailing Federation balked at acknowledging the record. But in December 2008, it recognized that the times should be counted by the World Sailing Speed Record Council. In 2010, Douglas, who runs the Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven and its affiliated shops, set a record — an average speed of 55.65 knots over 500 meters — that still stands. “It’s quite simple. Kitesurfers are sailboats,” said Douglas, 41, whose burly, 220-pound physique looks incongruously weightless as he skims lightly across the surface. “Any sailing craft on water that uses the wind for propulsion qualifies for the outright world speed sailing record. . . . Different yes, but it’s still sailing.” Different indeed. A kiteboarder balances on the board, attached by a harness and four lines to a light cloth “kite,” which fills like a spinnaker as much as 100 feet in the air.