THE KITEBOARDING HISTORY
Kitesurf, also called kiteboard, kiteboarding or flysurf depending on which country you’re in, this fantastic new sport which is winning new converts daily, which fires up the watching crowds and which, today, the media can’t seem to get enough of, has been rattling around people’s brains as an idea since the 60s.
But it took until 1984 to become anything like reality when Dominique and Bruno Legaignoux, two mad Frenchies obsessed by sailing and water sports, started working on the principle and applied for the patent for their ‘curved wing with inflatable structure’, the first kite to be water relaunchable.
Bruno on a hand-made wood-epoxy board – 1982
Dominique (left) in Casamance - Senegal
Somebody was regularly using a BirdSail in Hann's bay, Dakar, when the Legaignoux brothers were there and started their project.
Dominique's sketch - Mid-1984
Official drawing of the patent
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The Vision
Dominique and Bruno Legaignoux learned the art of sailing on the Breton seas, starting young, aged 10.
Very early on they began to sail dinghies and became French Junior champions in 1979. After 10 years of dinghy competition (Optimist, Vaurien, Laser, 420 , 470), they decided to retire from competition and sail for pleasure only.
At that time, Dominique surfed mainly at the surf spot, La Torche (Brittany – FRANCE), which has since become well-known for having hosted several Fun board World Cups.
At the same time, Dominique and Bruno were each preparing his own boat to realize a shared personal dream: sailing around the world.
During summer 1983, after one year cruising different waters, Dominique and Bruno met in Senegal. Life was beautiful; they spent hours discussing high tech sails and other speed devices, their other big passions.
In the beginning they intended to make thick sails for a future boat, then they moved on to kites as a natural extension of more traditional sail forms.
Another rigging option inspired them, somewhere between a windsurf sail and a kite: the BirdSail. This system was patented and made by Roland Le Bail (another Breton) in 1982, its principle was to lift the pilot off the water with the aim of realizing higher and longer jumps than with a standard windsurfing board.
But a major defect in that system lay in the impossibility of using big wings.
Out of all this jumble of ideas their ultimate project was somehow logically born and which would one day revolutionize the world of water sports: A board, a kite-wing.
Neither of them having flown kites before, Dominique and Bruno begin by making models to understand the theory of kite flight characteristics, notably how might it be possible to go upwind.
“ The advantages of kites as sails appeared very early on, after which their project became the development of a kite wing adapted for nautical use.”