When it comes to beach access how are you treated by local laws and officials? Here, from my experience, we are looked at and treated like skateboarders - a menace to the general public that use the same lands. Any suggestions to get us up to speed would be great.

Where i live on the east coast of England there is no real problem with local laws we are certainly not looked upon as a menace. One of the spots i go to has a buggy ban but the local council set aside a stretch of the beach for buggy use, they only banned buggies tho so i still go there to static fly and landboard. I think i'm right in saying this but in the UK local councils are duty bound to provide somewhere, for local sports clubs of all kinds to go although the club must be organised and have a certain size membership and the members need to have relevent insurance. So this would be one way of getting round a less enlightened local council but as i say were i live there are no problems with local authority.

Thanks for the info Jellikin - Insurance is always a stumbling block for us as well as the laws interpretation of our activities.

Has there been any positive feedback as far as the use of the insurance offered by the kitesurfing community, that is to say for communities other than kitesurfing? Outside of that insurance everything else seems to be a bit overpriced.

As far as club use, the only area locally that buggying has been truly "banned" is at Ocean Beach in San Francisco (static flying there is still allowed). Going to the city council with documents and references from a clubs activities may not do it for us. I know this is opening up an old can of worms that I said in the past that I would do something about - kinda fell off my radar in that I live 130 miles away - I'm not really what would be considered a local and may have been seen to be meddling in others affairs. I guess I need to get active on this again to see what I can stir up.

I think the advantage i have where i fly is that there aren't many of us so the local authorities don't perceive us as a problem, i think in other parts of the UK were kiting is more popular then i think the councils become more problematic. Also flying in areas deemed to be a nature reserve is a big no no. Insurance isn't that expensive joining the BKSA (British Kite Surfing Association) gets you adequetly insured, £25 a year (around $40).

Yeah, I've noticed that the Critical Mass Events can complicate matters - that's my theory on how Ocean Beach was originally shut down. Let that be a word to the wise for folks that fly in an area where there are maybe 2 to 6 regular flyers - if you invite a bunch of friends all at once without notifying the local authorities, there may be a serious misunderstanding and a very quick and decisive over reaction on their behalf.

If I could get insurance for flying my kite for $40 a year (that was validated to be useful), I along with a lot of folks on this site would pick it up in a heartbeat. Thanks again for the info Jellikin.