How to ride unhooked and land a raley

Advanced Unhooking means popping the chicken loop off your harness hook and taking the kite's whole pull through your arms. It is the entry ticket to wakestyle and competition freestyle.

Power works differently. Hooked in, sheeting the bar out depowers the kite. Unhooked, the bar is effectively fully sheeted at your fixed grip: you cannot depower by pushing it away. That is why trim decides everything here.

Before you unhook, pull the trim strap so the kite sits comfortably with the bar at the sweet spot, and park the kite low, between 10 and 11 o'clock, or 1 and 2. Choose moderate power, well powered but not overpowered, and flat water.

A shallow lagoon is the natural classroom; Dakhla, where the wind blows on something like 300 to 320 days a year, is the one riders fly to for a fortnight of it.

The pop replaces the sent jump, and the kite does not move at all. Bear away toward the kite briefly to soften the line tension, unhook, then carve back hard upwind against the parked kite. Load builds violently in the lines. Release it by scooping off your back foot. Speed and edge make the height, not the kite.

The raley is the cornerstone unhooked trick, the one that unlocks nearly everything else. Pop hard and let your body swing up and back so the board and legs extend behind you, the superman position, arms bent and the bar close to your hips.

As the kite's pull swings you forward again, bring your knees back under you, land tail-first and slightly downwind, and hook back in. The faster you ride and the further back you let the load throw you, the bigger the raley. The S-bend, the 313 and the whole handle-pass family grow out of it.