Kite · Pioneers
1994
The KiteSki goes upwind
Bill and Cory Roeseler patent and sell a kite system with water skis and a bar with a reel, able to relaunch from the water and sail upwind.
US 5,366,182, Fig. 6 (1994) · public domain
Bill Roeseler, an aerodynamicist at Boeing, and his son Cory worked on a simple problem: how to be pulled across the water by a kite without a boat to help. Their answer was the KiteSki. The patent, filed in November 1993 and granted on 22 November 1994, names them both.
The rider stood on water skis and flew a two-line delta kite from a buoyant bar at least three feet long. A braked reel on the bar let the lines out and in, so the kite could be launched from the water. Because the kite pulls at the rider’s centre of lateral resistance, the patent argues, it creates no capsizing moment, and the sail size is no longer limited by a mast.
The KiteSki went on sale in 1994. It could sail upwind and had a basic system to relaunch from the water. By the late nineties the two skis had given way to a single board, closer to a surfboard.