No Jake,

It is you who made a stupid point.

Life is a dangerous concept. No matter how hard we try it always ends in death.

Your child can kill himself by falling off the swing in your garden if he doesn't hold on tight to the ropes. Still we allow our children to enjoy this toy. And any kid can drive his bicyle into that nice white picketted garden fence and impale himself. If this the fault of the bicycle or even the fence ?

Nothing is idiot proof.

And I'm not advocating putting 4 and 5 year olds on the landyachts. But 10 year olds an onwards seem to do pretty well. After 3000 blokart sold they have quite alot of experience in having kids drive. No landyacht was ever sold in these numbers.

Natural reflex of any person (including) kids is to steer away and let go of the sheet when in danger of colliding with something. This is in fact a good way to stop the landyacht. Making a (involuntary) 360 spin will kill your speed in a very short distance. By the time you hit the object the speed difference is surprisingly small. Yes, you get shaken about but nothing serious happens.

It is not like doing 35 mph in a car and hit a wall or something.


Additionally it is not difficult to set a course where craft going in opposite directions don't meet eachother. When a landyacht sails very fast on a downwind leg then he also sails very very deep. Pretty much you are going straight to the bottom mark.

Again it may appear very dangerous but the blokarts (not the larger class 5 and class 3 yachts or iceyachts) aren't really.


Having said this, if somebody decided to sheet in tight point straight at a solid wall and then take a good 50 meters to pick up speed and not steer away or sheet out then yes, it will hurt alot.

But then again you don't need a landyacht to do this. Just start running (scating or moutain biking) towards that wall, head first, and only stop when you hear the ambulance.

But I have never seen a kid do this. It's the adults who try to make that high speed rounding at the latest possible moment but never the kids.

Wouter