Why You Should Always Travel With a Spare Bar
An unpopular opinion that has saved my last three trips.
Most travelling kitesurfers carry one bar. It's their bar. They know how it feels. Spare bars take up weight and space they don't want to sacrifice. I understand the logic - I just disagree with it.
The bar is the weak link
Kites don't break often. Boards don't break in transit. Bars do. The chicken loop fails, a line gets cut by a fin, the bar end pops off, the depower line snags. Each of these is a 24-72 hour rental fix at a destination that may or may not have your model.
The cost of having no spare
Three years ago in Cumbuco I sliced my power line on a stranded buoy. The local shop didn't have a Duotone bar in stock. I lost five days waiting for replacement parts to fly in from Brazil's south. Five wind days. Worth more than the £200 a spare bar costs me to carry.
What a spare bar looks like in practice
It doesn't have to be your premium bar. An older model from your shed, off-season eBay listing, or last-year's school rental works fine. Goes in the bottom of the kite bag, weighs 2 kg, takes up minimal space.
The same logic for lines
A spare set of pre-cut lines weighs almost nothing and is the second-most-common failure point. Some riders only carry these and not a whole bar. That's a reasonable compromise.
The travel-light counter-argument
If you're at a major destination with a kite shop in town (Tarifa, El Gouna, Maui) you can probably get a bar replacement same-day. At smaller spots (Dakhla, Kalpitiya, Mui Ne) you cannot. Travel decisions should match destinations.
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