BayAreaKiteboarding.com

I was at Alameda on Saturday afternoon, and was the guy whose kite blew up - literally. Quite a bang. I guess I'd overinflated it, so when i spun it round it exploded. It was a 15m Naish about 5 years old that I'd bought used a few weeks ago as my starter kite. Luckily a friendly stranger (Johnny) gave me his 14m for the day so I was able to get on the water. Anyway, the bladder has a foot long hole which also broke through the protective covering. It needs a new bladder and to be professionally put together. Has anybody got any good local places they'd recommend to have a look at it and see if worth repairing? I suspect I'm in the market for a replacement, but wanted to look at options. Cheers, Stephen.

Stephen, call Sonny at 3rd Ave. He the man. If you give him a kite bag I'm pretty sure he could make a kite out of it :).

Leo

like mcfly said: sonny is the man. you don't need to buy a new kite.
I doubt you over inflated it, bladder pop more often due to a slow leak that finally gives up.
So in order: get a new bladder (if you have a foot long tear, I doubt even sonny would fix this, so for a 15M, that's probably going to be the most expensive part of the repair).
call sonny.
give him your kite.
wait a few days.
and voila.

Replacing a bladder is actually pretty easy, but REALLY time consuming the first time, plus I don't recommend doing that for the first time on a 15m, that's a looooong bladder to reinstall without any twist in it.
Later on in your kiteboarding life you will probably do it yourself.

Cheers.