9/30/04 "It's a beautiful sport," Lompoc's Paul Dieckman said of kiteboarding.

Dieckman, a longtime practicioner of windsurfing, was talking of the newer version. In this one, kiteboarding, the sail is attached to the surfer and board by long, 800-pound-test wires. And on a windy day they go flying across the water in a wet aerial ballet.

"You see it and think 'Hey, that's neat'," Dieckman said.

"But they're dangerous," Dieckman added. "And that's why I'm trying to get them banned from Jalama in the summertime when it's crowded."

Reciting statistics available on the internet, Dieckman noted 14 deaths related to kiteboarding from 2000 into 2004.

"It's the wires," Dieckman said. "Thirty yards of wire. When the kiteboarder comes back up on the beach the whole outfit almost has to be caught by someone else. Sometimes it gets away.

"Most of the deaths are the kiteboarders themselves. Some are bystanders," Dieckman noted.

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He displayed a picture of a Santa Barbara girl whose neck was slashed by kiteboard wire on a Santa Barbara beach. He noted regulations aimed at kiteboarders on the more crowded South County beaches.

Then he talked of a couple of accidents this summer at Jalama. There was nothing serious, nothing fatal, he said. But one involved a kite that got separated from the boarder in the water, then went up on the road and caused a single-vehicle accident.

"Nothing bad has happened yet at Jalama," said Dieckman, who works as a cook at the local penitentiary. "But I'd like to see some precautions taken before someone really gets hurt."

Alan Hunt can be reached at 736-2313, ext. 107, or alhunt@pulitzer.net