Swell surf camp Cabarete, Dominican Republic Caribbean surfing camp

kitesurf Cabarete school

Learning to Kiteboard with Swell surf camp

At Swell, we have two basic lesson structures; group or individual.  An explanation of how these lessons differ is below; please read carefully before deciding which course to take.
First though, we’d like to explain some facts and dispel some commonly held misconceptions about learning to kite board/surf.

There are not many previously learned water sport skills which will speed up the learning process of Kiteboarding.  Much of the learning curve is about understanding how the kite flies, how to judge the wind and then learning to control and harness the kite’s power without injury to yourself or anyone around you. 

We see the learning process as putting together pieces of a jigsaw slowly. 
Many kite schools will advertize that the average beginner requires around 9 hours to complete a Kiteboarding course, but this is often misleading. 

We do not rush people through the process; we’ll only move on to the next ‘jigsaw piece’ when we are sure that the previous step has been understood and mastered.  In truth, the average beginner actually needs 12 hours or so of instruction or assistant shadowing before they are really ready and confident enough to rig up and kite by themselves. 

We often offer an assistant to a student at the ‘end’ of their course to shadow them as they hone their skills.
Whilst our instructors are ‘I.K.O. qualified’, Swell is not an I.K.O. registered school and does not intend to become so, for various reasons.

Our instructors have many years of experience in teaching Kiteboarding and we are very satisfied with our attention to detail; especially around the issue of safety, as undertaking a Kiteboarding course is inherently a potentially dangerous thing to do.

Swell Lesson Structure:

Group Lesson
A group lesson is defined by students sharing equipment and instructor.  A group lesson will have up to four students, sharing two sets of kite equipment and an assistant instructor helping the main instructor.  If there are only two students in the group, one set of equipment will be available.  If you take a group lesson, you will be observing for half of the lesson as another student goes through a particular step.  Equipment will then be swapped over and you will change places.  Group lessons are charged at $48 per hour per student.

Individual Lesson
In an individual lesson, each student has his own set of equipment.  The instructor may have up to four students still, but will use the services of an appropriate number of assistants.  Occasionally you might be the only student with the instructor.  The learning process is faster this way as you are not stopping to change over equipment or having to watch someone else take their steps.  Individual lessons are charged at $60 per hour per student.

Assisted practice with Swell equipment is charged at $45 per hour per person.  With your own equipment, the charge is $25 per hour.

We realize that there are plenty of cheaper places in town to learn to kite board, but we also know that kite boarding is a fun but potentially dangerous sport if not taught correctly.  Good instruction with quality equipment should be priced according.