The Yakuza is designed for the kiter looking for absolute performance. The original Yakuza and now the Yakuza GT have been developed by the most diverse and technically minded team within the kiting industry.
Ozone has worked closely with highly successful buggy racers including World Champions and National Champions to perfect what has become the benchmark in race kite technology. The design process on a high aspect kite like the Yakuza GT is very involved; a race kite needs to perform in a wide variety of conditions, upwind, downwind or any direction you choose and be able to go as fast as possible whilst maintaining stability and low-end pull. If you want to be the fastest or feel the need to have the most powerful kite possible in your quiver then the Yakuza GT is the kite for you.
In the race season 2008 worldchampion and 5 time german champion Björn Krautschick, was using the Yakuza GT prototypes with which he managed to win the championship once again. The Yakuza GT gave him the right advantage against all the others. Imaging in one race he started late from the last position, fought hard and took all he could out of his GT. Few meters before the finish line he had overtaken everyone and even passed the person in lead. Björn reported he was able to go much more upwind than anyone else and was also the fastest on the speed course giving him the necessary advantage to also win that race.
Robby our designer put a lot of thought and effort into the new design and the result once again sets the standards in the race world. Beside a plus on speed he was working on more stability and general user friendliness. There is still the typical Yakuza feeling in the kite and there is still heaps of extra power you can get through the brakes. Everything works very intuitive and riders new to the Yakuza GT won’t need much time to get used to it.
We have been working harder than ever before on the smaller sizes that needed to perform but still be super stable in high gusty winds. Therefore the smaller kites (<4.5m) got a special profile and planform. We found out that the advantage of having a slightly less performance kite which therefore is safer and easier to handle is much more relevant than having a crazy kite the rider is scared to use in naughty conditions.
We also didn’t want the kites to be only ridden by our Pro race team that can handle almost any kite. The Yakuza GT is the kite if you want to look into racing or just looking for the most powerful and fastest kite on the market to brake your personal records.
The bigger sizes >10m of the Yakuzas have also been used as the low wind power houses for loads of snowkite expeditions through Greenland, Antarctic and Canada. Eric, Sarah and Curtis from the www.pittarak.com expedition were adding 12 and 14m Yakuzas the first time to their quiver when they were crossing Greenland from south to north in 2008. They staked up 2 sets of 30m Lines and were able to snowkite even if they couldn’t feel a breeze on the ground which gave them a big advantage making distance. For heavy weight buggier are snowkiters that travel with heavy equipments and sleds we have made a 17m version which will pull you like a tractor in less than 5 knots winds.
