This is a cautionary tale for fellow hangglider pilots. I made a critical error during my setup which caused my harness to separate from my wing and forced me to hold on to the control frame for my life. Fortunate circumstances led to me surviving this incident with relatively minor injuries.
I was asked if I thought about landing in the ocean to possibly soften the landing. In the moment I had not thought of doing this, however I don't think that I would've decided to do so given my fast rate of decent, the low tide, and the fact that I risked not being able to swim while in my harness (although the risk of being trapped under my wing might have been significantly less considering I was no longer connected to it).
It's very fortunate that the hang loop let loose while I was facing into the wind. The wind this day was consistent at about 20 mph. The fact that my crash landing was going into the wind meant that my ground speed was significantly slowed (as compared to if my crash landing was going down wind).
Considering I used this hang loop setup for many flights in the mountains, this location is potentially the most fortunate place for such an incident to occur. I can't imagine having to hold on to the glider for much longer than I did. If this had occurred in the mountains, where the landing zone is much further away from the launch, I doubt that I would have had the strength to hang on for the duration of the flight out to the landing zone.
Please be very vigilant when preparing to fly to avoid such an incident as this one.
Fly safe my fellow pilots!
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