Riding on the Wings of the Wind
- 5/22/2009
By: Kip Tabb
There is a grace and a beauty to skimming across open waters, propelled by nothing more than a huge kite and and unceasing wind. Yet, within that grace and beauty there are forces of extraordinary power at work and in the harnessing of those forces comes a sense of freedom and joy that is almost addicting.
“There is an exhilaration--a rush of power and control all at once that’s just amazing,” Chris Moore, Kiteboarding Manager of Kitty Hawk Kites, says. “There’s so much power there and it’s just controlled.”
Kiteboarding is a sport uniquely well suited for the Outer Banks, especially the area south of Oregon Inlet. With its wide shallow waters and reliable breezes, Pamlico Sound is a perfect environment for learning the sport. “This is one of the best places to learn,” Trip Forman, founder and co-owner of Real Watersports, says. “You have constant winds and shallow water.”
Moore agrees. “It’s a lot easier to learn here. There are no dangerous waters,” he adds.
Although it is the ideal learning conditions that brought many kiteboarders to the Outer Banks for the first time, it is the winds that keep them coming back. With its 90 degree bend at Cape Hatteras, no matter what direction the wind may be blowing, somewhere on Hatteras Island there is always a launch site. “You have constant winds here,” Forman say. “But it’s not just the winds. The winds here can come from any direction and if you don’t have good winds at your launch site, you can shift yourself ten miles and find good conditions.”
In a troubled economy, kiteboarding continues to show surprising strength. “There are as many kiteboarders coming to the Island as there are fisherman now,” Carl Giordano, marketing director for REAL Watersports, says. “On a windy day in the spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is look north or south and you will see kites on the Pamlico Sound as far as the eye can see . . . 50 or 60 in each direction. It’s a beautiful site.”
The strength of the Outer Banks as a world class kiteboarding destination is seen in the Tri-villages (Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo) on Hatteras Island. Long a sleepy stretch of two lane highway connecting Northern Dare County with the more built up areas of Avalon to Hatteras Village, the area is being transformed.
“Cape Hatteras is now to kiteboarding what the Colorado Rockies or California Sierras are to skiing and snowboarding,” Giordano says.
Development in the Salvo area would seem to confirm his remarks. In the past year, both Real Watersports and Kitty Hawk Kites have completed extensive retail and training facilities in Waves. “You can go five steps out of our back door and launch,” Moore says. “This is probably the best spot in the world.”
Real Watersports just opened their Watermen’s Retreat--a resort condominium located at the faciltiy, and the Kitty Hawk Kites condominium is scheduled for completion in June of this year.
There are other factors that have contributed to the growth of the sport on the Outer Banks. It’s proximity to major metropolitan areas on the East Coast is certainly a factor. Giordano points out that with multiple launch sites along the entire length of Hatteras Island, there is something for every level of participant. “Unlike many kite destinations . . . with tiny, crowded beaches, Cape Hatteras has many kite beaches, both ocean and sound side, that can accommodate . . . hundreds of kiters of varying ability on any given day,” he says.
Although there are conflicting versions of who holds the first patents or where it actually began, by the mid 1990s kiteboarding was a recognizable sport. Early teaching techniques were primitive to non-existent, according to Forman. “When I first learned how to do this in 1998,” he recalls. “It was sort of for the brave at heart and dumb in mind. I learned from a training DVD and going out and doing it.”
That is not the case any longer. “The advancement in teaching methods, like the use of a jet ski for a coach to follow a student . . . has brought safety to the process and confidence to the student,” Giordano says.
There is universal agreement that this is a sport that requires trained teachers. “We strongly encourage new kiteboarders to get qualified instruction,” Moore says. “This is not a sport that should be taught by a friend. That is not the way to go. Not only will it be safer with an instructor, you will learn a lot faster, too.”
It is still a relatively young sport and it is continuing to evolve. The latest innovation is to use an actual surfboard instead of a board specifically designed for kiteboarding. “Today we use surfboards with the kite, not modified at all for kiteboarding, to ride the waves exactly the way a surfer would,” Forman says. “The biggest difference is that with a kite you can ride 30-40 waves in an hour where if you were paddling, you may only get 10-15.”
“The thing that attracted me to kiteboarding originally was the ability to jump and ride waves in lighter wind than windsurfing,” Forman goes on to say. “Now that I have been kiteboarding for over 11 years, the thrill is never gone,”
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