So the 40th Annual Lincoln City Kite Festival has come and gone.
The weather was not always conducive. Saturday started out with some intimidating conditions; thick storm clouds on the horizon and strong gusty winds, surf heavily influenced by the previous night’s storm, and a high tide an hour and half into the schedule that left a 40 foot strip to fly in.
I have a durable and reliably stable, single line kite that all the inflatable kite flyers are familiar with. So, I made a point of having the first kite in the air to provide something of a weather vane for my friends.
As the winds began to calm, and the festival was scheduled to begin, folks started to bring their giant inflatable kites out. Between the instability of their kites and how close the fly them to the ground, I proceeded to move my anchor to avoid tangling in their kites or tails.
Just about at the point of high tide, we had an incident unfold right in front of several of us kite fliers. A wave came over the berm of sand, up and around the D River and into a pile of kites that were (too slowly) being moved downwind and higher on the beach. As we were grabbing lines and kites to keep them from being pulled out with the receding wave, part of the wave knocks over a preschooler and swamps a mom (carrying another child) so that she can’t move to assist. Two of my friends leapt into the water to grab the child the was rolling with the outgoing water and assist the mother to dry sand.
After that excitement we all continued to add color to the air as the changing winds and growing room allowed until about 3 in the afternoon. I wound up moving my anchor for the kite I initially launched several times, adding 2 small inflated kites to it. I also managed to get 2 of my Cody’s up, trained together for the majority of the afternoon, and eventually got out a train of six, 4 foot Delta Conynes that I only fly when it is particularly nice.
I think that I may have had the last kite in the air as we all cleared the field to head for dinner. While it started out intimidating and I didn’t get far on advertising my kites, the day turned quite fair and we represented our passion well.
Sunday was a whole other matter.
The forecast missed by a little. The fine rain we had most of the day in place of the overcast skies made it so that very few kites came out of vehicles. Where the forecast was nearly perfectly accurate was the wind conditions. The wind started softly from the East and only shifted to the Southeast.
Again I got kites out as early as I could (and flew them as often as I could), but wind off the mountains is hard to fly in, and the soft wind died every time the wind shifted directions. I vacillated between my stable and reliable Delta Conyne when there was enough wind and an Indian fighter kite when the wind was too low, except for about an hour around high tide (which was even higher) when there wasn’t enough room to work and it was better to make certain the tourists realized that the surf line was not a safe place to be playing.
Toward the end of the afternoon, once there was plenty of sand again, many of the inflatable kiters came out to try, but couldn’t find sufficient stable wind to keep their huge kites up for long and took their gear home to dry. I did have a nice moment with another flier, that was flying two custom Delta Conynes made by my dad.
At dinner that night, I got a “Well, we did the best we could with what we had” from one of the more experience fliers, but my Codys didn’t even come out of the bag on Sunday.
So, no traction on the current steps, but went out and represented (and reminded folks that I really know how to fly).
The last couple days since have been full with the day-job, catching up with homework with the kids, and drying gear out.
I hope to get the latest video up soon.
TTFN