FEATURES – MAY/JUNE 2009

Kites in Rodanthe

OBX breezes provide the perfect environment for an action-packed water sport that's gaining popularity.

By Mike Mather

Bookmark and Share

 

A brisk ocean breeze lifts a wisp of powdery sand from the dunes' crest along Route 12 on Hatteras Island. The swirl dives to the pavement and snakes like a dusty river across the blacktop.

The same constant force—that has bent the scrubby underbrush, that hangs a flock of gulls motionless in midair, that drew a pair of dreamers from Ohio to test a flying machine—brings Will Brooks back every summer.

The wind.

By Labor Day, Brooks and dozens like him will teach thousands of travelers from around the world to boogie with the breeze at the end of 100-foot, wax-coated lines. They come to learn on an island shaped by nature as the perfect kiteboarding grounds. The adventurous Atlantic excites the experts. The placid Pamlico Sound nurtures the novices. And because the island bends like an elbow, the ideal breeze is always just around the corner.

"This is probably the best place to kiteboard in the world," Brooks says. In fact, the Outer Banks is better, say the experts, than Hawaii. Better than Mexico. Costa Rica. The Virgin Islands. But few of the students come from Hampton Roads, barely 100 miles away.

"It's right under their noses," says Trip Forman of Real Kiteboarding in Avon. "And they don't even know it."

Kiteboarding as a sport is barely a decade old. It's what you'd get if MacGyver had to sail himself out of trouble with only a wakeboard and a parachute. Kiteboarders—or kite pilots—soar curved foils big enough to fill a living room to heights of 100 feet. Then they wriggle their feet into the board's straps, dip the kite into the wind's "power zone" and skip like a stone across the water.

Will Brooks, his boss Chris Moore, and a quiver of instructors at Kitty Hawk Kites plan to harvest the Outer Banks breeze and the sport's growing popularity by turning Rodanthe into the Vail, Colo. of kiteboarding. Kitty Hawk Kites is building the equivalent of a ski resort on the shores of the Pamlico Sound, where kiteboarders can stay in luxury condominiums, zip across the breezy water, take a kiteboarding lesson, shop, dine and drink.

"It is windy all the time here," Brooks says. "And the Pamlico Sound is knee-deep to the horizon. You can't beat that for teaching."

This year Moore and his staff will put 1,000 novices on the path to kite pilot, from pre-teens to senior citizens. The journey for all starts the same: in a basement classroom with a concrete floor, two white boards, and a couple dozen white folding chairs that look like they were pilfered from a wedding.

Brooks, with unbrushed sandybrown hair hanging past his earlobes, wants you to think of the kite as a lion and the kite pilot as the lion tamer.

"These kites are very powerful," Brooks says. "If these things get away from you, they don't turn off."

Brooks goes on about "wind awareness" and "the wind window." He looks like a typical lifelong Outer Banks surfer—he is—but he talks like a weatherman. He says a good kiteboarder will understand the science of it all, the air density, wind speed, humidity, and what kinds of clouds foretell what kinds of weather.

"That's all part of the appeal," he says.

But because training a kite pilot generally takes more than a day, many teachers on the Outer Banks push kiteboarding camps. Kitty Hawk Kites offers a two-day "Fast Track" camp at its kiteboarding resort for $600. At Real Kiteboarding, the three-day "Zero to Hero" camp is $1,200.

If you've ever learned to snowboard, you'll know what's in store, Brooks says. The first sessions are challenging, even frustrating.

"But then something clicks, and you're riding. And it's great."

For more information, visit www.kittyhawk.com or www. realkiteboarding.com.

>>back