Judy Agner stood barefoot in the soft sand at the north end of Wrightsville Beach Nov. 8, surveying the hundreds of brightly colored kites decorating the sky or heaped on the sand.
“This is a hobby gone amok,” she said with a laugh. “My husband got one kite, just one little kite. And then it was a little bigger kite, and then a little bigger kite. And now I should probably have a Volkswagen for all the kites we have.”
Nine years ago, Agner’s husband, Michael, invited fellow kite enthusiasts to gather at the north end of Wrightsville Beach to celebrate a shared passion. Thus the Cape Fear Kite Festival was created.
Saturday morning, the Agners erected a vibrant array of banners and flags which proved to be one of the more successful displays on a calm day that reduced many of the kites to colorful piles of fabric on the beach.
Despite the lack of wind, few of the participants or onlookers appeared to mind relaxing on the beach waiting for the sea breeze to pick up. Fliers from as far away as New Jersey and Florida mingled under the sunny skies, comparing stories from the kite-flying season.
While many of the 70- and 80-foot inflatable kites were grounded Saturday, attention shifted to the small, high-performance kites. Joe Hurdle, who travelled from Durham for the event, sifted through a pile of handmade kites to pull out a delicate, rectangular kite no more than one foot in length.
He modeled the kite after the Japanese Buka fighter kites, he said. While authentic fighter kites were made with glass-coated string to slice through an opponent’s kite string, Hurdle opted to use sewing thread.
Next to the fighter kites, Hurdle had a collection of college-themed kites. In an effort to remain objective, he brought kites representing Duke University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University — although he admitted the N.C. State kite always seemed to fly the highest.
Hurdle said the kite festival made him feel nostalgic for his boyhood days picking out a kite from a box at Rose’s Dime Store. Hoping to help others create similar memories, Hurdle’s friend Paul Rogers brought a pile of extra kites to hand out to children.
“I love putting a kite in their hand and saying, ‘Run!’” Rogers said.
One such child, 4-year-old Lily Sullivan, scampered across the sand Sunday, the second day of the festival, clutching the string of her brand-new kite. As her mother, Lauren Sullivan, and her grandmother, Brenda Croom, looked on, she made the kite turn back and forth in the stiff breeze.
“We’ve been coming here for the past four or five years,” Croom said. “It’s like a little stay-cation, a girls’ weekend away.”
As Lily Sullivan played with her tiny kite, above her a 60-foot inflatable manatee hovered in the breeze. The north wind picked up overnight and the sky was almost completely obscured by kites of all colors and shapes, swaying in unison.
On the beach strand, a steady stream of families wandered toward the north end, drawn irresistibly to the mass of kites. Children flocked to a giant black inflatable kite in the shape of the character Toothless from the movie “How to Train Your Dragon.” Jeff and Joyce King brought the kite with them from Annapolis, Md., to make its first appearance at the festival.
“We’ve been his caretakers all season long,” Jeff King said, explaining that five identical Toothless kites were commissioned by 20th Century Fox Studios to promote the movie franchise. Searching for experienced kite fliers capable of handling the pieces, the studio reached out to the Kings.
Jeff King said this was the pinnacle of his kite-flying hobby, which started years ago when he bought a single kite on a family vacation at the beach.
“And every year on vacation, I would pick out a new kite, so after a few years I had a collection of half a dozen,” King said.
His hobby evolved into competing in national indoor kite-flying competitions, where he developed a talent for making his four-line kite dance through the air in time to a musical track.
The Kings’ kite-flying passion culminated in the commissioning of a 100-foot blue whale inflatable piece, which they acquired in 2009. Jeff King said his next goal is to attempt to create his own inflatable kite in the shape of a flying monkey from “The Wizard of Oz.”
King said he enjoys the variety of kites as well as the assortment of people at kite festivals, from the eclectic kite-flying community to the enthusiastic spectators. Whether flying massive kites in festivals around the world or helping organize family community flies at home in Maryland, King said the appeal is always the same.
“People say, ‘What do you get out of this?’ And we say, ‘We have a good time, but what we really enjoy is entertaining people. Especially the kids.’”
email [email protected]
