Swinging wildly above Maui's Kanaha Beach, ground zero for the sickest wind sport yet

By Tom Byrnes

Erik Aeder

A tanned, muscular woman stood at the water's edge holding a bright orange-and-yellow kite above her head. Letting it go, the kite popped open with a loud snap, and a guy standing on his board was jerked nearly 20 feet straight up into the air as if he had hit an eject button. Suspended like a puppet, he swung wildly for several seconds before landing on the water and pulling on his kite as it towed him out to sea. The distance from takeoff to touchdown was a good 50 feet. The NASA-like liftoff drew a round of approving hoots from the small crowd. Stunned, I turned to a dude with spiked peroxided hair and flowered shorts sitting on the tailgate next to me and raised my eyebrows in dis- belief. He shrugged and laughed, "Brah, that was sick!"

It turned out to be just the start of the show. I watched a half-dozen kiters rip back into the cove, one after another, spraying curtains of water behind them. Yanking their kites skyward with a snap of their arms, they flew as high as 40 feet, twisting insanely before touching down almost 100 feet away. The variations were endless: triple forwards, tweaked tabletops, double backs, quadruple loops, and spinning 540s. Taking a lesson had seemed like a good idea, but the acrobatics were a tad daunting.

"It's like wakeboarding, but you use a kite to pull you instead of a boat," a windsurfing buddy had told me over beers the night before. "You can do it in flat water and with almost no wind." He had made it sound easy, but now I was having second thoughts. Being the only novice on a beach full of gonzos was one thing; decapitation by one of the 100-foot kite lines was definitely another.

My purple, one-square-meter trainer kite was a miniature version of the real deal, but the pair of finely braided lines and the lightly padded aluminum control bar were the same setup that everyone else was using. "Flying the kite is probably 80 percent of the sport. For power, just pull gently to the left and then to the right. Keep it straight overhead for neutral. You'll be fine as long as you don't yank on it."

Handing me the bar, he walked down to the water and eased the kite into the air. The force of the wind took me by surprise and I tugged hard, instantly jerking the kite to the right and smashing it into the ground. Martin launched it again, and this time I pulled left, crashing it into the water. The next time, I managed to keep the rig in the air, but got dragged forward to the edge of the beach. Apparently, this was going to take some time.

After an hour of land practice, I found myself flying the rig around the points of the clock with something that vaguely resembled confidence. I then moved up to a more powerful, five-square-meter kite and into the water. Chin-deep and struggling to keep the bright blue rig motionless, I positioned the board underneath me. In the distance, I could hear Martin yelling above the breeze. "Okay, now make a big figure eight with the kite. Just twist the bar left-to-right and back again, nice and easy, and you'll take off."

Dropping the kite just slightly off the 12 o'clock position filled it with power. My entire body shot out of the water, the board dragging behind. Pulling at the kite only sent it flying higher, and stalling it dropped me back down into the water. After several dunks, I had a steady pattern going. Terrified of teabagging my ass all the way to Tahiti in 30-foot hops, I let go of the control bar and watched the kite collapse downwind. That's when I saw the guy with the peroxide spikes go whirling by and land in a huge splash just 20 feet away. When he surfaced, he was sporting a wild grin and waving. "Nice try, Brah! Hang tough—you'll get it!"

That was all I needed. Tugging the kite back into the air, I popped out of the water, leaned back, and was as close to flying as I had ever been.