I heart kites!

I have been a kite addict ever since I was a small child and my uncle made a kite for us out of a blue paper shopping bag complete with his very own hand rendered Mickey Mouse drawing. It was fantastic! I remember how he carefully cut out the kite, drew Mickey and glued the edges in place over the string. I even recall digging through my grandmothers rag bag to get an old shirt to tear up for the tail. It flew beautifully and I eventually got to climb to the top of a tree I was normally warned off of to retrieve it. (I was the only one light enough for the small branches to hold.) Since then I have built a number of kites and have a collection of a dozen or so that I still take out regularly. I've been known to drive hours out of my way to visit Kaleidokites in Eureka Springs Arkansas. It's an all time favorite kite shop hidden in the Ozarks, another all time favorite.

Lately I've been fascinated with the idea of kites as both an emergency sail for sailboats and as a possible way to propel a power boat either as an emergency measure or just to avoid using fuel. One innovate company doing amazing things is California based Kiteship. They have been in the traction kite game for quite a while now and are doing incredible things with boats and kites. They've also popped up over at Instructables in chapter 12 of Tim Anderson's incredible free yacht saga.

As part of my own saga to eventually own a boat and with the possibility of yet again cross pollinating and combining more than one interest and  doing something practical, wow, I'll be keeping my ear to the ground and surely exploring this one more down the road.

You can see another article on kites I wrote for my Bay Area Dad blog here.
http://sfbaydad.blogspot.com/2009/07/activity-go-fly-kite.html