Seneca Lake Whale Watch Kite Festival, NY

In Newport 1995 I saw Thom and Terry Shanken and we talked a lot about Verdun were we met first. He asked me to come to the first kite-fly at Seneca Lake during the so-called Whale Watch Festival (it is a joke, it came up some years ago). So, I went early september and attended a very nice small local festival.

On Friday, after 6.5 hours of driving west (with the sun in my eyes) I arrived at at 9 pm at the house of the Perries. Ken and his lovely wife just came back themself from their vacation somewhere at the coast. Ken had a lot of German food in the house, real German Wurst (saucage). After a long meal :-) and a couple of beers :-)) and discussions on kiting I went to bed - and fell a sleep in one minute.

The next day, before we went to the festival site, Ken showed me the workshop of John Warden. He makes tents and all the kitefliers use his workrooms actually to make kites - tons of ripstop, 20 sewing machines and so on. And the cutting table.....me and my small table at home....

After that we went to the festival site. About 100 vendors were present at the lake shore with a lot of interesting art stuff. Also present the daughters of John who just opened a kite store.

Several kitefliers from Pennsylvenia, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts and the local kite gang where there - pretty much all the people from KISS (see article in News of ConnectiKiters about Adirondac). Early we had a lot of wind, really nice weather and could fly big flowforms with all kinds of windsocks, my arches and really a good amount of single line kites. A lot of spectators were interested. Later the wind dropped more and more so that we skipped the planed night flight.

In the evening we went to the kiter-party at the Warden home - all kinds of good food and beer and wine and..... Really nice. 30 people had a lot to talk about and a lot of laughter could be heard in the beautiful night. The party finished when we went to see the fireworks at the lake - and we all slept like stones.

Sunday was really a tough day without any serious amounts of wind. We all tried our best to fly at least something but it was really difficult. The whale watch now really became a whale watch -- the Rokkaku from Thom and the gang with the Seneca Whale Watch symbol went into the lake but we could recover it. Later my Chucalissa Rokkaku also went into the lake - its really not easy to pull a kite back on its string. Thom had a lot of fun flying his fighters that day.

When the wind finally slept in totally around 5 I went on my trip home - 6.5 hours again..... It was a really good and friendly event, a lot of new friends I met. The festival certainly has the substance to grow - John has big tents :-). So I wish that in the next years we will speak about the Whale Watch Kitefestival with 100 kitefliers attending.

Happy Flying

Kai