“I was about 9 years old when my mother asked me if I wanted to make a kite,” said Hank Manseau, 80, of Scarborough.
He remembers using pieces of wood from an orange crate to construct the crucifix frame of a classic, diamond-shaped Eddy kite. A supermarket paper bag served as the sail. And since they didn’t have any glue, his mother mixed flour and water as an adhesive.
“That turned out to be such a heavy kite,” Manseau recalled. “It needed a strong wind to fly. And it was so poorly made, it was difficult to keep from turning in big circles … Then the string was so lousy, it would break frequently. So my first attempt at flying kites taught me how to climb trees.”
Decades later, Manseau owns hundreds of kites of all shapes and sizes. In southern Maine, locals long ago dubbed him “The Kite Man.” And he’s not flying solo.
Manseau is one of the many members of the Nor’Easter Kite Club, an informal group that flies a variety of extraordinary kites at Bug Light Park in South Portland and other Maine venues.
“This group has really come together and gelled,” Manseau said. “People come up from all over New England to fly with us regularly because they love the people here and they love the place that we fly in.”
The Nor’Easter Kite Club was established by Tony Heeschen of South Portland, who caught the kiting bug in the 1990s when he caught sight of people flying stunt kites at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth.
“I thought kite flying might be a nice, inexpensive fun way to fill some of my free time,” Heeschen said. “So I bought a little stunt kite, and a few hundred kites later, here I am.”
Each weekend, if the weather’s good, the Nor’Easters gather, usually at Bug Light Park, an open space with a stunning views — in one direction, the islands dotting Casco Bay, and in the other, the cityscape of Portland.
“When you fly a kite, you can lose yourself. It can become kind of a Zen-like experience,” said Heeschen, who compared the kiting to sailing. “It’s just you and the wind and your little kite, a little piece of fabric and some string.”
“You can make kite flying into anything you want it to be,” said Kendra Brown, who joined the Nor’Easters just over a year ago. “If you want it to be super relaxing, you can fly a single-line kite; you put your kite up, stake it down, then sit down and watch it. Or it can be super exhilarating for people who fly really large kites or multi-line kites that take a lot of interaction. Then there are people who sew their own kites, adding artistry to it.”
“Once you buy your first kite and go out and meet up with someone who’s also flying, you’re going to be hooked, and you’re going to end up buying more kites than you need,” Brown said. “So be prepared. It can be an all-encompassing hobby that borders on obsession.”
Heeschen has traveled to big kite festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada, viewing the work kitemakers from all around the world. His favorite kite maker is from Tasmania. And Heeschen himself crafts a variety of kites at his home.
“I’ve started this whole series of portrait kites,” Heeschen said. “I’ll take a photo of someone — I started with a photo of my wife. I lay ripstop nylon — black, grey and white — and sandwich them together.”
Several Nor’Easters are experienced in the art of kite making, and each kite maker has his or her own style.
Tony Otis of Westbrook, a nurse at Maine Medical Center, began making kites in the 1970s while serving in the Navy at Virginia Beach, where he stumbled upon a kite store.
“They intrigued me,” Otis said. “But they were expensive back then. I figured I could probably make one. From then until today, it’s been a process of learning how to make a kite. There’s lots of different ways to making them, but the real trick is to make one that flies. There’s some science involved.”
While Otis has sold a few of his kites to friends, he keeps the majority of his creations. He forte is cellular kites — high-performance kites that, in the air, form rigid, three-dimensional structures. These kites can be simple (a two-celled box kite) or extremely complex designs (such as the lotus cellular kite, a multitude of overlapping triangular cells that form the shape of a lotus flower.)
“I think people have to have some patience, building a kite, especially one that looks good and flies well,” Otis said. “It doesn’t happen in a hurry. I’ve spent, on one kite, easily 100 hours.”
Otis said he has never pursued any other artform, but when it comes to kite making, there’s few things he enjoys more. His prize creation to date is a rokkaku kite, a traditional six-sided Japanese fighter kite.
“The design has been around forever — it’s ancient in its origins,” Otis said. “I made one with a crane and bamboo trees and a river flowing through it — all appliqué.”
While kite flying has been around for thousands of years, the activity has drastically changed in the past 50 years, as people around the country have shown a renewed interest in kiting.
New materials, such as ripstop nylon, fiberglass and carbon graphite, have expanded the possibilities of kite designs. In 1972, Peter Powell introduced a toy dual-line stunt kite that could be controlled by the flyer to perform tricks in the air. Then, in the 1980s, Peter Lynn of New Zealand introduced a stainless steel kite-powered buggy — basically an “overgrown Big Wheels,” Heeschen said.
Shopping for kites and kite-making materials is mostly an online affair nowadays, though there are some kite stores scattered throughout the U.S. Michaud isn’t the only Nor’Easter to invest big bucks into the hobby.
“The Kite Man” Hank Manseau had to purchase a special trailer just to store all of his kites and transport them to events.
“I have, without a doubt, the largest collection of big kites in Maine,” Manseau said. “I have a 20-foot-tall kitty, a 20-foot-tall teddy bear, a 20-foot-tall puppy, and a more recent addition, a gorgeous white horse … these animals are what we call line laundry, but they’re a great display.”
His giant manta ray, a $6,000 flowform kite, measures 32 feet across and 96 feet long.
Regardless of how massive the kites are, it only takes an 8-10 mph wind to fly them, Manseau said. But don’t let that fool you. In just a 10 mph wind, giant kites can generate 3,000-4,000 pounds of lift. Therefore, Manseau flies them on 2,000-pound lines attached to “very big anchors.”
“Every time you put a kite in the air, there’s a distinct probability that you’ll never see it again,” Manseau said. “I don’t think there’s anyone who has flown at Bug Light Park that hasn’t made a contribution to Davy Jones’ Locker.”
Though Manseau is known for his show kites, his passion is performing stunts with kite stacks — trains of connected kites that fly horizontally rather than vertically. Using strings, he can make the train dance through the air in different patterns.
“When I discovered the world of trains, I also discovered the world of showmanship,” Manseau said.
Manseau is one of the many Nor’Easter kite flyers who put on a grand show at the annual springtime Bug Light Festival, which was held this year on May 17. During the big event, some of the most impressive kites in New England fill the sky above Bug Light Park.
“There used to be a time when I’d go out and fly a kite for me,” Manseau said. “Those days are gone.”
Nowadays, he flies kites for everyone and anyone — the ferries motoring into Portland Harbor, sailors in the bay, locals walking to work and children playing in the park.
“There’s something about something floating in the air that appeals to a lot of people,” he said.
To join the Nor’Easter Kite Club email list, message Heeschen at PandTkites@gmail.com. To learn about the American Kite Flyer’s association, visit aka.kite.org.
Events to consider: Kite fly organized by the Northeast Kite Club, second Saturday each month, at Bug Light Park in South Portland. “But quite frankly, if the weather is nice, every Saturday and Sunday is a kite fly at Bug Light Park,” Heeschen said.