While spending an afternoon at Cape Hedge Beach the other day, this kind of rare sight flew (or glided) overhead. I’m guessing it was a hang glider…..which, I kid you not, I always thought was called “hand gliding” until yesterday….or maybe a microlight. It was hard to see in the sun and my iPhone couldn’t zoom in too much.
Anyone else see it?
Good Morning Gloucester 
Looks like fun
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I heard it before I saw it fly over my house heading 128 degrees SE over the Annisquam. By the time I picked up my dropped jaw to get my camera, it was too late.
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If Marty heard it then that is a parafoil ultralight. Soft wing not more than just a sport parachute with a propeller, a seat, and a cup of gas hanging underneath. Usually they have wheels but she looks to be stripped down and she is just dangling legs.
A special kind of ultra-crazy. A Go-Pro is now on all flights so search for youtube videos with area flown over, “parafoil” in a few weeks.
youtube aerial view includes my house, your house and Joey’s truck at the dock!
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That’s a PPG, or Powered Para Glider. The chute is a foil and the pilot wears an engine on their back.
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I saw/heard them too from Beacon Marine, there were two of them. They were definitely powered paragliders.
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Joy and I watched a couple of them flying out of Good Harbor Beach a couple of years ago. She wrote a poem about it: “Icarus at the Beach”. Here it is, along with my iPhone video of two of the paragliders in action:
A couple of weekends ago, Joy and I were walking on Gloucester’s Good Harbor Beach, a half-mile strand facing the open Atlantic. We heard a buzzing sound, looked up and saw a red and white parachute floating overhead, with a pilot dangling below it, with a small motor and propeller blade strapped to his back: a “paramotor.”
Nearby, another “paranaut” spread out his bright yellow parachute on the sand, ran a few steps into the wind, pulled on a starter cord, and took off into the bright blue sky. He circled to the north, and as I attempted to film him with my iPhone video camera, disappeared into the sun. The red and white parachute flew into view just as my camera’s battery ran out.
It’s “Icarus at the Beach!” exclaimed Joy.
The video:
She too wrote a poem about Icarus:
Icarus at the Beach
By Joy Halsted
He stands
poised to rise,
clutching the reins
of the parasail.
Strapped to his back
the propeller whirls and rasps
but the red and yellow sail
refuses to blossom,
lies listless on the sand,
a reluctant dragon.
Wait –
the wind grows stronger,
the indolent creature fills and lifts,
bringing the rider’s leaping form to ride
its billowing body aloft
to float towards the sun
while below,
the sea is waiting.
©2013 Tom Halsted
Poem “Icarus at the Beach, ©2013, Joy Halsted
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We saw 4 of them fly over Niles beach!
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Excellent way to get around and what a view feel like a gull in the drifts! 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
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