Bill Verboon of Ontario, Canada, windsurfs in front of Sound Mind & Body.
Photo: Rick Kinnaird

View from the Deck
Getting the shot

by Rick Kinnaird

We’ve wanted to get some good photos of Sound Mind and Body with some wind or kite surfers in the foreground. On the day we were going to have to leave Hatteras to come northward, we got a call from the folks renting the house, Bill and Judy Verboon, that the wind had picked up and Bill was going out windsurfing.

I put on my swim trunks, aqua shoes, hat, long sleeve tee shirt and grabbed my waterproof camera and headed over to Sound Mind from Penny Lane. I waded out five hundred feet into the Pamlico Sound ... in October. The water came up to my mid-thigh. As Bill prepared his rig, I started shooting. Some folks next door started “pumping up” their kites for kite surfing. It looked like I’d get the opportunity to photograph both kite and wind surfers!

Two days before, upper New York State had received two feet of snow and temperatures had dropped in the Appalachians, so we decided we might need our winter coats on Hatteras. When we arrived, the temperature in Avon was 83 degrees; on the day I took the photographs, it had “dropped” to 73 and I was standing in the Sound barelegged.

Bill rode by on his wind surfer. I snapped away.

Then the fellow from next door came by in his kite surfing rig. I ran further out and indicated I wanted to take his picture.

Both pictures caught only a trail of white surf. I had to learn to lead my subject before I snapped, like hunting quail.

I could hear the sails on both rigs as they powered up from the wind. I could see the wake, feel the wind, hear the kite, and the sun warmed me. It was wonderful. I resolved to be sure to put down the paint brush and hundreds of other maintenance things that were taking my time and get out and start surfing.

By the time I got to shore I was breathing the thrill of being there in that moment in time which when the wind is taking you ... it is an experience unmatched by anything else I can think of.