After failing to fly on Saturday, the giant ‘Nagaraja’ kite at last managed a successful takeoff on Sunday afternoon at Sanur’s Mertasari Beach.
The nearly 250-meter Balinese kite, whose name means the “Dragon King” broke an Indonesian record last year as the longest and largest kite in the country, logged by the Indonesian World Records Museum (MURI).
But the kite’s debut this year for another run at the two-day Dangin Peken Dhananjaya Cup Kite Festival wasn’t so legendary. Getting the thing off the ground was more of an epic fail on Saturday than anything else.
After flying only a few meters, the kite crashed to the ground. Footage of the botched takeoff show people, numbering in the hundreds, scrambling in all different directions as the kite comes clambering down.
“We were worried about the audience getting crushed by the kite, because the kite weighs more than 700 kg,” explained Nagaraja coordinator, Kadek Suprapta Meranggi.
Because of the crash, the kite’s wings and joints were broken, so it had to be repaired before trying to go up again, according to Suprapta, more commonly known as Dek Soto.
It took about an hour to fix the kite and get it back to fighting—or shall we saying, flying—shape.
The kite had issues flying because it wasn’t set off properly, Suprapta explained.
“So what happened yesterday was an incident of human error. Now we have set everything and affirmed it so people already understand that the big kite needs space,” Suprapta said.
Thankfully the kite was able to fly on Sunday afternoon, even though the wind speed was apparently less than optimal, at 13.2 knots.
“The ideal wind speed to fly the Nagaraja is 17 knots. We just flew it so the audience wouldn’t be disappointed,” Suprapta said on Sunday.
The kite made it about 25 meters into the air, because of the slow wind speed, local newspaper, Tribun Bali observed.
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