60 kilometres of kite string would stretch from the Eden Kite Festival venue at Eden Lawns in Sedgefield to the Beacon Island Hotel in Plettenberg Bay; 650 square metres of cloth weighing 65kg would cover the Centre Court at Wimbledon almost 5 times; Add 2kms of 2mm thick fibre-glass rods weighing only 13kg, and then you can start preparing to break a record…
Cutting and sewing the cloth into 2 000 kite skins and adding two fibreglass rods per kite took three people 22 days of full-time work. Screen-printing the 2000 kites took two people 20 days. Winding the 60 kilometres of line onto 2000 handles, hand-cut from correx board, took four people 16 days of full-time work.
That is what has gone into producing the kites for the Sotheby’s Africa Record Attempt at the 3rd Eden Kite Festival! Our goal is to get as many of those 2000 kites into the air simultaneously. For this we need 2 000 kite fliers – including you!
The kites are for sale at tremendously reduced prices at the festival as well as beforehand at Sotheby’s offices, Knysna Tourism in Knysna and Sedgefield, and at the Scarab, Wild Oats and The Heath (Harkerville) markets. Those places are also where you can buy your entrance tickets for the Kite Festival on 22nd October (not to mention the pre-festival Wendy Oldfield & Leroy Botha concert at the Octopus Garden at Scarab Market on the evening of 21st October.)
The Executive Mayor of Knysna, Councillor Eleanore Bouw-Spies will open both events and you can also meet professional kiters from South Africa, Poland, England and the Netherlands.
Tickets for the festival are R20 for adults and R10 for under-12s. And the kites – worth R95 – are only R35 each. Payments can be made by EFT or ‘Zapper’ before the event, or in cash at the gate. The advantage of buying your entry tickets beforehand is that you get to use the Express entry at the festival and miss the queue to get in.
Tickets for the Wendy Oldfield concert are R100 each, and going fast!
The 3rd Eden Kite Festival is sponsored by Lew Geffen Sotheby’s International Realty of Knysna, Sedgefield, Mossel Bay and Stilbaai, and is in aid of Masithandane’s Bursary Fund, which keeps children in school by providing transport and essentials such as feminine hygiene products and stationery. There is no high school in Sedgefield and no public transport is available to get learners to the nearest schools.
