From watching the region's landscape suspended in the sky, to testing out one's balance on the ocean surface, to diving deep in the water in search of hidden ecosystems, businesses in the Cape Fear region have long embraced water sports at every elevation. Here are some of them.
Water sports can be extreme, requiring athleticism and skills. Those who prefer a more relaxing and picturesque water sport experience have an option with Wrightsville Parasailing Co., a family-run business at Wrightsville Beach that has been open for more than 20 years.
Jay Dalton, owner of the company, has flown over 7,500 people in Wrightsville Beach skies using parasails and his boat.
Dalton got the idea to start the business in 1998 after seeing people enjoy the recreational activity.
“I was on my honeymoon in Jamaica back in 1993, and I saw folks out there doing it, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’d be a lot of fun to do at Wrightsville Beach.’ And that was the extent of my thought about it. A couple of years later at Wrightsville I saw folks out there actually doing,” Dalton said. “The very next year my sister passed away and she was just 37 years old at the time, and it had a pretty big effect on me. I decided a year later that I needed to do something different in life, and I quit my job. My wife was pregnant, and we went to the beach, and I started my little parasail business.”
Wrightsville Parasailing operates out of Airlie Marina and has one boat, Live like Libby, named after Dalton’s sister.
In parasailing, a person is attached to a sail and a boat and is then elevated and pulled by the boat. A ride above the waves lasts about 15 minutes.
One feature of parasailing is that it doesn’t require special skills, making it more accessible to all age groups, said Dalton, who commutes with his daughters from their home in Cary to run the business during summer weekends.
“There are a couple of things that people might find surprising, but mainly, it takes no training of any kind. I’ve flown 11 82-year-olds,” he said. “We strap you into the harness, and we control you. You don’t have to know how to do anything other than how to get yourself out of the sail in the event of a water landing, which is extraordinarily rare.”
The majority of people who parasail with Wrightsville Parasailing are summer visitors, Dalton said.
“They are mostly tourists – almost all. I’ve had people from almost every state,” he said. “Tourism is absolutely critical. Wrightsville Beach would die a quick and sudden death without tourism in the summertime.”
One of the challenges of running a parasailing business in the area is the weather, he said.
“The people that had been doing parasailing in Wrightsville before I was left, and I learned later that they left because it’s too windy and too rough on the ocean most of the time at Wrightsville Beach,” Dalton said. “We did it full time the first couple of summers, and then I went back to working as an engineer (at Duke University’s Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility) and kept the business going just on weekends from that point.”
Despite the weather challenges there is still a large demand from tourists wanting to parasail, he said.
The Daltons want to maintain the business as a family endeavor. They also started the Elizabeth Dalton Averett Foundation, a nonprofit in honor of Jay’s sister that raises money for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center for research.
“I would like to say that I have a big, bold plan for expanding the business and doing something like that. But the truth is we like it just like it is,” Dalton said. “I haven’t even raised the price in 13 years. For us, it’s a family thing that gets us to the beach on the weekends.”
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