Parasail Companies Run Into Turbulence

Flying-Hi Enterprises put two people high in the sky last week.

Dangling gently under a huge red and yellow parachute, the passengers bounced gracefully in the wind about 600 feet over San Pedro Bay in Long Beach. Tethered by steel cable to the deck of a 300-horsepower boat, they angled back and forth in the air like the flying sailors they had become.

“I’m scared,” Carey Mayberry said before climbing into the two-seat open compartment beneath the parachute. Using a winch, crew members began reeling the chute and its human cargo out like a kite directly from the moving deck into the flapping breeze behind. “I’m afraid of heights,” Mayberry said.

A 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Sunset Beach, she had won this ride for herself and companion Paul Scaringe by placing second in a local beauty contest.

Thus it was business as usual for the parasailing concession in this city on the ocean. For Flying-Hi Enterprises, “business” these days means providing its services for free. Long bureaucratic delays, its owners say, have prevented them from obtaining the city permits necessary to operate for profit in Long Beach.

So the company is giving occasional promotional rides to people like Mayberry and Scaringe and planning to move to Mexico. When that happens, it will become the second local parasailing concession to disappear this fall, leaving the city’s would-be parasailers with nowhere to turn.

“It’s very frustrating,” Flying-Hi president Bill Kimball said. “Very disheartening.”

Said Lorraine June, spokeswoman for the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Council, which three months ago was touting the city’s two parasailing concessions as major tourist attractions: “I’m very sad. (They) were helping make our waterfront come alive again with visitor activities. We’ve got these tremendous waterfront facilities, and it’s a shame that they’re not being taken advantage of.”

The city’s brief stab at becoming a year-round parasailing center began last year with the arrival of a company called Parasail Adventures. Southern California in recent years has seen an increase of interest in the sport, in which customers pay to be strapped or seated under parachutes that are pulled behind fast-moving boats.

In very short order, according to June, Parasail Adventures was able to get an exclusive contract to operate out of one of the city’s prime locations, a dock near Shoreline Village by the downtown marina.

That did not dissuade Kimball’s competing Flying-Hi Enterprises from setting up shop a short time later. Because Shoreline Village was already spoken for, Kimball said, he obtained a temporary permit to operate out of nearby Shoreline Aquatic Park and embarked on negotiations for a permanent berth at a city-owned marina near the Viscount Hotel and Queen Mary across the Los Angeles River channel.

For awhile things seemed to be going smoothly for the city’s fledgling parasailing industry. Then two weeks ago, the industry hit turbulent waters: Parasail Adventures announced that it was going under. Company owner Kwan Lee could not be reached for comment.

But Terry Koenig, marketing manager of Catalina Cruises which had contracted with Parasail Adventures for use of the dock near Shoreline Village, attributed the company’s failure simply to its inability to attract enough customers to stay afloat. “Between advertising and running the boat,” Koenig said, “they weren’t able to make a go of it.”

Kimball’s company, meanwhile, had developed problems of its own.

The firm’s temporary berthing permit expired Sept. 4 after only one month of operation. And negotiations for permanent use of the marina near the Viscount Hotel appeared to him to be hopelessly mired in red tape.

Kimball blames the delay on foot-dragging by the hotel, which leases the marina from the Port of Long Beach and must formally request permission from the port’s board of directors to allow parasailing there.

Dave LaPort, manager of the Viscount Hotel, on the other hand, attributes it to Kimball’s own delays early in the process in obtaining proper insurance and registering his boat with the Coast Guard. “The problem is that (he) started too late,” LaPort said.

Whatever the cause, Kimball now says that he cannot remain in Long Beach. With no income and expenses of nearly $2,000 a month, he says, his small family-owned firm is on the verge of collapse. To stave off bankruptcy, Kimball says he plans within a few weeks to move to Baja, California, where he hopes to contract with a tourist resort to offer rides for about $35 apiece.

But he has not given up on Long Beach. “We’ll be back next year,” he said, adding that he will begin negotiations early enough this time to be well-established by the beginning of the summer tourist season.

For the time being, though, he is mainly giving free rides to friends, family members and occasional contest winners.

“That was great!” Scaringe, the contest winner’s friend, enthused after his recent experience in the sky. “I’d do that again.”

Mayberry, for her part, seemed a bit less certain. “If people like roller coasters, they’ll love this,” she said, looking slightly pale. “My stomach hurts.”