Greystone's glider
When U.S. 280 is in the grips of rush hour traffic, Curtis Williams can just sail right past — or more accurately, over — the stopped cars.
A Greystone Cove resident, Williams is a regular sight in the skies above Chelsea and surrounding areas. His vehicle of choice isn’t a plane, but rather a parachute attached to a seat and a motor. The sport, called powered paragliding or paramotoring, is fairly new. Williams said he knows fewer than 20 people across the state who do it.
“It’s the best medicine on earth,” Williams said. “Once you’re up there, nothing can touch you. So it’s this very freeing feeling.”
Williams and his wife, Lindsey, run multiple e-commerce companies including Blanks Boutique, which sells children’s clothing designed for embroidery. Their businesses have become so successful that he was able to take a step back and explore new interests. About three years ago, he came across a local paraglider online and emailed him.
“That afternoon I was out holding a little paraglider above my head. I was completely sold on it,” Williams said.
Williams and other local paragliders have since taken to the skies nearly every day. Unlike flying planes, Williams said, paramotoring is not expensive to get into and can be done from almost anywhere. Williams frequently takes off and lands in parks or vacant land. Most of his flights are in the mornings and evenings, when the air is smoother.
Once he’s in the air, Williams said he has freedom in what he can do, as long as he’s not in congested areas or the airspace of local airports. He can fly at high altitudes or skim just above the ground, following any path he chooses.
“It’s whatever I want to do at that particular time,” Williams said. “It’s been an absolute passion. I would say it’s almost my main job now — flying — because I do it so much.”
Williams has used the new sport as a chance to perform at local festivals, teach students about meteorology and even drop Easter eggs for First Baptist Church of Moody. Wyndham Resorts has also paid for him to come and fly over the beaches near their hotels.
“There’s a sense of excitement with kids and almost wonderment with parents,” Williams said. “It’s just something unique you don’t see every day.”
He’s one of a few pilots, however, who take their powered paragliders on long trips, and that is where Williams found a chance to use his flights to benefit charities.
Operation Reconnect
In 2015, Williams took his paraglider on a nearly 300-mile, nonstop flight to Panama City Beach, raising awareness and donations for Operation Reconnect, a charity that provides weeklong Gulf Coast vacations for military service members and their families after they return from deployment. Williams said Operation Reconnect needs more visibility because the charity seems almost too good to be true.
“They’re actually struggling trying to find enough veterans to do it because it doesn’t seem like it’s a reasonable offer,” Williams said.
He also wants to start an organization to provide paragliders at no cost to other charities for events and fundraisers.
In late March, Williams decided to up the ante with a five-day, 560-mile flight from Savannah, Georgia, to Key West, Florida, to benefit Operation Reconnect. Having made the trip to Panama City Beach, Williams said he expected the trip to be fairly easy. However, it was physically and mentally challenging for Williams and flying partner Brady King to spend five days in the air, avoiding a number of airports and making only brief landings to rest and refuel.
There was a support system along the way. In addition to their videographer, Williams said pilots followed the live tracking of their flight and would meet them at landing spots with food and gas. Williams and King flew about 10 feet above the ground for most of the trip, seeing “all along the way, just thousands of people waving at us.” They also knew another, more important crowd was watching them.
“We felt like we had accomplished something beyond just the challenge for ourselves,” Williams said. “We had veterans all over the world — Afghanistan, Iraq — live tracking this flight, and they were well aware we were doing it because it was the only way we could think to give back to them.”
Some of the most memorable parts of the trip included passing Cape Canaveral, “where things are launched into space, and we’re just putting along in our little parachutes,” and passing over Cumberland Island, Georgia.
“There’s nothing like looking off to your left [and] you’re seeing dolphins playing in the water, and looking to your right — Cumberland Island, for instance, there’s wild horses. So we’re flying through the dunes and there’s wild horses running alongside of us. I mean, it’s such a spiritual feeling to see that,” Williams said.
The Everglades were particularly harrowing, he said. In addition to seeing alligators below them, thermal currents would lift Williams and Brady thousands of feet in the air or push them far beyond their normal speed.
“At some points we were over the ground at 70 miles per hour, and we typically cruise at 20 miles per hour,” Williams said.
What’s next?
When they landed in Key West, Williams said he was relieved the trip was over and almost immediately fell asleep. But he’s already gearing up to compete in the Icarus Race in October, which stretches about 800 miles from the Seattle area of Washington to Sacramento, California. Williams also wants to break a world record with a 700-mile continuous flight.
“It’s an epic challenge,” he said. “I would like to break a world record before I retire.”
That retirement doesn’t mean hanging up the parachute for good. He’ll continue paramotoring for fun and charity, but Williams said he’s not going to try additional challenges or push the limits of the sport. Instead, he wants to try something new, like sail planes.
“I just think I’ve reached the point where I haven’t learned everything, but I’ve reached a level of aptitude where I think pushing it further is too much risk, not enough reward,” Williams said.