This weekend, necks will be craned above the horizon and lines will surely be flying high as the Whidbey Island Kite Festival takes to the skies over Camp Casey.

The annual festival and sport kite competition presented by the Whidbey Island Kite Festival Association and the Whidbey Island Kite Fliers will draw kite enthusiasts from not only the surrounding Puget Sound area, but from as far away as Canada and states all over the west.

Last year’s festival drew a crowd of close to 6,000 spectators for the weekend. The competition itself had around 40 entries, and there’s no counting how many more single-line fliers came.

“This is one of the premiere kiting events in the Pacific Northwest,” said Lisa Root, secretary/treasurer for the Whidbey Island Kite Fliers.

All festival events are free to the public. Featuring a two-day sport kite competition, single-line kite displays, kids’ kitemaking, raffle tent, beginning sportkite lessons, sport kite demonstrations, parachuting teddy bears for kids ages 10 and under, an indoor sport kite competition, and used kite sale.

“It’s a great way for someone to pick up a kite at great prices,” said Marjorie Taylor, festival co-organizer and competitor.

The featured flier for this year’s festival, Paul Horner, started as a sport kite flier and is now an accomplished kite maker.

“He creates these extremely artistic kites,” Taylor said. “They are canvases, gorgeous canvases.”

At the competition you’ll know who the diehard kitefliers are — they’re the ones with overflowing kite bags and way more kites than they can carry.

“I bought an RV just to go to kite festivals,” Taylor said.

For kite enthusiasts, the reasons they fly are almost indescribable.

“When you fly in harmony with the wind everything coalesces,” Taylor said. “You’re generally not aware of the wind because you don’t see it, but when you fly a kite you have to be so in tune with nature.”

Taylor’s love of flying started with a $4.95 kite she picked up for a beach vacation.

“We saw other people flying dual-line sport kites and I just had to have one,” she said. “Now I’m like any other kite person, there’s always one more kite you’ve got to have.”

The popularity and possibilities with kiting are as endless as the different flying niches in the sport.

“There’s kite buggying, kite boarding, single-line, dual-line and fighter kites,” Taylor said. “And that’s just the start of the list.”

Marjorie’s husband and festival co-organizer, Allen Taylor, can still remember the countless newspaper kites he and his children crafted during Labor Day family vacations at Pacific Beach on the Washington coast.

“We’d head out to the beach with newspaper, split bamboo and a book of kites of the world,” he said. “Some flew better than others. Most only had a couple flights if they were lucky but it was a lot of fun.”

The first kite festivals on Whidbey were organized in the mid-’90s by a Snohomish County kite group. By 2000 the Whidbey Island Kite Fliers club took the event over and made it a community event with support from the Central Whidbey chamber and local businesses. The next year the festival became its own nonprofit entity so that funds raised could then be used for kite education facilitated by the Whidbey Island Kite Fliers as well as scholarships for different kiting conferences.

The Whidbey Island Kite Fliers currently has a membership of 35-plus ranging in age from 7 to 80, according to Root.

This weekend’s sport kite competition is broken down to two broad categories. Kite ballet consists of choreographed flight routines set to music. The precision competition has fliers performing specific and very intricate flight patterns. Both competitions are broken into individual, pairs and teams contests in varying levels from beginners to masters. Competitors will all be flying high, hoping to earn points at this American Kitefliers Association sanctioned event to boost their national standings.

Oak Harbor native Daniel Haigh began flying sport kites in 2000 after he became enamored by a visit to the Whidbey Island Kite Festival.

Haigh said the Whidbey kite competition is unique because it doesn’t break competitors down into age divisions or separate by gender.

“You’ll see 9 year olds and 80 year olds out there flying together,” he said.

Today Haigh is a dual-line sport kite flyer known throughout the circuit for his champion technique. He flies individually and is the current American Kitefliers Association national champion in masters individual precision flying. He and competition partner Bill Rogers are national champions in masters pairs ballet under the name “Fly By Nite.” And along with Rogers and teammate Wayne Turner the trio’s team “6th Sense” is the current national champion and title holder in masters team ballet and precision.

“In general, the public doesn’t understand the sport,” Haigh said. “If I tell people I fly kites in competition they always ask me if it’s a big one because that’s the only picture of kites they have.”

But anyone who knows Haigh knows not to knock kite flying. It can take you places, as it did when Haigh took an all-expenses paid trip to compete in the World Kiting Championship in France a few years back.

Marjorie Taylor can tell you that how this weekend’s kiting contest goes depends on the wind more than the competitors.

“My husband and I were flying precision figures when the wind came up suddenly at 24 miles per hour,” she said. “We flew horrible and had a few near misses. I’ve never flown so bad, but we had so much fun that even the judges were laughing.”