Pirates Of The Wind: Kite Festival Sprintkite Cervia 2024

It was – tough. From the very beginning.

Roberto said that unspecified consequences shall befell us if we don’t show up at his festival.

Then the weather went all crazy with incessant rain and, for the first half of September, clearly illegal temperatures.

Then the weather kinda backed off (it was still way too cold; we came from 38 degrees in Opuzen and 36 in Urbino to 9 degrees at home), but the wind started go berserk.

And when we were ready to go back home, Roberto pointed out that if we don’t come back next year, he will drag us to Cervia by our ears himself, and they will close the roads out of the town so we won’t be able to leave till Tuesday.

We handle such stuff very well: we simply complied with everything. Came to the festival, endured the temperatures, fought with the wind, and dutifully marked the next September for an extended stay in Cervia.

Real badasses, that’s who we are.


How it started:

Il grande KAP Jasa is on the road again

How it was going:

Il grande KAP Jasa is on the field again

And then it went further into sheer badassery …

Ufff …

… and beyond.


You see, this Cervia (there’s another Cervia festival in late April/early May) is badass. It’s like a pirate ship – raiding the sea, the beach, and the sky. Cervia for the naughty ones.

Where Livio plays Laibach for dinner, and Massimo distributes sour cherries from hell.

And everyone gets a funny hat!

Yeehaaa!

Where we do actually fly kites, but the wind is a badass – so you get sunburns on your knuckles because you can’t really let go of the line and relax with a glass of spumante.

Where you take a break for a cup of nice espresso, but then a huge manta with a huge pilot kite crashes down in a cloud of fine sand (something that really shouldn’t – couldn’t! – happen, because the manta can fly alone: if something messes with the pilot, the manta can handle it, and if the manta has a problem, the pilot pulls it out).

The pilot, the manta, the sunflowers … all came crashing down

Where the trilobites – good old stable trilobites! – get completely crazy, entangle themselves and sweep the field together … five times in a row.

With Pink Floyd on full volume.

Of course it’s Pink Floyd …


Sprintkite Cervia kite festival is … special. For starters, it’s not even in Cervia proper, but on a beach of Tagliata di Cervia, a strip of sand by a protected pine forest. The beach is just like any Italian Adriatic beach – narrow, sandy, littered with neat rows of umbrellas – but when Roberto and his Cervia Volante wind pirates assemble their merry crew, it explodes in all kinds of shapes and colours.

The pirates that stick their flags into the sand of Tagliata di Cervia are true masters of the trade: make kites hard, fly hard, party hard.

Like Patrizio and his multicellular kite that is actually 12 kites in one:

And Maurizio, and Gerardo, and Guilherme … and Daura, Denis, Paola, Andrea, Federica, Augusto, Emanuela, Aristide, Franco, Giancarlo, Giovanni, Stefano … and the rest of the pirates of Italy.

And Christopher of the Pannonian sea!

And master Zhiping Liu of the Yellow sea, who gave us one of his kites (after he sold us one, for he is a pirate too) …

And Pavani who got dressed by Massimo …

…. so she could light up the night!

Even contrada di Lavagine from Urbino boarded the pirate ship of Cervia Volante … (wonder who is in that costume).

And us.


As we never forget to mention, we are KAP Jasa team, so we had to do a kite aerial photography session. But we were in the badass Cervia festival, so it was … intense.

A fierce gust of wind broke a spar on our Original Blue rokkaku just as it went out over the sea, and a panicked salvage operation ensued.

Crrrack! went the spar

Everything was saved; Ivor got the camera before it fell into the Adriatic, the kite fell on dry land – all it needs is a new spar and a patch to mend the tear.

We got a couple of nice aerial photos, but we didn’t give up just yet, so we got a replacement spar and went to the Saline di Cervia to do a KAP session with the flamingos …

… but only managed to scare the poor birds away with our kite, so we didn’t 🙁

Next year, Cervia, next year!


Every sailor on this pirate ship had just one goal – to steal hearts and to spread happiness. Livio with his hats (and other things, mainly bottled). Massimo with his sour cherries. Guilherme with a coconut on his head. Everyone with their flying wonders, making passers by hurt their necks when they stared for hours into the colourful sky.

Even we did our share of happiness distribution: a little pirate in the making, Alessandro, came to us and insisted on helping.

And he chose to help with our huge snake!

And he did it – the snake flew!

Later he helped with the trilobite, and with the vicious Rukfaš fled … he talked in Italian, us in Slovenian, and we easily understood each other.

Since Alessandro was really cool; flying kites, packing kites, winding the lines, and since every true wind pirate needs a kite – he got our colibri to take home and hone his kite flying skills! 🙂


It was two magnificent days of a fantastic kite festival.

The people, the kites, the parties; food, wine, coffee, and beer … the debates, the laughs, the pranks …

Thank you, Roberto and the Cervia Volante team; thank you, friends old and new – for a truly amazing time we had on this pirate ship of a kite festival in Cervia.

Shine on – you crazy kiters. We love each and every one of you.


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