Along the south side of the dunes in Sand City, on a property that has been under development for decades, there are ideal flying conditions for paragliding instructor and owner of Raven Wolf Sky Sports, Cynthia “Cyn” Currie.
“Because of the Salinas Valley behind us, the wind turns on every day at about noon and so Monterey is a place where people travel from all over the world to come and fly here,” Currie says. “It’s a very consistent and beautiful place to fly.”
Currie moved to Monterey in 2012 as a skydiving instructor and paraglider. In 2016, she opened her own school, which offers tandem paragliding, among other experiences such as parakiting.
The areas where Currie can operate in Monterey County are limited, as Marina State Beach is a regulated site, where only more advanced pilots are allowed to paraglide and must follow strict rules to protect the environment. Another rule bans anyone from accepting compensation for tandem paragliding instruction.
Because of this, Currie has been launching with permission for the past decade from a property owned by developer Ed Ghandour, who has long had plans to develop an eco-resort on the site. While that project was mired by legal and regulatory obstacles over the years, it allowed Currie and others to paraglide there. Now, it is back under development.
(Ghandour did not respond to a request for comment by the Weekly’s deadline.)
“It seems like he is building again and he has asked us not to fly,” Currie says. “I am not able to take people tandem or teach them to fly anymore.”
Sand City City Manager Vibeke Norgaard says the development is fully entitled by the city and the California Coastal Commission, but she does not yet know when construction will begin.
Currie says the cease-and-desist letter from her landlord came as a shock, but she understands that business is business. She says she is in talks to potentially purchase a portion of the property not under development. But the sale would take time, and to continue operating her business, she has to travel elsewhere, likely to Chile. She says she would like to return to Monterey County but isn’t sure when or where.
“I am going to have to figure out a new path,” she says of her business, “and so I am.”