Community gets on board with businessin water

It’s a scene that’s not unfamiliar to Cypress Lake.

Two people in the cool lake water on a warm day in late May. One sitting on a jet ski. The other bobbing in the water.

What they are doing – or trying to do – on this warm afternoon is the unfamiliar part to Cypress Lake. Or at least it was.

“Put the board underneath you,” Rich McGahan, called from atop his jet ski.

He was coaching a woman in the water.

She moved through the water not by her own strength but by an unseen force.

“You feel that,” McGahan yelled as he squeezed the jet ski’s throttle. “Lean forward. There you go.”

As the woman followed his direction, her body emerged from the water. She rose until her body hovered a few feet above the water’s surface. On her feet, a pair of boots attached to a board. On the bottom of the board, two vents with water jets, which aided her flight.

And now that she is out of the water and in the air, this woman is now flyboarding, a water-based sport that pairs a snowboardesque board with a jet ski and enables intrepid souls to soar several feet into the air.

Flyboard riders are strapped to the board by large boots. The board’s jets are powered by a large diameter, 60-foot-long hose running from the jet ski to the flyboard. This hose redirects the water sucked in by the jet ski.

Rich, along with his wife, Paula McGahan own and operate the airbound business – Ark-La-Tex Flyboard, which is the only flyboard business within 200 miles.

“It’s vacation fun right here at home,” Rich said about the water sport he and Paula introduced to the Shreveport-Bossier City area last summer.

The McGahans discovered flyboarding while vacationing in Gulf Shores, Ala.

“We were looking for a few things to do in Gulf Shores. And we did [flyboarding] and parasailing,” Rich said. “After we did it, I wouldn’t let it die.”

He recalled telling Paula, “We’ve got to bring this to Shreveport-Bossier City.”

So the pair found investors, got trained and opened up shop. In 2014, Rich and Paula took up 120 people in two-and-a-half months. They were hoping for a bigger year in 2015, but a rainy May has proved difficult for work.

Rich and Paula remain hopeful. The couple have relocated the business from Cross Lake to Cypress Lake, where they’re building a dock near the marina at the Cypress-Black Bayou Recreation Area.

This location also served early this month as the location for the 2015 North American Flyboard Championships, a competition which brought in 70 competitors from 17 countries throughout North America.

Rich called it a “historic event,” because this year marked the first time for the United States to host the championships.

Asked how difficult flyboarding is to pick up, Rich said, “Everybody is different.”

“For the wife and I, it took five minutes. [Paula] shot straight up.”

Logan Faust remembered his first few flyboard attempts being difficult. The 14-year-old from Marshall, Texas, now attributes his skill to “muscle memory.”

Logan’s been flyboarding for three years and his experience shows as he jets across the water, flipping through the air and deftly changing direction.

Logan and his father, Craig Faust, discovered flyboarding while on YouTube. They tried it and took to it.

Craig controls the jet ski’s throttle while Logan, the pilot, circles around the watercraft performing tricks.

Because the jet ski’s thrust is redirected to the flyboard, Craig is essentially dragged around the lake as his son flies around him.

The key to flyboarding for this father-andson duo is “leaning forward on the balls of the feet.” This positioning is what gets the pilot out of the water and into the air.

Rich said the need to lean forward is in relation to the jets on the flyboard’s bottom. Because of the location of these jets (slightly angled and at the front of the board), the pilot must lean forward for flight, which is counter-intuitive for many first-timers.

Kelly Wells, vice president of sports and tourism marketing at the Shreveport-Bossier Convention & Tourist Bureau, echoed both Rich and Craig on the flyboard flight technique. Wells said he grew up on the water and is familiar with wake-boarding and water skiing.

“But this is the most unique thing I’ve ever done,” Wells said.

Wells first went up with Rich in early May. Much like the woman who Rich coached into the air, Wells was coached upward, too, after five or so attempts.

His description of flyboarding is simple, “Flying using water thrusters on the bottoms of your feet.”

Wells, like Rich and Paula, is excited for and optimistic of flyboard’s future at Cypress Lake. Besides being a “great quality-of-life” activity, Wells said, it’s also great for sports tourism. He cited the North American Flyboard Championships as a big feather in the area’s cap, saying the event helped fill more than a few hotels during the first weekend in June.

“It’s huge,” Wells said. “Rich and Paula are awesome and doing a great job.”

And for Paula getting the word out is the secret to Ark-La-Tex Flyboard’s success.

“Our biggest obstacle is getting anyone to see what it is,” she said. “If and when the word gets out, we ought to be run over with business.”

Both she and Rich hope the move to Cypress Lake will increase the eyes on and interest into flyboarding. Either way, they are forging ahead. From the flyboard championships to a family flyboarding event planned for October, it won’t be too long before everyone gets at least a sight of this out-of-water, water sport.

For Rich, it’s all about getting people that first experience.

“For those who know about it, [flyboarding] is awesome,” he said. “I pride myself on being able to coach anybody out of the water.”

And he promises, “The view from up here never gets old.”