When early signs of Hurricane Florence took hold of North Carolina’s Outer Banks last week, professional kiteboarder and business owner Dimitri Maramenides saw an opportunity. Part extreme product testing and part publicity stunt, the owner of Epic Kites was caught on a local newscast zipping around off the coast of Nags Head. Video of the stunt went viral.
Cullen Browder, the reporter on the scene, asked Maramenides–who was born in Greece and raised in Cameroon, Africa— what he was thinking, adding, “this is the last thing emergency management wants to see.”
To be fair to Maramenides, Browder was also on the beach defying a mandatory evacuation order.
Maramenides, though, didn’t see the decision to kiteboard in the ocean before a hurricane was forecast to make landfall as a dumb idea.
“People are like, ‘You’re crazy,'” said Maramenides in an interview. “But I’m not that crazy because, you know, it’s not that windy right now. It’s blowing like 25 to 35, so… and a lot of rain. It’s not like 75 and up.”
Maramenides does explain in the video above that he takes a few precautions before heading out with his kite including wearing a bright yellow rash guard and writing his wife’s phone number on his forearm in permanent marker – the latter of which seems questionable.
Still, at the end of the day, the Outer Banks dodged a serious bullet with Florence, and Maramenides got some serious publicity for his company, Epic Kites. Maybe it wasn’t such a stupid stunt after all.
