The flight of the Manta Ray

July 14, 2006 Last month we ran a story on the Kite Tube, a human-bearing inflatable towable water kite and within a week we’ve been sent another one – the Manta Ray has an 11 foot wingspan and is specially designed body to allow an average-sized body to rise out of the water and hover in the air. It takes approximately 23 mph moving to get an average sized adult airborn and hovering but as can be seen from this video, once the Manta Ray is airborn, it can hang there for very long period. Now Sevylor “absolutely discourages attempting to hover with two people” but there’s two seats and … aw shucks! At $US499 it comes in one hundred dollars below the Kite Tube and is distributed across the world.Please note that the Kite Tube has now been withdrawn from the market for safety reasons.