Monterey Sky Sports Starting Small and Dreaming Big
C
ynthia Currie, owner of
paragliding instructor ratings with Bill
all the pros of a skydiving dropzone
Monterey Sky Sports, proves
Heaner at the Point of the Mountain.
without any of the cons. She could still
that first impressions can be
At that point, she had already been
offer tandem flights and teach—her
teaching her friends for free “but
favorite parts of the job—but the loom-
wasn’t legit.”
ing overhead of the plane would be
deceiving. Her pixie form and blonde good looks belie an iron will—and a high-
“I wanted to change that, work
conspicuously absent. “At this point, I was immersed in
powered background, besides. Cyn
through the ratings process and teach
spent her teenage years teaching
people properly,” she explains. “It was
the ratings process at the Point of the
surfing and swimming; in the years
an eye-opening process.”
Mountain, so I would talk to Bill over
going forward, she earned a degree
As luck would have it, Cyn was stay-
and over,” she says, “I really picked his brain. He is a fantastic adminis-
in marine engineering. In her 20s,
ing with a close friend who had just
she became a professional skydiving
taken the plunge of business owner-
trator and he knows my background.
instructor, logging more than 10,000
ship, opening an aerial-arts school in
He skydives and BASE jumps, so he
jumps—but that’s certainly not all
the Point neighborhood. Cyn’s friend
understood where I was coming from.
she’s taught. To date, she has also
had an embarrassment of empower-
His mentorship was key, and he was
instructed kite surfing, aerial arts,
ing pep talks to share, and the spark
incredibly supportive. He said he
snowboarding, BASE jumping, wing-
caught fire.
would help me through the certifica-
suit flying and—most recently—paragliding. “I feel so lucky to be the momma bird
“I started thinking about opening a
the paperwork. And he said, Look, why
she says. “It’s magical, and there
don’t you just start it small?”
of so many talented pilots and flyers,”
wasn’t anyone doing it here. I had no
she grins. “On a spiritual, energy-mov-
idea why.”
ing, hippie-California-girl way, I do feel
tion and help mentor me through all
paragliding school here in Monterey,”
Framed like that, the project suddenly started to feel do-able.
For Cyn, the paragliding school had
“That really spoke to me,” Cyn insists.
like this is my destiny.” Cyn had been engrossed in the business side of skydiving for 10 years before she kited her first paraglider wing in 2013. Aside from instructing, she had managed skydiving dropzones, taking in the many lessons of airsports business ownership osmotically. At one point, her Australian ex-husband suggested that they open up a small, Cessna-based skydiving dropzone together in Oz. Cyn insists that she would have owned a business with him in a heartbeat, but in the end the idea of owning an airplane struck Cyn as “madness.” The idea of taking the ownership reins herself didn’t appear until much later. It was only last year, in fact, when the flashbulb went off. At the time, Cyn was working towards her
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USHPA PILOT MAGAZINE
ABOVE Cyn
working with students at Sand City.