John Ritter: Swept Away. Michelle Henderson took up kitesurfing for fun. It nearly ended her life—until a fellow boarder swooped in.

By Kathleen Fifield(photo: Preston C. Mack/Redux) For John Ritter, windy days are the best days. Every chance he gets, he heads for the Banana River, a long, narrow estuary that borders Cape Canaveral, Florida, to go kiteboarding, an adventure sport that combines elements of surfing and sailing. He straps himself into a harness connected to a 42-foot-long kite, then stands on a board as the wind pulls him across the water’s surface. “It’s my favorite thing to do,” says Ritter, 53, a retired business owner. Last fall, Michelle Henderson, an accomplished runner, diver, and longboard surfer, got the kitesurfing bug. “It looked like fun,” says the 50-year-old orthopedic surgeon. “Just another crazy thing I wanted to challenge myself to do.” So Henderson got a kiteboard, took some lessons, and a few months later drove out to the Banana River. There she met Ritter, who took her under his wing as a beginner. He offered to help her improve her skills. “I was doing the fairy godmother thing and looking out for her,” he says. They made a plan to get together one morning in November. The idea was that Ritter would instruct Henderson while his wife, Nancy, 49, trailed behind her on a Jet Ski. That way, there would be someone to retrieve Henderson if she got into trouble. Ritter gave her a few tips. The breeze was irresistible, so after pointing Henderson into the wind, he took off. He’d sailed about three quarters of a mile down the river when he felt the gusts pick up. He knew that the stronger the wind grew, the more difficult it would be for Henderson to control her board. Worried, he turned and started sailing back toward the two women. Henderson had already decided to head for shore. The wind was too strong for her, and she wanted to save her energy for the lesson she’d scheduled for early afternoon. She prepared to land her kite by releasing one of the four lines that kept the sail in the air. But she didn’t have a chance. Seconds later, a huge gust sent the kite billowing skyward, yanking Henderson, who hadn’t yet unhooked herself from the harness, up with it. She released her board and tried to pull the safety release. Ordinarily, that would’ve detached the kite from the harness and sent it crashing into the water. Instead, another strong blast of wind propelled the kite upward again. Even more dangerous, the sail’s lines started to twist together, round and round, creating what’s known in kiteboarding circles as a death spiral. Still attached to the kite, Henderson was jerked over the water, then back under, as the runaway sail pulled her along behind it. Her mouth and nose filled with water again and again, the pressure from the harness on her rib cage restricting her lungs even further. She couldn’t breathe. Henderson knew she had to yank the safety release to detach from the kite. But she couldn’t locate it under the mass of tangled lines, let alone pull it. Nancy was several hundred feet away on the Jet Ski and couldn’t get to her fast enough to help. Choking and fighting for air, Henderson knew she was only a few minutes away from drowning. Her heart told her she wasn’t ready to go. She prayed to God: “I’m not done yet.” By now, the wind had jumped from 15 mph to nearly 40, and the waves were at least two feet high. Ritter, who was still a quarter of a mile away, could see that Henderson was attempting to release her kite. Good move, he thought. Then he realized she couldn’t do it. “She was going downwind at 20 miles per hour,” he says. “That’s when I knew we had a real problem.” He took off after her on his board, but she was moving so quickly, he wasn’t sure he could catch up with her. As Ritter closed in, he lost his own board. Struggling to steer his kite while being dragged face-first across the water, he hit an upward surge and leapfrogged in front of Henderson. Controlling his kite with one hand, he grabbed her lines and pulled himself alongside her with the other. Henderson felt Ritter lift her out of the water. “Grab onto me!” he shouted. As she held his arm, he tried to pull the release but couldn’t reach it. Then suddenly, Ritter let go. At that point, without him holding onto her, Henderson was sure she would die. But Ritter had seen Nancy approaching and figured he’d have a better chance of helping Henderson from the Jet Ski; he landed his kite and jumped onto the vehicle, steering it from behind his wife. “We could barely get it to move forward,” Ritter says. “The waves were so big that we couldn’t punch through them.” The couple ducked as Henderson’s kite swooped wildly over their heads. Then, as the sail took a nosedive, Ritter jumped for it. With all his might, he leaped from the Jet Ski onto the sail and wrestled it to the water, where it finally collapsed. Henderson floated for a few minutes, then rallied to help pull in her lines. As she untwisted them, she counted the revolutions—more than 200—and was amazed that the kite had turned so many times. Nancy wasn’t surprised by her husband’s actions that day. “I knew that John of all people could jump onto the kite,” she says. Ritter, for his part, credits Henderson: “She’s in incredible physical condition, and if she weren’t, she would have been dead when I got to her.” The experience hasn’t kept Henderson off the board. She’s taking more lessons and plans to keep kitesurfing. “Life is fragile, but it’s meant to be enjoyed,” she says. “I’m grateful that I’m still here to do that.”