Holly Alaimo, director of the annual Martha’s Vineyard Wind Festival, found an abandoned kite in the road earlier this year. The kite was shaped like an eagle, but the bird was flightless— cars were running right over it, she recalled.

But Ms. Alaimo took the kite and fixed it up, bringing it to the Wind Festival on Saturday.

“Kids have been playing with it all day,” she said.

Toward the end of the festival, now in its third year, the Ocean Park breezes had picked up into a brisk, chilly wind. Earlier in the afternoon, kids had gathered beneath a tent to make 100 kites, which were perfect for the early breezes but faltered once the winds picked up. Yet stalwarts remained as the adult kite-flying competition got underway.

And despite several store-bought kites fluttering above the park, it was the handmade ones that stole the show. Lisa Sternberg of Hampden earned an award for best homemade kite, which she and her uncle, David Merrill of Plainville, Conn., had made in August on the porch of their Camp Ground house. The kite was in the quintessential diamond shape, papered as a collage and braced with bamboo.

Salty Agard, who “can get his kite to do anything,” according to Ms. Alaimo, sailed an octagon kite painted with a Barbadian flag and also braced with bamboo. His kite, which buzzed in the wind, drew the attention of the Holt and Campbell families, who were visiting the Island. He shared some kite-building tips with the group.

“The most important thing is the tail,” he said. The tail of his own kite was made with cut-up T-shirts, stretched out and knotted together, and netting from Christmas trees.

Mr. Agard asked where the families were from. On hearing ‘Worcester,’ he nodded.

“So if we see a kite [blow over to the Island from there], we’ll know it’s from you,” he said. 

For more photos, see the gallery Afternoon at the Wind Festival.