My soundtrack for today: Riders on the storm. Highway to hell. I will survive. We lift you up where we belong. Bad Religion. Nine Inch Nails. Perfect day. Early in the morning, after a hard night’s sleep, we cross over to the neighbouring island of Coche. In the morning there’s already a lot of flying sand on Isla Margarita.
Coche. White sand, palm trees, a few hotels. 30 kiters on a 100-metre-wide flat-water piste similar to a tournament course close to the beach. The wind is chopping with 10-minute values of 22-30 knots measured on the beach. Kites: everything between 5 and 9 m². Mine has 10, my knees are shaking. I’ve never been out in such nasty winds.
There’s a liftoff right at the start, I’m dangling on the last knot and the end of the depower. The wind is blowing fully offshore. The kiters are racing at high speed on narrow courses. Kites whizz past each other just a few metres apart and there are some nasty collisions. Nobody dies, but the crashes in this storm are all hard.
Normally my jumps don’t get higher than five metres. That’s my upper limit. Today that’s almost the lower limit. Every little kick sends you to the stars. The landing speed is high, the water is hard, the next kiter is always close. I mess up a few things, but without any bad consequences.
Is this still fun? No. It’s drifting towards religion. It’s drifting far away. Pure ecstasy, everyone yodelling, whistling, you can see your opponents’ big grins from 100 metres away. From the beach bar, the almost perverse sound of Trip Hop by Kruder and Dorfmeister echoes out to sea. Then suddenly a kiter flies over you at a height of 15 metres.
I forget everything in this church. There is only wind and water. Hardly any time for pictures, they would have been bombastic, but I didn’t have time. I forget time and space. And I almost miss my boat back to Isla Margarita, which I practically jump into straight from the water. The crossing is rough. Eight metres of boat fighting against 1.5 metres of swell. El Capitan bites his lips. I’m wetter on arrival than I was on departure. Oh it’s such a perfect day…
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.