I was quite disappointed with my first time kitesurfing in Cape Verde. Cape Verde is located in the middle of the Atlantic – not quite in the middle of the Sahara, but still a good distance away. You’d think the wind would be laminar. But it’s not at all. It is extremely gusty, now in November constantly changing between 12 and 28 knots every second from 10 am to 5 pm. Regardless of the coast.
A diving instructor on Estoril beach has a Zodiac for the recue. This is urgently needed: a maximum of 5 kiters per 10 kilometres, wind 75 degrees offshore. There is a small offshore island in the direction of the wind. Otherwise, the next stop is Brazil.
There are no bad conditions, just too little experience. I go out and do my first laps. A ride on a bull. I set my depower quite high. The result: a gust sends the kite quite far over me. The wind hole afterwards doesn’t slow it down. The wind picks up again, the kite gets hit on the head and falls out of the sky. A line wraps around the tip. It takes me five minutes to get the kite back in the air and another 10 minutes to get back upwind to the beach. That’s enough for now.
There are strange corals on Boa Vista. Not sharp, but round. They look like brains or cauliflower. These corals are everywhere, even on the beach in Estoril. Despite its curves, one of them bites me on the foot when I get out and leaves me with a nice cut, which over the next few days just can’t decide whether it wants to heal or become badly infected.
Two days later, the surfers are rejoicing. One hell of a swell rolls into Boa Vista. The waves on the beach are 1 to 1.5 metres high. 20 to 50 metres further out, half the masts of windsurfers disappear behind the waves. 25 knots tear the spray from the crests of the waves in a way that would have given Peter Jackson real pleasure. Monsters break on the outer reef. It’s hard to say how big they are because they’re about 3 kilometres away. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were five or more metres.
In front of the Tortuga Bar, the wind is a little weaker in the afternoon and the waves are lower. The diving instructor and his boat have left, but the kite instructor says that the next school has a jet ski. I tell the Regensburg girls anyway: if I’m more than 200 metres out at any time, something is wrong. In that case, please organise a fishing boat in the nearby harbour immediately.
I’m going out. Wind: normal range, slightly less gusty. Almost too weak to go upwind, so after just a few minutes I decide to go ashore on Boa Vista rather than in Brazil. On the way in, 80 metres from the beach, I catch a small wave quite stupidly. I lose my board and tear up the kite. The wind is too weak to go upwind with bodydrag. I struggle for a long time, but when I’m about 1 kilometre out I know it’s time for a self-rescue. I pull the safety.
I wind up the front lines. The pull is very strong. It takes me a long time to work my way up to the kite. I try to use the bar as much as possible, but my fingers still get a few deep cuts from the lines. Just as I’ve wrapped up the kite, a fishing boat arrives about 30 minutes later. Thanks, girls!
The fisherman can’t get to the shallow beach. I still have to kite the last 300 metres through the surf. I fall onto the beach like Robinson Crusoe. My heart is racing. Shit, that was exhausting. That was agony. It’s hard to believe how infinite time can seem.
The kite instructor approaches me: Out without a rescue, whether I’m mad. I had a rescue, it would be great if you could offer one too. Why am I going out without shoes? Because I’ve got two pairs at home, and at €10 a day for surf gaiters, I’m just not going to do it. Above all, the tone directly following the fear of death is as far as possible: totally wrong.
A little later I realise that it wasn’t me. The instructor needs a rescue. The school next door has a jet ski. But they refuse the rescue on the grounds that nobody has a licence. Given the legal situation in Cape Verde, this demand is about as idiotic as a free-swimming licence for trout.
The competition between two kite schools meant that 1) I was really scared to death for a while. 2.) I lost my kiteboard. All the best on your way to Brazil! And finally: I’m sure I’ll be pissed off for a very long time. This is such a nasty way of failing to provide assistance, such an ice-cold crime, that these wankers from the kite school should just hide well for the next eight days. Otherwise there’ll be a headline “Kite instructor decapitated by kiteboard”. I call that reimbursed assistance. So, must go and find a new board with sharp edges…
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.