Puerto Rico

I’ve been fortunate to spend most of February in Puerto Rico and this month featured nonstop wind and waves, making for incredible kitesurf and wing foil sessions. I rented a beachfront Airbnb and decided to forgo a rental car since I was staying at my preferred riding spot. Puerto Rico is quickly becoming a second home for me and I’m hoping to start looking into buying property there next winter. After having an incredible two-week trip here in 2022, I decided to book the full month of February 2023. Soon after, my friend Arlin Ladue committed to joining the trip and I couldn’t wait to see how he would capture the spot with photo and video. After attending the Dakine and Cabrinha “Vive Mas” dealer meeting in Mexico, I flew into San Juan February 5 and couldn’t wait to get out and use my new equipment. 

I broke more gear on this trip than the rest of my time kiting combined. My 10m kite ripped while landing on a rock at the end of my very first session. A couple days later, I fell while winging in big waves and popped a 4.2m wing when I was stuck in the impact zone at the worst time. Luckily, I was able to have a repair guy pick them up quickly and still had an 8m kite and 5m wing to use. The 8m kite ended up being my go-to size for this trip and I didn’t miss the 10m all that much. At the end of the first week, I was having such an amazing sunset session that I lost track of where I was on the reef. After a few incredible waves, I dropped in too high and saw a bunch of rocks starting to surface as I went for my first turn. I was able to steer the kite out the back and save myself, but the board was crushed into the rocks and ended up with a blown-out fin box and a couple other small holes. I was fortunate that Arlin brought a kite surfboard he was barely using and was able to borrow a 5’6 North Wam for the rest of the trip. But I even managed to damage that board in an incident towards the end of week 2. I scrubbed too much speed on my second turn on a wave, fell off the back and dropped my kite into the wave that I was just riding. The kite fell right as the wave broke, and the canopy separated from the center strut. I was dragged so fast that my board leash cut into the rail of Arlin’s surfboard and eventually snapped the leash cord. I floated to shore with a bare strut sticking up toward the sky, and luckily the board stayed nearby for me to paddle in. At this point, I was down to just a 5m wing and spent the next day driving to San Juan to pick up my repairs and have the 8m fixed while I waited.

My body was hardly unscathed, either. One of the first few days, I was kiting overhead waves and didn’t make it out of a top turn. I was pulled to the bottom so fast that both of my feet slammed into the reef and there was so much moving water I couldn’t feel any tension on my lines. I tried to steer aggressively in each direction to regain control but ended up crashing the kite into the wave behind me. The wave pushed the kite towards me, and I needed to swim upwind to avoid getting caught in my own lines. Luckily, I was already lying on my surfboard and was able to paddle away quickly. I decided to flag-out the kite after it hit the water and had to wait for 3-4 more waves to pass through before the kite drifted downwind and out of the impact zone to relaunch. I think flagging-out was the right call here, but it can also backfire since it’s more likely that you’ll invert lines or get a tangled mess with the bar. The downside of not flagging out is you could get pulled very hard/underwater by waves and this also puts more pressure on your kite’s canopy and stitching. I escaped that incident with just a couple small cuts on my feet and a scrape near my knee. The impact from the wave breaking was so violent that the GoPro bite mount I was using snapped in half (didn’t lose the camera). I had a couple more encounters with the reef during the next week. One botched tack led to a vertical fall with my right foot jammed into a crack in the coral. It took me a few tries to get it free and left me with a lot of missing skin between my toes. The worst one was a few days later when I dropped my kite on the inside after my second turn on a wave. With a kite in the air, you get enough lift that the shallow reef isn’t a problem but if your kite is in the water, each wave will pull you across the water surface or even underwater. The first wave hit the kite and my left knee was dragged into the reef. I didn’t feel anything but could see a bunch of skin missing and kept trying to relaunch my kite. Two more waves hit the kite, scraping my left and right thighs over reef sections before I was finally in deeper water. I got up and riding again with blood dripping down both legs and made it back to the launch spot as quickly as I could.

Despite all the broken equipment, cuts and scrapes, I still had an incredible time and some of the best sessions I’ve ever experienced. Riding around professional kiters like Evan Netsch and Reider Decker was inspiring, and I was able to learn a lot by watching and talking to them between sessions. I was impressed by their ability to do aerials between waves and have decided to make strapless airs a summer goal for myself. We were treated to relatively large swell conditions, and I’m inspired to keep pushing my strapless wave riding. Even after 4-5 years of focusing on strapless surf riding, there is still plenty I can learn and progress on. My friends Matt and Chris flew in from Florida for one week and we were treated to 6 days of epic conditions. We didn’t even mind that the wind turned off for a day and we were able to experience some world-class snorkeling right out in front of our Airbnb. After so many sessions, we didn’t feel like cooking much and were big fans of the wood-fired pizza from Villa Montana.

Another highlight was our photo session when Arlin swam with his camera in a water housing. This was one of the windiest sessions of the trip and there were occasional overhead sets rolling through. Using flippers and holding a camera, Arlin managed to get out a few hundred yards to the surf break where I was kiting with Evan on his wing foil. I spent at least an hour riding circles around Arlin, trying my best to line up waves to make turns in front of him. I was surprised by how well I kept track of his position and we only had a couple close calls. There were plenty of waves faces to make big spray turns on, and I hoped that maybe some of them would come out in the photos. When we got back to the house, I was blown away by the quality of the shots and this session goes down as one of my favorites since I started kiting. Arlin swallowed a lot of salt water, and I was stunned that he was able to take such amazing photos while taking waves to the face every few seconds. I can’t wait for our next in-water photo shoot and this experience gave me even more motivation to start working on strapless aerials this summer.

Overall, it was an amazing trip, and I can’t wait to return to Puerto Rico next winter. I learned a lot of lessons about kiting in big swell and am excited to keep putting in time on my new Dakine and Cabrinha gear. I’m looking forward to spending even more time down there next year and eventually I’m hoping to take advantage of tax incentives and set up a winter home for myself.