THE RETURN
During the national slalom event Ricardo was bummed he missed that good swell, he went absolutely nuts when he saw a few pictures! So naturally he did not hesitate to plan his escape from Margarita to be sure not to miss the next swell. Shortly after, we all spotted another decent swell on its way! It seemed like it would hold up for a week but the only down side was that it had too much east in it!
Ricardo organized everything anyway, Antoine Albeau, 22 times world champion, was at the same time visiting Venezuela with his girlfriend, so he also jumped on Ricardo’s speed boat for an adventure with all their gear with plans to score some insane waves! On the way over even Antoine was telling me that it was hard core! Antoine is very extreme at everything he does and for him to say it was gnarly it must have been insane! He told me that one big wave covered the entire length of the 33 feet boat, soaking everyone on board! Thank god they made it there safely. It took them six and a half hours to make the 171 nautical miles (317 km) journey by boat averaging a speed of between 16 and 30 knots. The next morning I went to wake up Antoine and Ricardo early at Francis Key, we saw some set waves at Casa Verde but they were not what we expected!
When we hit the water, the waves looked like there were dropping rapidly instead of increasing! It seemed like the swell came at night or just did not come at all because it was from the East/ North East! We still had an awesome day foiling, kiting and stand up paddling! Unfortunately Antoine had to leave after a few days! Ricardo stayed for a while and we scored some super fun head to logo high waves at Casa Verde with a swell that came unexpectedly. It lasted for about four days with the waves offering a huge variety of moves such as aerials, off the lip, goiters and air takas! Ricardo even screamed to me on the water that he pulled off a double air taka! I was like dam! I did not believe him but my good friend Eniel, who was also kiting in the waves, told me that he saw Ricardo pull a strange move from far away! Ricardo was praying that we got it on film; unfortunately it was not recorded since it was in the inside at La Pasa and a bit too far away! I told him we would have to come back so he could do it again!
