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Cape Verde
The island of Sal, part of the Cape Verde archipelago, lies in the South Atlantic off the coast of Senegal. Being 1500 miles south of the canaries, it’s only five and a half hours away by plane, which makes it an easy week winter destination.
Sal has a reputation for wind, and many who have worked there liken it to Margarita for its consistency. This is perhaps due to the fact that with a similar proximity to the equator, the same North Easterly trades pump over Sal. Added to that the water is warm (shorty temperature) and very blue, the sun shines and the beaches are long. We spent the month of March, 2007, here and it blew pretty much non stop. For the average weight guy 9m and 12m would be good, if you’re a tad lighter you may well need something smaller.
Most of our time will be spent at kite beach, on the East side of the island, five minutes by truck from Santa Maria. Here the wind blows cross on, with waves breaking on the reef about 150m off the sandy beach. On the inside of the reef is the flatter water – perfect. If you have enough of banging your head against the brick wall of your latest move, just nip out the back and carve some waves, hmmm.
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Real World Kitesurfing
To get the most out of Sal you will need to be happily riding up wind. At high tide there can be a shore break and inside the reef area gets choppy. Although the waves are not powerful, on larger days they can be intimidating. There are no rescue facilities at Kite beach. On the plus side, if anything happens you just get washed up onto the sand
The idea here is to “mix it up a bit”. That is to say you can expect the same intense but fun six days of full on coaching, during which we’ll be looking at the usual improvements from stance, jumping, looping all the way to the craziest freestyle tricks, but we will also be covering an introduction to waves and riding them.
The six days of coaching are packed with simulator work, demonstrations, on-water coaching, video analysis and constant feedback. We will be covering a large syllabus of moves and techniques, very much customised to your individual needs. If you have a wave board, definitely bring it along.
Accommodation is bed and breakfast at the Morabeza Hotel right on the beach in Santa Maria, so we’ll be heading out into Santa Maria’s haunts to sample the Creole cuisine and booze.
The price this year for the Morabeza Hotel was £879 for a week, with two sharing. Unfortunately the single supplement is quite hefty. This included flights, B&B and the kite clinic.
This is without doubt one of our personal favourites. Sometimes we had to bully ourselves to come in, off the water because we were having just too much fun. The mixture of waves, endless wind, empty beaches and warm sunshine after the harshest period of the British winter was almost too good to be true.
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