Rider: Willow-River Tonkin
Location: Embuaca, Brazil
Photographer: Axel Reese
“Traveling last year brought me to some pretty epic places. It was awesome to travel the world and explore the craziest spots. Traveling has encouraged my progression as I kited in so many different conditions. Strapless freestyle is definitely where my passion lies.
Traveling last year brought me to Brazil where I joined up with a team mate, Steven Akkersdijk and Axel Reese, a photographer from Germany. The three of us started our search for the perfect flat water lagoon as well as waves for strapless riding!
Embuaca ended up being one of the stops on our road trip up north from Cumbuco. The wind didn’t really pull through as much as we expected for Brazil but luckily our quiver of kites enabled us to go out even in the lighter wind conditions. This day I took out my 11 meter Section and a Ripper 3 for a little wave and strapless freestyle session. After playing around in the waves a bit, Axel joined us for a photo shoot session. Doing strapless freestyle in lighter wind conditions is really challenging but never the less can produce some unsuspectingly awesome results.
This day everything lined up so well; the waves together with the sideshore wind made it perfect for launching some big strapless air grabs. I personally like stronger wind conditions for more radical and powered tricks. Saying this, light wind, strapless freestyle challenges you to try a completely different range of tricks that you wouldn’t normally do in stronger winds.
Embuaca was a super fun spot to play around at, with nice clean right handers for smashing and clean kickers to boost off.”-—Willow-River Tonkin
