Meet Michel Copetta Winkelmann

Beside Spanish people and Portuguese people of Europe that I already accustom to meet recently, non-native English people that I am now becoming familiar to are Brazilian people and Chilean people. Now that I am not only used to names like Chris, Paul, Peter, or Brian, but also Carlos, Romeu, Pedro, and Gabriel. And I found so far that Brazilian people and Chilean people are better in speaking English.

And when I met this guy the other day, I found there is no communication gap between us. With his enough English and mine we can communicate each other well.

Michel is a professional body boarder from Chili. He likes to make videos of himself surfing and publishes them in Vimeo. I’ve checked some of his videos and I was stunned by how well he surfs. He is very good at knee drops.

Michel came to Krui with his group of friend and stayed in one of the surf camp by the beach in town. It was his first time in Krui and they stayed for one week.

The morning was beautiful and the surf was big when I met this guy at The Peak. Five or six people were surfing The Peak and some others were at the beach watching and waiting. It’s like a real coincidence when I started talking to this guy. He was like waiting for someone to come out of nowhere and I was like coming at the right time. “You are like an angel for us,” he said. He was looking for someone to operate his camera to take some videos, and I came with my camera to take some pictures. Then he asked me to take some videos of them surfing with his camera. I agreed. His camera is better than mine. “All of us want to go into the water. Nobody wants to operate the camera,” he said.

And it was a long-long surfing session. The Peak was like pumping all day long without a pause. I started taking videos of him and his friends at about 9 in the morning, and they only finished surfing about a quarter before 1. It was almost four hours and the people in the water had turned over many times but this Chilean guys. And I only stopped taking videos when the memory was overloaded. And when we checked the videos on a computer in the camp, I had made more than 300 video files. It was full memory.

And thanks God, the videos I made were not bad. Michel and his friends were satisfied for what I made. “It’s only you take too much videos about somebody else, not us,” he said. But anyway, the videos were OK.

And it was a long-long day like I said when the surfing sessions continued until evening. We came back to The Peak at about 4 p.m., me with the camera and Michel and his crew with their boards.

The Peak seemed to have been working all day long. When we arrived back at the surf at 4 in the evening, it was still pumping with many people out. The angles where I took the videos from were very beautiful. And when the clock just struck 4, the lights were pretty much enhanced the view, and the Chilean guys in the water just surfed right. What spectacular videos I made. However, as the evening getting later and later the light was then getting dimmer and dimmer. And turned out, many videos I took were lack of light as this guys stayed in the water until dark.

One thing to remember about this guys is that they were like blessed with some good lucks during their holiday in Krui. Michel and his friends never planned to get out of Krui by an airplane before they saw some flights took place right over their head, at The Peak. They asked whether they could fly from Krui to Bandarlampung. I said yes. And they were very happy when I told them that the flight schedules were on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, because they would leave on Saturday.

The flight was like a blessing for this guys. As their flight from Bandarlampung to Jakarta would start at 2 p.m., they must start leaving Krui by a car earlier in the morning, as it takes about 6 hours drive from Krui to Bandarlampung, and it means they must forget about the surf for the day.

However, as they would leave Krui by an airplane, they wouldn’t have to start leaving Krui that early. They had much time to surf in the morning. So they planned to surf up north at Jenny’s, Honey Smack, or Jimmy’s in the morning before the flight.

There actually no flight for this guys because they hadn’t booked yet, and because there was only one flight a day from Krui to Bandarlampung, and the only flight for the day was fully booked. However, it was kind of another blessing, the flight for the other day had been cancelled, and it was rescheduled for Saturday, so there were two flights on Saturday. And what a good luck, this guys could take the second flight.

Earlier at 04:30 in the morning, we left the camp by a car for the surfs up north. We arrived at the surf at about 05:55. And after checking all the surf spots, they decided to surf Honey Smack. Among all the three spots, Honey Smack was the biggest earlier that morning. And for the better of it, there was no other people but them three. So they enjoyed the surf just for themselves for more than one hour.  It was a lot of fun. And it was just another luck for them because the surf didn’t work that big the day before.