Reunion

How did this trip come about and what was the plan for the shoot?

Colleen: This trip came about sort of as a follow up to the SUM of 5 project we did a few years ago, which we had a really great response to. We wanted to get the women together again for another freeride/freestyle shoot and we made the plan to all meet up in Martinique in the Caribbean and sail around on a catamaran for a couple weeks. We were looking to explore spots that aren’t as commonly ridden, however, in the end we had to entirely change our plan.

We are just about to release the video from the trip titled “Reunion”; what’s your take on how the video turned out?

Hannah: I like it’s rawness. The way that it’s not glamorized and that it’s straight up and real. I think I’ve never seen a girl kite video like this before. It’s really cool.

Paula: This trip was just so memorable, it was awesome. When I saw the video, I wanted to go back. It’s exactly like it was. The video is done very nicely and yeah; it really just makes me want to go back.

It sounded like the wind conditions were kind of challenging and you had to hit up different locations as well?

Colleen: Yeah, we had to completely change our plan. Nothing worked out like it was supposed to, but luckily we were living on the boat, so we were able to adjust. We were planning to only sail around Martinique, but early on in the trip we realized that we were going to get almost entirely skunked, if we stuck to our original plan. We rerouted to sail down to the Grenadines, which typically gets a little stronger wind than other places. It was about 20 hours sailing each way, so we had to make the call early on in the trip so that we would have enough time to kite in Union as well as make it back to our flights out of Martinique.

Give us a brief recap of the trip…the highlights, lowlights, what stands out to you now as you look back on it?

Hannah: I loved exploring the Caribbean with all of you kick ass girl teammates. I loved the bond that we made living together on the boat. It was also really special falling asleep looking at the stars every night that we could see through our skylight. It was also really cool to check out the JT Pro Center. If you want the more Juicy side, some of our personalities did clash a little bit, it wasn’t always smooth sailing with nowhere to escape living on the boat [laughs]. We got stuck in a bit of ‘swell’ in the middle there, but in the end I think it actually brought us closer together as friends. 

The real drama happened only on day 1…what was the big incident?

Hannah: Day 1 did start out quite dramatically. I was minding my own business walking on the boat and the next thing I knew, I cracked my head open on the boat. There was blood everywhere. I was lucky that at this point we weren’t that far from shore so it was easy enough to get to the hospital and all of you girls all took good care of me. I also timed it well with the wind so my head healed while we didn’t have wind. I even had a shower cap with me, so that I was able to use it to keep the scar dry and still go in the water to swim.  By the time we had good wind, my head was healed so in the end it worked out well.

What did you do to make the most of your no wind down days or days when you were sailing for the entire day? How did you stay moving?

Hannah: That’s the hard thing about being on the boat – it’s impossible to get your steps in. I would love to know how many kilometers we all swam between us. We spent so much time lapping the boat or the bays, wherever we were whenever there was an opportunity. We swam a lot.

Paula: I’m a very active person and when we were on the boat the first week with no wind, I still needed to move everyday. While we would be parked in the harbor in the mornings I’d go for a run on land, but most of the time we were on the ocean, so I’d just do a little workout on the catamaran. It was fun because some of the girls joined me too, because there wasn’t much to do with no wind so it was super nice.

Tell us more about the vibe of the movie for those who haven’t seen it.  What’s special about it?

Colleen: We were given free rein on this project so we wanted to have some fun with it. We were working with Vincent Bergeron, who is incredibly creative and funny – he has his unique style so the video will look a bit different than others. In general, I would describe the video as a little bit “edgy”, but it’s all in good fun. There are some sarcastic moments of us joking around and maybe not being so ‘lady like’, which in the end gave a cool vibe for a women’s project and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Tell our listeners….were we really having as much fun as it looks like we were on the video?

Paula: For sure, even more! It was so much fun with these girls. It was fun everyday. We had no wind the first week so that was different than we expected and then the second week we had wind. There was some drama on the boat as well, but we had fun and we enjoyed it to the maximum.