Now, Six-time Kitesurf World Champion Gisela Pulido decided to challenge one of the fastest ferries in Spain, the Tarifa Jet of the German company FRS. This machine has 40.000 horsepower and weighs 4 tons, whereas Gisela barely weighs 50 kilos and is only powered by the wind on her Kite. But this way, Gisela fulfilled a dream she had since she was a kid: to navigate alongside the ferry with her Kite from Tarifa to Tangier and becoming one of the very few sportswomen in her speciality to cover the 28 kilometres between both countries.

The ferry of the German company FRS travels at 42 knots and crosses the Strait of Gibraltar in 35 minutes. Throughout the year, the ferry ships 1.5 million passengers and it’s one of the most usual means of transport people use to visit the North of Morocco.

During her long days of training in the sea, the young champion has always been accompanied by the usual presence of the ferry that travels through the waters of the Strait and, finally, this has been the year when she has been able to know how it feels to travel alongside it first-hand. Like David against Goliath, the young kitesurfer used several elements to her advantage, like the fact the ferry always has to be slower normal while entering or exiting the ports, or the chance to take a shorter route. This way, while the sportswoman started and finished her route in points of both countries that were closer than the ports themselves, thus ‘saving’ 7 kilometres, the Ferry had to follow its usual route from the port of Tarifa to Tangier.

But things never were that easy to Gisela as her main ally, the wind, was usually constant and strong from the East, but there were moments when it changed and that made it difficult to the young Spaniard to advance at full speed.

Even after reaching a speed of 25 knots and sail across waves that were between 2 and 3 meters high, the power of the ferry made things very difficult to Gisela, and their showdown finished in a tie. Yet, she was very happy to have fulfilled her life-long dream: “To cross the Strait was one of the challenges I always had in my mind, not only because of the tough physical challenge that is to cover that long distance with my Kite, but also because I have fulfilled the bucolic dream of uniting both continents.”

Despite her youth, Gisela, only 16, is the current leader of the Kitesurf World Championship, after scoring 5 victories in 7 events, with three events left.