She first took to a surfboard as an escape from her own spiralling teenage rebellion, but now Maya Gabeira is breaking as many taboos and preconceptions as she is surfing breakers.
The morning breaks cloudy in Saquarema, a surfing town two hours' drive north through lush countryside up the coast from Rio de Janeiro. Just off the shore, a dozen surfers, photographers and a cameraman bob up and down on jetskis in the dark water. They've been monitoring this particular swell for a week, checking the predictions and data fed to surfing websites from swell buoys, anticipating waves of up to 6m or more.
As the waves crest and crash on a low reef, the first of the group straps on a light orange board and drops into the water. Though the wetsuit is heavily padded, the surfer's long, brown, sun-streaked hair and the curves are unmistakably feminine. There is a girl in this group of tattooed and musclebound surfers. Her name is Maya Gabeira, and she's on course to change the face of big-wave surfing forever.
She clutches the tow-line as her partner, Brazilian big-wave surfer Carlos Burle, pulls her onto the first wave of the day with his jetski. The wall of the wave amassing powerfully behind her, Gabeira skims across the water at over 40kph, her legs wide on the board, absorbing the hidden bumps on the face. She powers through as the wave crests and white water begins crashing down behind her. She pulls off of the shoulder and drops into the water. Burle picks her up in the jetski. She heads back out to catch another.
"Maya is like, 'I want that,'" Burle says later, thrusting an arm forwards and laughing. "She wants it really bad and she's a warrior. You can tell that."
