I was never a fan of Kelly Slater

I was never a fan of Kelly Slater. Until a few years ago I must add for the sake of honesty. I don’t remember when I came to admire Kelly but, as sure as getting older should be a path for minimal wisdom; becoming a nearly 40 year old surfer had the unavoidable consequence of realizing that I do admire who he is and represents. I guess it won’t be foolish to say: without any doubt he is one the best surfers ever and surely the greatest professional surfer of all times, with an importance to the sport itself at the same level of the Duke someone pointed to me not long ago, coincidence or not one of the first foreign surfers to have surfed Peniche, older and wiser than me.

My undisputed teenager idol was the great Tom Carrol. I was (still am…) a goofy footer and liked those bigger days. I even changed my skateboard stance to improve my goofy skills and try to emulate his power rail to rail surfing. I still remember those issues from the Hawaiian winter report where he would always be featured somewhere, either dropping some bomb in Sunset, always on focus at the Pipeline Masters or like Brad Gerlach (if my memory does not betray me) once described: “doing a full cut-back under the lip at Backdoor, no one does that!”. This I appreciated the most; he is not exactly a big guy and would tackle Waimea, Sunset and Pipe as any veteran Hawaiian would, this was my dream, to surf Hawaii like Tom Carrol. Tom Curren never surfed Hawaii like Carrol, and that was why I admired Carrol the most.
I guess I never really appreciated the competitive surfing as much as I did the free surfing especially in the place of birth of the sport of kings. I knew who Eddie Aikay was, and Renno Abelira, and Bobby Jones, and Mark Foo and Sunny Garcia, Jonny Boy Gomez and Brock Little and so many others. They charged Hawaii and kept my big wave riding mystic alive, but Tom Carrol was my idol.
Then Kelly Slater came along and that’s when things got complicated. He just was the best surfer now (then an now..), but like any “fanatic” it was not easy to admit it, I didn’t admit it, period. I did not like Kelly because now my idol was no longer on the spotlight. I have to say that I lost some interest in competitive surfing.

Last year I moved to a new house. While I was packing boxes I found an old pullout poster from Surfing magazine maybe from 1987, I can’t tell for sure but it is definitely from the 20th Century, the wetsuit was an O’Neill… This was a two page poster that featured a teenager Kelly on a backside bottom turn and said: “Kelly Slater has it made: travelling all over the world, surfing the best waves on the best days, breaking competitive records – his pro career plotted before him. But he pays the price, and that’s going out and ripping like a champion, regardless of his moods or fancy. And there’s no turning back – he’s in the limelight to stay.”

I remembered this poster but this was not the side I had showing on my teenager walls. I turned it around to see what I wanted to see and there was him! Tom Carrol somewhere in France on a backhand arm stall about to be behind the curtain, it said “Anticipation: sweet, divine anticipation. There is none more sublime in surfing than the anticipation for the tube.”

I was amazed to discover an almost relic item with both of my idols today. Both quotes are still valid today. The one regarding Carrol about an experience that only surfers know what it means, the other about Slater reminding us why he, more than 20 years after that poster, became the best surfer ever.


Two sides of a changing passion

Text and image: Marcos Bairros
Surfing Pullout Poster Date Unknown, mid to late 80's.

To change the tone, some lecturing… or maybe not

Yes, it’s that time of the year when everyone, including the posh boys and girls that never set foot in Peniche, is comfortable in town and wants to see and be seen… The pro’s are in town, Dane Reynold’s in town, the TV’s are in town, the crowd is in town…

It’s definitely a special moment during the year. We can understand all the hype and some fancy clothes inclusive. We can also understand that some surfers who can hardly make a decent takeoff will be in Lagido barking at some pale faces, pretending to be locals. We do understand that some of that socialite, who on a normal basis despise Peniche and what it represents, suddenly have this overwhelming urge to make the hour drive up here, even if they just hang around the VIP tent adding some extra fat to the wannabe slim figures.

What we don’t understand is that while free surfers and some pro’s at Supertubos are putting on a show like last October 6^th these people will still rather do what they usually do…but then again, who cares?

Photos: Sandra Stubenvoll @ www.balealsurfcamp.com
Words: Marcos Bairros

It's alive! It's alive!

Like Dr. Frankenstein when he first saw his creation come to life, I had to shout out loud the very same words. Besides the somewhat scared look from the occasional surfer tourists at the beach, the local crew new I had no serious mental problem and in fact it was a perfectly reasonable behavior considering the recent past. Perhaps the lunatic look in the eyes could have been avoided.

The reason for the awkward scream was the vision of a surf spot that had been hibernating for such a long time (I'm a liar, I just wasn't there...) that for a while I thought it had passed away. But it hadn't. In fact the vision before me was of a very alive creature, one that already had claimed a victim, half a surf board left behind by the unlucky challenger.

Later that day I saw a local body boarder going for a double up. As it went onto the shallower part of the sandbar he free felled halfway through the drop. It threw a square barrel over him and he made it out. Later I paddled by on the way back from another wipeout on the shallow Supertubos, his face still had the same words written all over: "It's alive, it's alive!!"

Supertubos is not dead, September 2010
Photo: Sandra Stubenvoll Words: Marcos Bairros

Another year, same routine…

Years go by relentlessly and as I once heard: days go by slowly, the years go fast. One year nowadays seems to feel like a 365 days ritual with the right fruit to go along as well as the right fish. As surfers we also look upon the year with the anticipation of the right swell, the perfect day, in between the slow days without surf and that’s it, happy New Year!

Now it’s summer and there’s a promise off an arriving swell, it’s been flat, seas are calm, moon is getting bigger and chances are that the Atlantic throws at us another great summer session.

I for myself always miss the winter and all that it represents. Feels like it was yesterday we saw this break on a perfect winter swell, the perfect wind direction.

Somewhere in Peniche, not small for connoisseurs of this break.

Photo: Sandra Stubenvoll -Baleal Surf Camp - Peniche, Portugal
Text: Marcos Bairros

Meaningful to some

This is a photo I like because it means something, though it might not to most people.
I’ll explain why. This photo from Sandra shows a lot about being in Peniche. Besides the gradient from the background in the top to the lower part with the foreground with colors I like it also shows some unavoidable Peniche features.

The photo was taken from Molhe Leste beach just south to the East pier at Peniche’s harbor. There’s the fishing boat coming back to harbor, probably with this year’s first school of “sardinhas” in it, which reminds me that I haven’t had yet and must soon. There are the persistent seagulls looking for some opportunity in the boat’s trail, a must have you ever stared at Peniche harbor entrance. There’s the “nortada” and not so mild by looking at the various “carneirinhos” and there’s a summer sun showing the deposited algae from the storm the week before, this means as much “iodo” as possible in the sea water . For a surfers’ eye there’s also some lines coming in strait from west. If there would be some more feet on those waves this shot would probably be of a “tubo” a few hundred meters south, but that’s another story.

Photo: Sandra Stubenvoll Text: Marcos Bairros

El Niño vs Azores High

It's already known by surfer communities’ worldwide. This winter (northern hemisphere) or summer (southern hemisphere) depending where you have been, has been dominated by the El Niño climate pattern phenomena. To make it short, in what surfing wise matters, this means that Hawaii had the best season in the last 10 years, California was pumping, and Western Sahara had classic weeks after weeks. The other side of this coin is that many locations around the world had an unusual poor season.

The case of the Western Portugal coastline was one of the latter. This winter indeed brought our way countless storms and swells; the problem is that part of the El Niño influence in the North Atlantic the normally mid north Atlantic position of the Azores High pressure system went south! By making so the Azores High pressure system cleared the path for the storms that are generated in the Caribbean region.

So, instead of their normal path towards the north Atlantic, they just crossed the same ocean straight into our exposed western coastline, threw the swell north and south (we’ve hear western Africa was on fire) but by landing straight on our backyards, many time, stormy conditions did not provided the right wind direction to make the best of the plentiful swell offer.

Not a drama, especially in Peniche where we could still surf regularly, as usual. But when Spring arrived and conditions finally allowed for Supertubos to show a little of what it can do, some of us have wondered what winter season we could have had, had El Niño have not shown its power once again.

Supertubos spring 2010. Photo by Sandra Stubenvoll, Baleal Surf Camp

Closeout

Photo by: Baleal Surf Camp - Peniche Portugal

Not just the perfect barrels deserve the spotlight. Some lesser creations from Nature are as divine as the more frequently captured A frames. In the end, and this literally means the beach, they are all, and as they break they all were, unique. Each and every one of them.