So the travels have turned into surf safari again. When your significant other is married to the waves, it happens.

Chris and I set out on a road trip to Portugal from France, and by the time we had picked up the rental car in Madrid he was already busily charting the swell – it was brewing somewhere far, far away, and ultimately headed our way. After checking the offshore buoys online, Chris determined that we had a window of about four days until we had to be near the coast. In other words, I had four days to plan the trip how I wanted – then it would be coast-est with the mostest for the rest of the time.

I am used to this sort of imperative.

But even in the off time before the swell arrives, I somehow always feel the energy of the phantom waves’ presence pounding down on us, steering our itinerary toward the ocean.

There’s Chris, already judging wind conditions as we approach the coast. A worried crease pinches his forehead as we near the fishing village of Peniche on Portugal’s central coast and the wind is absolutely howling onshore, causing what little swell there is to foam into loathsome closeouts.

When we reach our destination, Ericeira – a surf-centric fishing village less than an hour north of Lisbon – times are truly turning tense. The main break is full of ‘kooks’ floundering in the waves like beaching whales – young prodigies of the onsite Escola de Surf, no doubt, hauling boards the size of boats and acting as slalom buoys for the folks who actually know what they’re doing in the water.

“In America, you would never put a surf school right at the main break,” laments Chris, shaking his head. He scowls at the Austrian and Swiss license plates on cars stacked with surfboards in the parking lot. “I don’t mind people learning how to surf,” he said, “but the thing is they don’t know anything about the etiquette.”


To go into surfing etiquette would sidetrack this blog completely. And, coming from a kook like me, it probably wouldn’t hold a lot of credence anyway. So I’ll refrain.

The next morning, things were looking up. As we drive to the main break in Ericeira – a right point break at Ribeira – the swell lines are more visible then ever. Arriving on Sunday just as the Internet predicted, they are steamrolling toward the shore. The wildflowers spilling over the dunes still have their petals shut in sleep, but for the surfers the day has long since begun.

Chris can barely contain his excitement. The wind is offshore, causing the peelers to stand at attention until breaking in a finely cut line.

I can’t help but relax, too, even if I won’t be paddling out myself. Finally the ocean has delivered – and in such grand scale, no less, that the kooks (me among them) will most likely stay onshore – just like one of those dreaded, wrong-direction howling winds.

- by Terry Ward