Prior to 2009, I’d only spent about eight hours in mainland Portugal, when I whiled away a day in Lisbon waiting for a plane on the way home from Madeira. That Madeira trip had been both great and eye-opening; we were only there for about a week, but our arrival coincided with a huge swell that I had watched develop in the North Atlantic and slam into the Azores before filtering down to Madeira. The surf fluctuated between big and clean and huge and out of control, and all in all, it was a great trip. 

During that layover, my wife and I took a cab from the airport to Commerce Square, which is where the English-speaking tourists in front of us in line at the taxi stand were headed. It seemed like a good enough call to kill a few hours — the Praca do Comercio, as it’s known in Portuguese, is rich in history, including its destruction by an earthquake and the resultant tsunami in 1755. It was also the site of the King’s assassination in 1908, but today the rebuilt square seems mostly like a great place to separate tourists from their Euros. We walked around for a bit and then decided to grab lunch in one of the many outdoor cafes adjacent to the square. The hostess seated us near a group of four tanned German guys decked out from head to toe in surf gear. One of the Germans had a huge bandage wrapped around his head like a mummy, and I remember thinking that the swell must have pumped into mainland Portugal as well, and decided to make sure to come back and have a look.

Luckily, the crew at Rip Curl didn’t keep the lid on the location for 2009’s Search contest as well as they had in previous years. It seemed like everyone knew early on that the contest was going to be held at Supertubes as an extension of the WCT European leg. When the location was confirmed, I thought it would be a perfect excuse to go back and check out all that Portugal had to offer. I didn’t get around to making any firm plans though, and after seeing the tour strike out wave-wise in both Hossegor and Mundaka, I pretty much blew off the trip... that was, of course, until I saw the swell forecast for the beginning of the waiting period. 

If you think about it, the Northeast region of the East Coast is a pretty crazy place to accurately forecast. How many times have you rearranged plans, called in “sick,” and packed up your gear in hopes of surfing waves that will be generated by a storm that has yet to even materialize? The other side of the Atlantic Ocean, however, is another story. The same storms that sideswipe the Northeast and deliver eight hours of waves (four of which typically arrive in the dark) morph into ship-eating monsters as they race toward Europe. With its wide swell window and narrow continental shelf, an awful lot of that energy gets directed toward Portugal, which is the westernmost point of continental Europe. It’s one thing to track a low across the Midwest and keep your fingers crossed, but there’s nothing like tracking actual waves as they traverse the ocean, which gives you real confidence in a forecast. The swell that was already in the water and headed toward Peniche for the contest looked good enough to throw myself at the mercy of the last-minute airline ticket gougers.

Maybe it had looked too good. When I arrived at Supertubes, there was three feet of sand in the media room and the judging scaffolding was a snarled mess on the dune. Apparently, the swell had already peaked and done a number on the contest site. The wind was still onshore, but down the beach they were holding first-round heats in the lee of a harbor jetty. The day prior, I had missed a decent tow session by the Rip Curl guys, who were able to commandeer the water patrol skis at their own sponsor’s contest. The rest of the ‘CT Top 45 surfed the wedge at the harbor jetty, which from what I heard was pretty good. When I arrived the next day though, the phrase “Dream Tour” was not the first thing that entered my mind.  

There was a little mobile setup at the harbor jetty, with the judges in a trailer parked on the seawall. I guess it was the backup site for the backup site, but they were getting through some heats. After waiting out a rainy morning, the comp started up again, this time in consistent head high waves with sunny conditions. A large crowd was watching the contest, but I noticed another large crowd gathering about 600 yards down the beach in front of the wreckage at Supertubes. Gradually, people started heading down the beach by the hundreds, to the point where the crowd at Supertubes was far bigger than at the contest site. The attraction? Kelly and Dane doing flyaway airs and carving 360s in onshore surf about twice the size of that in which the heats were being held. Once Portuguese national hero Tiago Pires lost and adopted son Marlon Lipke won his heat, the locals were far more interested in seeing Kelly surf than the Australian journeymen in the bottom half of the draw.   

As far as the type of three-month after-the-fact play-by-play of the contest that the surf media abandoned with the advent of the Internet, I’ve already said enough. What might be worthwhile to mention, though, is Portugal’s potential as a first-rate surf trip destination. In the Peniche region alone, there are a multitude of options, including long stretches of quality beachbreak, which can be key as a visiting surfer. During the Search contest, heats were held in four different locations. The contest organizers were able to find decent waves during all kinds of swell and wind conditions, and although they pulled off a good event, for anyone with a little local knowledge and the ability to be a bit more mobile than the entire WCT, there were times when there was much better surf to be had nearby.   

While far from tropical, coming from a New England background, you can count on shedding a layer of rubber upon visiting Portugal. Although having to pack a fullsuit may not be everybody’s idea of an ideal surf trip, nothing says vacation to me like getting to surf in a 4/3 and dine at a sidewalk café when my friends at home are squeezing into lobster claws. As far as Europe goes, Portugal is even a relative bargain for traveling American surfers. Although sometimes it may seem like every surfer in Europe is sleeping in a van next to your favored surf break, Portugal does offer several options for reasonably priced accommodations. Couple this with great coffee, cheap wine, and a rich history, and your time out of the water spent exploring Portugal can be just as enjoyable as your time spent surfing. A modern commercial fishing fleet operates beneath the imposing walls of Peniche’s 16th-century fortress, and if you find yourself downwind from the cannery, it’s a tough fact to forget. The upside is that all of the local restaurants serve excellent fresh seafood. I don’t recall having a dinner without a head still attached, but each one of them was excellent. 

Portugal looks to become an even more desirable surf destination, as the ASP decided to replace the fickle and unpopular Mundaka event with a permanent stop in Peniche — and just think, they even came to that decision after enduring destruction, windswept conditions, and the general chaos that comes with making a first-time event go off. Maybe it’s the fact that Portugal serves as a perfect jumping-off point for sampling the rest of wave- and culture-rich Europe, or that a Peniche event fits so perfectly into Mundaka’s relinquished spot. Heck, you can even make your way to the righthand pointbreak-blessed Morocco in around six hours. So East Coast surfers should act fast — the world is getting hip to Portugal’s potential as a world-class surf destination, and as any seasoned traveler will tell you, as the country’s popularity rises, the cheap tickets (around $650 from New York, $740 from Boston, and $830 from Orlando as of press time) won’t last forever.