A lot of waiting around

As a non-surfer I have never quite understood Peter when he drives up to the beach, gets out the car then watches the waves for 20 mins, what is he watching for? He tells me it's the shape of the wave, where it's breaking, the consistency of the swell....blah blah blah. Watch a group of surfers watching the waves anywhere, I think they are waiting for someone to make the decision to 'go in', that way they can see how good it is and decide whether or not to bother. Get a group together and they can talk each other into or out of it, but that seems to take a good 20 mins.....these days, I take a book and stay in the car until the decision is made about staying or driving another 10 mins down the bay to the next spot and doing the standing all over again!

But for Garrett McNamara the big wave surfer it is a whole other ball game, well it's still surfing, but you get my drift. For McNamara it is life and death as he decides to ride one of the biggest waves in the world at Nazere. Making the decision to go in could win the surfer thousands of dollars, it could kill them, it could be the greatest moment of their lives or the end of it. And on top of that, the water is bloody cold!

A dawn call at Zon North Canyon where McNamara was scheduled to go in. We got there and waited, we stood watching the waves, watching the people far out in the distance on the jet skis watching the waves.

There were hundreds of us lining the cliff front at Nazere, watching, waiting and waiting until someone went for it - Andrew Cotton took a risk and surfed this enormous wave. Amazing, mad, brilliant.

Then we waited, we watched, waited for the next person to dare to surf these massive waves.

I went to get a coffee.

Yeh, I know, life and death, a bad decision could kill you, I'll never understand the complexities of this, but come on, get on with it!

Then they did get on with it, we had a flurry of activity as they tried to surf these monsters. No one quite managed it again, but the show was spectacular, from the surfers and from mother nature who sent us this storm and the massive swell - stunning and well worth the wait.

Comments

Building our Barrel Vault Wood Fired Oven

This is a short description of my barrel vault build that I have done here in Central Portugal. The final internal size is a 1m squared floor with a arch height of 50cm. I hope you enjoy and get some ideas from it. I wish to thank ukwoodfiredovenforum for their advice and support. • 1: First I dug out a hole in the flower bed, on top of the stone wall, where the oven was to be built • 2: Set up a form to pour in the concrete base • 3: Pour the concrete base, which was about 5-6 inches deep • 4: On top of the base I cast 4-5 inches of LECA (light weight expanded clay balls) mixed with cement to hold it's form • 5: Then I cast a 2-3 inch heat retaining base, to add to the thermal mass, using calcium aluminate cement with large grain sand, as a flat base for the hearth bricks to sit on • 6-8: I then dry laid the hearth bricks on a dry bed of fine sand and clay mixture, with th...

oh what a lovely bougainvillea

It was something I wanted to grow, a plant which would cover the wall, give shade, give colour and really stamp the fact we lived abroad. Bougainvillea. We have the other Mediterranean type of plants growing; we have olives in abundance, we have the grapes thriving, we have the figs establishing, but alas no bougainvillea. I looked up how to grow it and it says: Bougainvillea thrives in full sun. “At least 5 hours a day of direct sunlight is the minimal light required for good bloom. More hours of direct sun are better. Less than 5 hours and the plant may not bloom very well.” 5 hours of sun ‘check’, good light ‘check’, south facing ‘check’….but alas the Med we are not! This little peak of Central Portugal has cold air in winter (snow even), a vigorous breeze at dusk and is prone to a late frost. Our courtyard is just too exposed to the elements, there is no little ‘nook’ for a bougainvillea, there is no wall for it to climb...

We Three Kings

So, new year was fun. We popped to our Portuguese neighbours for one drink around 8pm (having already eaten and booked marked the evenings viewing on the TV). Peter got home at 4am! I was slightly more sedate and admitted defeat at 1am! The Portuguese do it so well you see. Rio and Philamina are our neighbours just over the road. Always really friendly we have been round for drinks with them a few times. Rio speaks Portuguese/Spanish with Peter and while Philamina does not speak English, she is wonderfully slow at speaking and I get about 60% of it! Typical Portuguese, they are warm and friendly, force feed you drinks and nice food, living proof of why we really love Portugal and the Portuguese people. This time, after disbelieving we were eating so early (8pm) they invited us round for a drink. Their children (about the same age as us) were staying along with their friends. Wonderfully they were young enough to know some English, which meant I could join in a lot more. When...

Helen and Peter in Portugal

Search This Blog