The World's Best Big Wave Pointbreak Under the Gun
by Chris Dixon
posted 8/04/03
Chris Dixon: Will, how did you get involved in saving Jardim do Mar? It's not a wave that everyone's familiar with.
Will Henry: I've been going there for years. I Went two years after Surfer did it's first piece and the place just looked unbelievable. I did my homework figured out where it was. There were only two surfers there and I actually wrote about that trip for Surfer's Path magazine. I've been going every year since. I think that's eight times. Every winter I go back and stay with some good friends there. It's kind of become a part of my life.
CD: Has it become a popular surf destination?
WH: It's definitely more popular. There are a lot of Europeans. I think most Americans don't know it's there, though a fair few East Coasters visit. There are very few from Australia or Brazil, but there are a lot who come from Britain and mainland Portugal.
CD: Jardim do Mar is on the Portuguese island of Madeira, but where is Madeira?
WH: It's about an hour and a half flight southwest of Lisbon. So it's actually closer in Latitude to Morocco -- 400 miles off the coast of Morocco. It's way out in the ocean, and it picks up all that north Atlantic energy in a generally much more organized way than the rest of Europe.
CD: Who governs Madeira?
WH: It's under the authority of the Madeiran government and Madeira has a sort of interesting position in European politics. They're considered to be an autonomous region of Portugal. Madeira has it's own government but it's supposed to abide by the Portuguese constitution.
CD: Give us some background on this road project. What's the basis or reason it even came about?
WH: There has been a ton of construction going on in Madeira over the last five years. Most of it has been funded by the European Union, which has put forth a lot of development money for the so-called "underdeveloped" parts of Europe. So Portugal got a huge cash injection, and Ireland got a huge cash injection. That's exactly why Ireland's having to fight to save a lot of their surf spots too.
CD: Where does this money go?
WH: A lot of this money goes to infrastructure. The first thing that happened in Madeira was highways. They were horrible. The topography of the island makes it almost impossible to build good roads. So they've built a lot of tunnels. It's just unbelievable the money they've spent and poured into their highway system. But it's a good thing. Where once it took three hours to get from one end of the island to the other, it now takes one. So the highway projects were sort of figured out. And there was a real impetus for the Madeiran government to do these things.
Now there's a lot of opportunity for developing marinas and tourist destinations. The first thing we got involved with on the island was really the reason Save the Waves even came to be -- they tried to build a marina at another surf spot called Lugar de Baixo (pronounced: bai-joo). That was a place the visiting crew from Surfer called Sammieland. We got involved in that and fought hard against it and they decided to move the marina to another location, which was a big victory for everyone. But it didn't really stop any of the projects from happening, and it didn't really make the local population any more aware that surfing is a resource that they should preserve. Now the background on the Jardim do Mar project is that this is something that some of the villagers have wanted for a long time.
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CD: Why?
WH: Well, the village has one road that goes into town, and it has a center circle and is really pretty far away from some people's homes and property. So if you come in with a big load of groceries, you have to walk it all. They wanted a road that goes closer to their homes, and they actually rallied for a road that would be in another part of the village, close to the cliffs, but several homeowners shot it down. But -- not only do people want to get to their houses. But there are some big land owners there who are hoping to build hotels. Road access is crucial to these hotels, so there's a lot of money tied up behind the scenes in this. Certain people are going to get more wealthy with this road giving more access to their property. And of course, the construction contracts are huge. When you think of the millions of dollars being spent on this project, the 300 people in the village and the average annual income of those people, it's so out of scale it's mind-boggling.
CD: If this is so massively out of the scale of this small town, how did it get through?
WH: With this seawall project -- emotions are pretty high in the village. Even though many of the people in the village argued against it, it still went through .The government said 'this is what's going to happen' and they apparently got the money for it. They posted a plan for the project on the wall of the church in the town. People in the know realized what this was, but it was written as technical architect's plans, so the townspeople didn't really get a clue on how big it was. It took awhile for the word to get out that the initial proposal was going to put 120 feet of riprap into the ocean! That's what all the commotion was about and that's why we did a protest there last year.
The World's Best Big Wave Pointbreak Under the Gun
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CD: Did the protest have an effect?
WH: Yeah, they basically told us they were going to redesign the project, which they never did. Or if they did, they just made it a little bit smaller, but they still are having quite a bit of riprap going into the water. Actually, we don't' really know what they're going to do -- they're keeping us in the dark and that's really their best strategy because we can't really act until they do something. Then, at that point, it's almost too late.
CD: It looks like they've already started judging by the pictures you sent us.
WH: Well they've gone right to the water's edge. They're going to have to put in rip-rap, otherwise the whole thing will wash away, and it's going to really affect the wave.
CD: So this is at an absolute critical juncture right now.
WH: Yeah, absolutely.
CD: How many other surf spots are there on this stretch of coast. Is this a surf-heavy zone?
WH: We've identified 13 or 14 legitimate surf spots on the island. I'd say that six of those spots are absolute A+world class waves.
CD: Six or so world class spots on a little-known island. It's unfortunate in a way, but you have to let the cat out of the bag about this place in a way to save it. I mean it's going to make more people aware of it, and potentially increase the crowds. But surfer awareness is the only thing that might work this at this point.
WH: Unfortunately so. When I was there a couple of years ago when this thing with Lugar de Baixo was going down, I was talking with a lot of the guys who go to Madeira every year and for whom this place has just become hugely important. We've always had a bit of a pact -- that we weren't going to tell the world about it. I've always wanted to write an article identifying it but never did. But we all came to the realization that if we didn't identify it, there would be no reason to come back. So I did actually get the support of almost all these guys in taking these steps to get the word out. Really it was a way of giving something back to the surfers of Madeira.
CD: Describe the wave.
WH: Jardim do Mar is a big wave spot in almost every sense of the word. It doesn't really start to break until it's about eight feet on the face, and even at that size it's pretty close to the rocks. The guys I've been surfing with who've known it for years came up with a description as a "surf spot designed by the Gods, for the Gods" and it really is. It's on a bigger scale than anything I've ever seen. It's kind of like a cobblestone pointbreak but the cobblestones are huge -- like half the size of a Volkswagen. And the wave is amazing. It's a really user-friendly big-wave spot. Double to triple overhead is where it works its magic. To be out there on a triple overhead day and these lines are just marching in is amazing. You have a fair amount of time to paddle into this thing and get to your feet before it starts to chuck over. So it's not like a Mavericks drop. It's an easier place to surf than Mav's but then on the flipside, the danger of the rocks there is pretty huge. Getting out of the water is scary -- the bigger it gets, the heavier it gets. So we're a little worried about that too because they're changing the coastline so much that they're probably going to make it that much more dangerous. Even if by some miracle the wave is spared, it's going to get even worse getting in and out of the water.
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CD: What have other environmental organizations done on this?
WH: Surfrider Europe hasn't done much besides help publicize it -- Surfrider Europe is pretty small. We've really gotten more help from Surfrider here in the U.S. Chad Nelson and Chris Evans. They've really done a lot. But the problem is that Surfrider is mostly a chapter based organization and they don't have a Madeira chapter. That's why Save the Waves sort of exists.
CD: What about a petition, or letter campaign or more rallies down there?
WH: Well I think we've sort of hit a wall with petitions and letter writing. We've certainly been heard and it's been somewhat effective, but I don't have a lot of faith that a continuing campaign with that will work. What seems to work the best in Madeira is public protest. Madeirans don't do a lot of protest to start with. But it is technically a democratic government, so you can get away with it. What you can do with the government is to get in their faces, go over to the island and get as much international support on this as possible. Madeira's only got maybe 30 surfers, and I'd say 90 percent are under the age of 25. They don't have a lot of clout and they get intimidated away from these issues. So our plan is to put on another protest, and we want to do it in a much grander scale than the last time. We have a lot of support from the surfers of Madeira, but also from the one environmental organization that is influential there, it's called Cosmos. So we're working with them and with the other major players on the island to put something together in the fall. So we've been wanting to have as much coverage and support as possible and to do it when the waves are good.
CD: Will you put on a contest or some event like that?
WH: That's something we've looked into. The last international surf contest that they've done there was a Red Bull Big Wave Challenge. Red Bull is willing to do another contest there, but the problem is, we don't actually know if Jardim do Mar the surf spot will be there to have a big-wave competition -- everyone's unwilling to commit. But there are plenty of other waves there that we can surf. The main thing I'm trying to get is a commitment from Sam George and Gibus de Soultrait. To get both of them there for the protest. Because that would be a hugely symbolic gesture. You've got basically the first few guys who went there. Gibus went before anyone else, but Sam was the first person to write about it and expose it to the world in a sense.
CD: Have you talked to Sam?
WH: Well, I talked to him last week, and he didn't say "no". There's nothing I could do that would make it any better than that.
CD: If people want to plan on going or be kept in the loop...
WH: Visit our website. We'll have stuff posted on it. www.savethewaves.org. The only way this is going to happen from our end is if we get some help from the member level and even if we get corporate sponsors. Our organization is entirely volunteer. No one here is making any money off this at all. It's all about saving the wave.
