Eight go Mad in Madeira

The scene is set in the line up at Punta Pequena. Double overhead waves seethe along the point with imperious power. Rene Gould and Gabe Davies sit far out back waiting for their last perfect ride. Trevor Clayton is caught on the inside being mauled by the rocks.

Rene: Hey, Gabe, where's the take-off rock?
Gabe: H’away mon. Ahh divvunt naw, leek.

CRUNCH. The sickening sound of fibreglass against rock as Rene is left aground while still being at least 100 metres from shore.

I think there is a saying about good surf that goes something along the lines of, ‘If there are good waves in front of you then go in and surf all day, 'cause tomorrow it will be flat.’ And if there isn’t then there should be. That’s the mistake that the Boex brothers, Sam and Jake, retail kingpins Trevor and Paul and myself made on the first day of our trip. One that we regret even now. Instead of going in at Punta Paquena and surfing four foot grunty rights we went to the pub where we drank and bullshitted for the following six-day flat spell.

The pub is a great place to be when bottles of beer cost 50 pence and the local poison, imaginatively called Madeira, flows like the extravagant lies of sexual exploits from the wino on the next stool. Madeira (the drink) is meant to be a wine. In which case it is lousy. However, as a sweet sherry it is passable; sickly sweet and clings to your throat with a bile inducing, eye-watering aftertaste. Lovely.

Spots
Apparently there was a Hurricane brewing off Florida; would it send us some swell before we left? Or was it a beer-fuelled lie? Flat spells are just as tedious in Madeira as anywhere else on the planet but they do have a subtle twist. The twist being that it is still eight feet, albeit onshore and breaking directly onto visible boulders, rolling around in a ‘shoredump of death’. So why not use this non-surfing time to do some research into the surf spots of the Island? Well, there is ‘Bonecrushers’, ‘Death Point’ and ‘Soul Destroyers’. They really go for cheerful names. Actually I made the last two up but even so I’ll probably just stick with ‘Chickens’ if that’s okay with you.

‘Chickens’ isn’t a bad wave really, and for most of the week it was the only place that could make any sense of the swell. The wave consists of a gnarly peak at any stage of tide followed by a whackable wall on the inside if you’re lucky. Man of the Match honours went to Sam as he pulled into barrel after barrel while Gabe, Jake and I settled for manoeuvres. The real plus of ‘Chickens’ is getting into the water. It is the one spot on the island with a ‘beach’ – slightly smaller boulders – and compared to the other breaks it is a joy to get in and out of.

Fish
There is a fine line between fishing and standing on a boat like an idiot – Gordon Smith

If you get bored of the one and a half hour drive around and through the mountains (alas, the only tunnel vision I got was while driving) to Chickens then how about trying out the world renowned big game fishing from the capital Funchal? Trevor is a keen fisherman and by using some Olympic standard misrepresentation, finely tuned by years in retail, he cajoled us into parting with £240 to charter a boat. As we motored out of Funchal harbour anticipation was high. Four hours later it was at rock bottom and mutiny was on the cards. Just as Trevor was about to be hacked up and used as bait, Funchal welcomed us back to dry land.

The best waves are on the west coast of the island, lined up righthand pointbreaks such as Jardim de Mar, Paul de Mar and the postcard perfection of Punta Pequena, all offshore in the relentless north-easterly trades, but they do all need a big northerly or medium sized easterly swell to wrap onto the points.

Boulders
The boulders are the worst thing about Madeira. They are everywhere. On the shore, in the water, even in the middle of the roads. Getting into the water is a nightmare. The boulders could be compared to large, round bars of soap with the occasional rogue barnacle waiting for a misplaced foot. It was impossible to sit on them, let alone walk across them with a surfboard. Still, the boulders don’t present much of a problem when it’s flat.

Then the swell came. It was the last full day of the trip and our only chance of a decent surf. After a twenty-minute walk up to Punta Pequena and a thirty-minute fumble over greasy rocks we were out and surfing. The wave is amazing. The swell was still very fresh and a little inconsistent; it was either three feet and barely clearing the rocks on the inside or double overhead and barely clearing the rocks on the inside. But what a wave. A reasonably easy take off followed by maneouvresville before you decide whether to pit your wits against the aptly named ‘wall of death’. It is a 100-meter section that sometimes closes out, is incredibly hollow and the lip pitches about two metres from dry boulders. To make things worse the water is so clear that you can see every rock with perfect clarity.

Backsiders Jake and Gabe found the wave very much to their liking and took turns pulling off almost unmakable floaters and under-the-lip hooks while regular- footers Sam, Piers and Rene Gould focused on slaughtering the lip and searing cutbacks. However, the Hero of the Hour award should go to the man behind the wheels of the Down the Line juggernaut, Trevor Clayton, for taking off on a solid set whilst totally engulfed in white water, guiding his 7’4" past the fearsome ‘wall of death’ and thus deflecting any further criticism over the fishing fiasco.

Vixen
Then it was time to leave, but we did have a chance to see Punta Pequena again before heading off to the airport. It immediately became apparent that the swell had arrived. If surf spots were women then yesterday she was timidly showing us her breasts in the corner of the playground – for 50p she may even let you have a feel. Today she was a pole-dancing vixen with the floor covered in ping-pong balls and scrunched up £50 notes. Easily triple overhead, snorting unstoppably down the point and as clean as a whistle.

Thank God we had to go home.

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