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There’s no doubt that I sounded a bit like a stuck-up asshole while telling my friend that I wasn’t overly excited for my upcoming trip to Portugal. I had been on the road for a month doing Cabrinha demos throughout California and the thought of parking my van at LAX just to fly halfway across the world to a place I had already been twice before wasn’t exactly getting me fired up. The odd part is that Portugal seems to be one of the hottest spots in Europe right now””everywhere I go I bump into someone that only has great things to say about Portugal. “It’s cheap  the surf is good, the food is good, the nightlife is good, the wind is good, the girls are good, the guys are good, the beer is good, etc.” To be honest, there are places I would have chosen to revisit long before Portugal because the conditions from my previous two trips were no better than what I could find at home in Oregon or down Highway 1 in California. I wouldn’t say it happens often, but occasionally I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, and this last trip to Portugal changed my mind completely.

Luke Dawson was slated to be our water photographer during the shoot. Now living in Lisbon while getting his master’s degree, the 25-year-old Californian confessed that he had scored so much surf on his first trip to Portugal that he had to find a way to return and live there, higher education being his best excuse. I admitted to Luke that I’d had the opposite experience. He promptly asked what time of the year I had previously been to Portugal. When I responded “summer, both times,” he started laughing and explained that although Portugal’s winds rage in the summer, the surf primarily fires during the winter months. Luke opened his Instagram and began scrolling through pictures of endless waves. My jaw dropped. Like so many places in the world, the windy season doesn’t always line up with the best season for waves, but as I’ve seen elsewhere, if you hit these destinations in transition seasons, you can often end up with both perfect surf and wind… To read the full article become a subscriber of Tkb Magazine.


Tkb’s Vol. 16, No. 2 summer 2019 digital issue is available now. The print issue will be landing in mailboxes soon!