glissers.com/blog

Time to get back to the roots!

http://www.glissers.com/Accommodation/Surf_in_Sweden!.html

I’m just back from a long-weekend in Algarve, Portugal. I went together with my girlfriend (who doesn’t surf unless the water is tropical…), so it wasn’t a surf trip . But I did get some surf everyday.

The first 2 days I surfed at Praia do Amado, a beach break just south of Carrapateira. Nothing special when I was there - probably because the swell was pretty small.
I was suprised how empty the line-up was though - on Saturday morning I had a decent wave all for myself, from 10 am to around noon.

On Sunday morning I called Rene at Atlantic Riders, one of the top rated camps on glissers. The surfcamp is located on the west coast of Algarve, with close access to tons of good breaks. He took me (and the rest of his guests) to a secret spot - a big, beautiful, and empty beach, with a gentle wave. We stayed there all day, and I even managed to convince my girlfriend to join us at the beach - it was that nice! I can’t tell you where it is though - Rene would hunt me down and kill me if I did.

We went to the same beach the day after. In the last day we drove to Amoreira , a bit further north. The morning surf was lame, but in the afternoon the swell picked-up, and period increased, and I had some brilliant waves.

All in all Algarve was better than I excepted. Great food and wine, pretty cheap, wild and beautiful nature, and tons of excellent longboardig waves. I’ll be back for sure, but next time I’ll stay with Atlantic Riders - those guys know the area and are chilled-out and friendly = recommended camp.

Glissers has started to collaborate with globalsurfari.com , a neat surf forecasting service based out of Australia. It’s run by Gary Brewer, a UK-surfer / web developer who moved to Australia for the surf (and for his Aussie girlfriend).

Local Glissers accommodations are listed right next to the surf forecast on globalsurfari.com. And on glissers.com we show thet surf forecast for most accommodations - see for example Atlantic Riders Surf Camp in Portugal . I’m very happy about this, think this is a cool way of providing more value for glissers members

I met a guy in Morocco once who told me about a “Swedish surf brand”, and he claimed that the boards were awesome. I was sceptical, but such a thing actually exists - Nordsurf is a Swedish producer of surf boards, with boards adapted to Swedish conditions.

I’m embarresed to say that even though I did a lot of windsurfing when I grew up, I never even tried wavesurfing in Sweden, and I still haven’t. I’ll change that this coming Christmas, unless there is too much ice. Here’s a good movie about the Swedish way of wavehunting.

Nordsurf.com is also a community for the dedicated tribe of Swedish surfers. They arrange surf camps, parties, competitions, and have a lively web forum (only in Swedish). And Adam at Nordsurf wrote a nice article about glissers - thanks

El Joy, a.k.a Fast Johnny, a.k.a Big Daddy J, is top of the charts at the moment. He’s added 6 different accommodations from the the US, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico and Australia. El Joy’s Glisser profile is here . It’s quite an achievement to be the number one glisser, but El Joy is modest:
“When I took my first trembling steps on a surfboard back in 1995, I could never dream or even imagine something like this would ever happen!”
On behalf of glissers around the world - congratulations, El Joy. Keep on glissing