Your Pointiest Surfboard’s Favorite Surf Comp Is Coming Back
The Alto Pro Am returns for a third edition in Portugal.
Ribeira d’Ilhas is a long, fat righthander.
Performance-wise, you might think the best board on which to surf it would be a groveler. Something short, stubby, wide. Minimal curves to suit the wave’s lack thereof.
Well, you’d be wrong. Because it turns out that the best board to surf Ribeira on is a rockered-out 6’9” with fins that took some poor bastard hours to glass in there decades ago.
Proof has been in served in the form of the previous two editions of the Alto Pro-Am.
The event is the brainchild of two kiwis who somewhat sometimes kinda live in Portugal, depending on whether or not it’s an immigration officer asking.
The concept: Buy a bunch of ‘90s boards on secondhand sites. Get a good crew of people together. Get them to surf the boards in a contest, and give them plenty of excuses to get together for a beer. Mmmhmmm.
And yes, the whole Y2K thing has been trending long and hard enough to irk some people (hello, Dane). The Alto is indulgent and unashamed of pulling its inspiration from that era, but it’s doing so for good reason. The founders — like most of the competitors and attendees — were born too late to experience that time. In today’s landscape, you might be able to understand why they’d feel drawn to it and want to engage with it in whatever way they can.
It’ll be the third edition in Portugal, and they’re coming off a banger one in Sydney earlier this year. Whispers suggest a US edition might not be too far off. The backing from Billabong and Monster helps, though the boys still barely break even on running the whole gig, despite the months of work required to pull it off.
Get there if you can. And if you can’t, then you can at least go terrorize your local with some big fucking sprays in their honor.
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