Nic Von Rupp Passes on Peniche

While waiting on the call for the Nazaré event, and as the Peniche party went wild, the pride of Praia Grande, Nic Von Rupp skipped town for Portugal’s southern frontier. 

“On those big winter swells, the mysto spots down south can get absolutely insane,” Von Rupp told me yesterday, after a session near Ericeira. “But you really have to know how to read the winds, the tides can really affect them. But you can get waves all by yourself.”

Scouring the limestone cliffs somewhere near ———, Portuguese renaissance man and Algarve pioneer, João “Brek” Bracourt captured NVR picking off this sub-sea level, cerulean cylinder. 

“I have been shooting Nic since he was a kid,” Brek says. “He asked me about this swell, and I gave him the green light. Peniche was maxing out and here, it was beautiful: Wedge Land—pristine water, picturesque… The next day we got epic rights. But it’s never like this, we promise—don´t come here, unless you have the time to spend learning hard lessons, because these waves aren’t easy to score.”

As we wait for the 12PM Peniche call, enjoy the fine words of Armando da Silva Carvalho’s “Empty At Sea”:

Who loves time like I do this clamoring morning
that moves away and makes me feel
empty at sea?
Who devours this breath of air so mouth soothing,
so wave-like,
water bells to my ears?

A bowing time,
childhood bent knees,
before the obsessive mother,
unfolding,
wave after wave,
carrying sorrow up to this rock
that sucks in my years
and bites, slowly, the memory
of life.