Nathan Florence must be cursed. For the third trip this year, he has found himself boardless at the hands of an airline. This time, the boardnapping took place on the eve of a particularly intimidating slab session in the Azores, a mid-Atlantic archipelago and autonomous region of Portugal.
Undeterred, Florence and crew found some loaners from local surf conservationist Andre Avelar. However, the prospect of testing out unfamiliar equipment on a very heavy wave seemed to daunt even the generally fearless Florence. “We’re yet again on borrowed boards and we’re going to be testing them at what is probably a mutant slab,” he said.
The mutant slab in question was Santa Catarina, located on the island of Terceira. There are many, many breaks in the Azores, but few can match the power of this particular monster. However, as Avelar details in the video, the break would have been lost to construction for a nearby airport if it weren’t for the dedicated community undergoing ongoing efforts to preserve Azorean waves. “When they started building the airport, they put all these rocks to protect this interior,” said Avelar. “So, at the time, the local community came together and tried to protect this world-class wave.”
