Scoring in Coxos, Portugal, Euro Thrash Continues...

The second day of the trip was one of the best days of surf we’ve ever seen. We scored firing Coxos, The Cave and Crazy Left. The wind cooperated, the swell pumped and we took advantage of what Portugal was delivering. Coxos was going loony as our cavalry pulled up to the carpark. Charly Quivront, Alex Botelho and Willy Alioti wasted no time trading off eight foot tubes out the back while Noa Deane jumped in shortly after. Everyone seemed to get spit out of a barrel. It was crazy. But in the distance, we could see The Cave trying to do its thing. The tide just needed to drop. Gony Zubizaretta and myself were getting antsy to give it a whirl, so we waited. And we’re glad we did.

Willy banking at Coxos

Gony put on an absolute amazing display of surfing at The Cave when it started to turn on. Gony is somewhat of a new resident of Ericeira, but he surfed the wave like he grew up there. For anyone that doesn’t know the place, it’s as heavy as it gets. Boils pop up out of nowhere, rocks are visible just feet from the lip and a nasty shelf sits just feet away from a wipeout. Tiago Pires once broke his back out there. It’s usually empty as no one wants a piece of it. But Gony lit the place up. He got three of the best waves we’ve ever seen out there. His first wave was a standup barrel wide enough for him to comfortably stretch his arms out in. Noa was also frothing to surf The Cave more than anyone and it showed as he got a few insane slabs to himself along with Gony.

Gony on his second wave out there. I’ve shot that wave like five different times, and this was by far the best, but most inconsistent

Ryan Burch was also amongst the crew and surfed six-to-eight-foot Crazy Left by himself for a few hours, carving the wave to hell on his handshaped asymmetrical masterpiece. It’s seriously a sight to see him on those boards and it’s safe to say he’s carved out a nice little niche for himself.

Burch at Crazy Left, I’d imagine the Portuguese version of the name sounds better.

Even after a terribly long day of surfing, we still managed to find the strength to put a few beers back. The days are quite long in Europe. We didn’t even eat dinner until 10:30pm that night. The Americans were getting hangry and all the Euros were having a good laugh at it.

Traveling with 12-15 people can be tough at times, but somehow we pulled it off with laser-like precision.

The following day was back to the beach break. And again, we were greeted with playful three-foot surf rolling off this amazing sand bar. It was icing on the cake after the extravaganza we had the day before. We could die happy. The forecast looked pretty grim after that run of swell, so we decided to pack up our gear and hightail it 10 hours to Hossegor. We went like 90mph and made it in seven hours. Not an easy task with three cars. We strolled into the Volcom France House around 10pm and called it a day.

Words and photos by Volcom staff photographer, Tom Carey. Check out additional Euro Thrash coverage from our friends Wasted Talent and Surfline who joined us on the trip.