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You would be surprised at how many daredevils there are out there. You need look no further than those world record videos of guys trying to go for 100 ft or so in Portugal. What's probably even crazier is that I saw a video the other day about guys in Russia trying to surf the Arctic in Siberia!
Those are the type of instances that makes me look for alternatives for a thrill kick. Surfing is not that fun...
Surfing is one of those things that is really depended on the season and conditions. I don't know if it is possible to name either of these places better than the other one in an absolute manner. I'd say the North Shore of Oahu, Nazare, and there are a few places in the South Pacific are the best spots. Nazare can be so raw and powerful because the water shoots through an underwater canyon.
So what I did was compare monthly swell/wave averages from 2 random but popular surf spots from both places (Blacks Beach is Califronia and Biarritz in France), and to my great surprise, unless I was completely missing something, the waves were larger in France!
I spent most of my teenage years living at La Jolla Shores and surfed Blacks regularly, and periodically for several decades after that. So I was quite surprised to see the stats at that link (particularly given that I now live in France and check the webcams often in Biarritz to see flat surf). Something did not look right about the Blacks statistics, which showed a lot less surf than I estimated. So I compared it against WindanSea, also a storied surf break in La Jolla. WindanSea showed up as having more surf than both Blacks and Biarritz. In my experience, WindanSea and Blacks had about the same consistency - although Blacks caught both Summer south swells and Winter WNW swells, whereas WindanSea was exclusively Souths. Additionally, on really big swells, good surfers headed to Blacks. So, bottomline, I think there's a glitch with the stats for Blacks.
The world record is constantly being broken and tried in Nazare, Portugal. Waves that big don't generate anywhere in the USA. Blacks beach is considered one of the better places to surf in the continental US, yet like his links showed you, the only time the waves were even close to as big as the beach in France was in the winter, and it wasn't the close even then. There were large portions of time where the CA beach got no swells at all.
The waves along the west coast of the USA are reliably and consistently bigger than off the coast of France.
Mavericks are a cultural staple of California for a reason.
Portugal has a spot known for swells - but your weird attempt to claim that "waves that big don't generate anywhere in the USA" is obnoxious. That's demonstrably, obviously wrong. California and Hawaii are known a lot more for their big-wave surfing than Portugal.
It's typical anti-American contrarianism, "just say America is inferior in every possible way, and run scrambling, change the subject, or fly into a rage whenever an American tries to point out that the US has sidewalks, or that America isn't the only country with strip malls, or whatever weird, negativistic anti-American talking point is popular on the internet that day".
The Pacific has far bigger waves/better surf than anywhere on the Atlantic.
That's why the best surfing places on earth are all on the Pacific- Australia, Hawaii, and the West Coast of North/South America.
Yes, there is decent surf in France, in Portugal, on some areas of the American Atlantic Seaboard (Long Island) but it doesn't compare to the Pacific.
This... although some solid surf in Portugal, France, etc at times too.
Scored this wave (black and white picture #21) at my local fickle spot that very rarely breaks on one of the biggest winter swells in years...this one had a ton of west in it which made a lot of secret spots fire! Paddled out deeper than anyone and sat on the hairy rocky boil...big outside a frame wedge came in (thanks Dawes for yelling to me "go go go")...made the drop, pulled in quickly, then ran like heck... lined up perfectly...lip was about 2 feet from my head...made it out clean! Photog got the shot. Still remember it like yesterday although it has been almost 15 years now! Aah the memories of my youth...surfing was a huge passion! Getting older now but still have the stoke and try to get to the beach whenever possible with a tinge of sadness realizing this probably will never happen again...but aah the memories! Smile every time I look at this blown up picture on the wall realizing it may never be that good again there!
Europe vs S. Cal Europe is far better. And it's really not close.
Huge wave spots: Europe vs Mavs/Ghost Tree/Todos/Nelscott,
i still give a slight edge to Europe w/ more spots, and stronger storms spinning off
the US & Greenland. The N. Atlantic storms seem to be a bit more powerful.
but Mavs is better than any big waves spot in Europe (when it's on).
S. Cal vs Portugal, France, Azores, Spain, Canaries, etc:
Europe wins in a landslide.
S. California is good a few days a year on big South (summer) and winter, West Swells.
Europe is good probably about 3~4 score days every winter from late August to early May:
it virtually/endlessly pumps. Then, after the peak of a swell passes,
you can fly to Morocco and get the peak of the swell all over again.
You can technically do that in Baja too..... but it's not up to Morocco level/s.
Last edited by odurandina; 11-28-2022 at 09:46 AM..
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Something awry with the Blacks Beach stats
