Rod Cunthorpe’s Next Perfect Chapter
Still in Portugal, Rod tackles Coxos, The Perfect Chapter tuberiding event and Rob Machado.
“Now I don’t speak Brazilian, the Portuguese native tongue, but I assume the locals were bestowing me the coveted "Keys-to-Coxos".
Portugal was growing on me. Like the anti-climate change agenda. Or scrotum mould. Having infiltrated and covered the Fattest Wave In The World™ at Nazare for their annual straight-hander comp, I was looking for more challenges.
Proper ones. Not like that fat, overblown, righthander at Coxos. I travelled there after that so-called Nazare swell. What a fucking letdown. And by that, I mean not just the wave (don’t these kooks know the far superior Ribeira d'Ilhas is just around the corner), but my tyres.
Having dominated the inside section on the high tide on the mini-mal, and tongue-lashed a few disrespectful locals who kept blocking me on the lefts, I came in to find my car had four flat tyres and “Seu resto de punheta mal batida!” written on my windscreen in wax.
Now I don’t speak Brazilian, the Portuguese native tongue, but I assume the locals were bestowing me the coveted "Keys-to-Coxos". That is a locals-assigned cultural accolade that gives you the best parking spot, the first wave of each set, a week’s free accommodation in Kanoa Igarashi’s Ericeira flat, a digital nomad visa and a love-making pass to the hottest, hairiest donkey, or woman, in town.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t hang around and enjoy their largesse. You see there was another one-day surf invitational event in town, the Perfect Chapter. The Portuguese, it seems, cannot contractually work more than one day in a row. Thus they’ve hit on the idea of six-hour surf comps. It’s an ingenious idea; they wait for six months, and then run events in sub-optimal conditions. A local bodyboarder dude, Miguel Fortes, a sort of older, squarer, shorter, and less funny version of Travis Logie is the go-to contest director. He is the one who ensures that the surf has to be about half the size, and half as good, as the swell from the week before.
Then they invite every surfer on the planet who has both surfed in a CT heat and undergone drug and alcohol rehab. To this mix, they fly in a host of the world’s worst, and most desperate surf media. The icing on the cake is the broadcast team who wouldn’t know Layne Beachley’s left nipple from Rob Machado’s right testicle.
Anyway, despite my Nazare reporting being described as a cross between Hunter S Thompson and Sarge (pre-paedophilia) and “a fucking disgrace” by Nic Von Rupp, somehow it didn’t get Rod Cunthorpe an invite. Of course, Rod Cunthorpe and invites get along about as well as Filipe Toledo and six-foot barrels, and I managed to infiltrate the contest’s significant infrastructure. I find speaking in the third person helps in that regard.
Imagine how stoked Rob Machado was then when I surprised him mid-nap with our classic greeting. I did the Borat style “High 5” (he loves talking about that high 5 when he lost a World Title) and then grabbed his stripy hair bag hat thingy, and in the universal sign of respect, grabbed each end and in a towel-drying manoeuvre rubbed it up and down my (exposed) genitalia. While he was on the ground crying (with laughter I assumed), I whacked a thruster in his weird board, cut six dreads off his head to smoke later (note to self: use more tobacco next time) and headed to the free gin bar to watch the action.
Of which there was little. I mean, I hadn’t been in this god-forsaken country for long, but even I know if you want to run a barrel riding competition you don’t a) not run it at Costa da Caparica and b) invite known tube avoiders like Nathan Hedge, Aritz Aranburu, Nic “The Chubster” Von Rupp, Lucas Chianca and Bruno Santos. It’s no wonder that Dylan Graves made the Final, given he has made his mark in surfing by surfing behind ferries. Fuck, what a tidal bore that hair farmer is.
Not that I saw the Final. Machado came out swinging after our fun introduction. I always knew he was more Johnny Boy Gomes than Mahatma Gandhi, and he used his remaining dreadlocks in a very effective garrotting manoeuvre. I was impressed that a 59-year-old man still had such strength, given he had spent the day avoiding four-foot tubes, on the wrong boards.
Aranburu was no help, kicking me up the arse with his size 3 lamb-skinned slippers whilst Anthony Walsh filmed it all with his GoPro. Hog, a fellow Australian, could have been my saviour. Yet instead, he decided to pour three cans of beer down my earhole. That it was non-alcoholic only added to the insult. If Balaram Stack and his girlfriend Eden hadn’t intervened, calming the crowd with a massive smoke bomb, I may never have gotten out of there alive.
In the end, all I had was my roughly scribbled notes, two of Machado’s dreads and a subscriber-based platform that no one was subscribing to. However, later that night as I had “Seu resto de punheta mal batida!” tattooed on my back, at least I knew I had the respect of the Portuguese surf community. That, and the promise of a hot, hairy donkey. Rod will ride again, mutherfuckers!
