CLUB DE PLAYA
Three days after this initial whim, I was wearily taking off from Gatwick at the crack of dawn, en-route to Spain having travelled through half of the night to make the early check-in. After a well-deserved snooze, I woke to the satisfying sight of a churning sea of white caps from the plane window with blue skies up above. I’d been warned of nuclear winds and, sure enough, the view below was kind of reminiscent of landing in Pozo with the azure Mediterranean fully frothing down below. Victor was in arrivals to meet me and we headed straight towards Almerimar on the highway, passing hillsides covered in a vast sea of shimmering plastic. Victor was soon to point out that this area is home to thousands of closely crammed-in agricultural units, their expanse so vast, they can easily be spotted from satellites in outer space. This is the largest concentration of green houses in the world and produces 2.7 million tonnes of produce worth over 1.2 billion euros to the economy – definitely an impressive sight!
After a quick stop at Victor’s parents to pick up his quiver of Quicksilver wetsuits, it was straight to the first spot known by the locals as Club De Playa. Surrounded by a huge harbour wall to the left and a small rocky groyne to the right, this beach had all the ingredients for the perfect wavesailing playground. With the infamous Poniente wind already screaming across the bay at around 30knots from the right and half-mast high ramps stretching right across the bay, this place looked to be heaven for starboard tack jumping. On the inside beachbreak, the waves were also jacking-up nicely over the sandy inside section, ideal for front side riding and tricks galore. I left Victor to rig-up and headed straight round to the end of the harbour wall along with his Dad, José, who was reluctantly assigned to video duties for the day. It was a solid mile walk to the end of the breakwater but the angle looked very interesting for photography and worth the effort. About ten metres after stepping out of the van, José was pointing out another break up wind and while staring to the left of me, I walked straight into a lamp post. José does not speak a lot of English, while my Spanish is limited to ordering beer, hello and goodbye. So I just had to shrug my shoulders after my opening calamity. We continued onwards and less than five minutes later, a huge wave crashed over the sea wall soaking me through to the skin whilst just missing José, this was not a great start to my street cred so far and I am sure Victor’s Dad was sniggering to himself while I recovered from my two goofy incidents.
Finally we were in position for shooting, after taking shelter from the battering winds at the base of the jetty. It didn’t take long for Fernandez Junior to demonstrate how he’s become such a maestro in starboard tack jumping. With ramps galore and full power on his 4m, Victor set about launching into an extreme air show of tweaked pushloops, monster forwards and enormous backloops straight towards the pointing cameras. Around midday the wind dropped a notch or so which, according to the locals, is the ‘funny hour’, so we returned to the beach and shot some more angles towards the harbour with Victor still well-powered on a 4.5, remorselessly ripping up the building shorebreak.
By 2pm it was time for lunch. In true Spanish style we retired to one of the local restaurants to eat some delicious tapas amongst Victor’s family. I was almost tempted to sip a glass of chilled white wine or slug down an icy cold beer, but with five more hours water time still on-the-cards, I decided to hold back until the camera duty was over for the day. Victor’s parents moved to Almerimar when he was twelve years old because it was José’s favourite place to windsurf and so that they could open up a windsurfing shop. Not surprisingly the windsurf/ clothing store is called E42 Windsurfing. When its windy, his mother is left to run the show, while on the calmer days, José takes a break from sailing and steps-in to help out.
