Vitor Oliveira

Plans to bring Munich's legendary Eisbach river wave back to its old shape are officially falling apart. After months of talks, studies, and paperwork, Surf Club Munich says it is ending its organized effort to restore the wave, blaming heavy bureaucracy and weak support from city officials. "The administration does not want to regulate surfing on the Eisbach, but to prevent it," the club said, pointing to what it called administrative obstruction after the wave vanished in October. The Eisbach wave, a global symbol of landlocked river surfing, has been missing since city workers carried out routine cleaning of the riverbed. Sediment, gravel, and debris were removed, and with them went the standing wave that once reached about one meter, or three feet, high. How a City Park Became a Surf Destination The Eisbach is a narrow tributary of the Isar River that cuts through Munich's English Garden, one of the world's largest urban parks. In the 1970s, concrete r...

By midmorning on December 24, Cocoa Beach looked nothing like a normal winter surf check. More than 10,000 people packed the shoreline and nearby streets. Many had to park nearly a mile away just to get close to the sand. The reason was simple. It was time for the 17th edition of Surfing Santas. Hundreds of surfers showed up dressed as Santa Claus, elves, snowmen, and just about anything else with a holiday twist. Some paddled out. Others stayed on the beach to cheer, dance, take photos, and soak in the scene. Music played, costumes sparkled, and smiles were everywhere. The crowd was the largest the event has ever seen, turning a local tradition into a full-scale holiday takeover on Florida's Space Coast. From One Santa to Hundreds Surfing Santas began in 2009 as a small family moment. Cocoa Beach surfer George Trosset paddled out on Christmas Eve wearing a Santa suit. His son joined him dressed as an elf. A single spectator watched. A local photo ended up on the front ...

This was going to be a fun and inexpensive surf trip. I had never been anywhere in the Caribbean to surf, but stories were beginning to be told about great reef breaks off the many islands. I had traveled all over Mexico and had surfed many places on the west coast. I liked to brag that I had been to all four corners of Mexico: Tijuana, Matamoros, Tapachula, and Chetumal. Technically, Chetumal was in the Caribbean, and I could remember some waves that looked rideable outside of the coral reefs, as well as the beautiful, warm, turquoise water. My Spanish was fairly good, so a Spanish-speaking Caribbean country was preferred. I would be traveling with my girlfriend at the time, Jan, who had never been on any foreign trips, so this was going to be somewhat of a show-off adventure for me, along with some great waves, I hoped. It was 1970, and as with all my adventures at that time, budget travel was mandatory because, well, that's the way I had to travel. This meant cheap hotel...

In a time when reality blends with fiction, natural with artificial, it's the unexpected that brings true joy to our lives. And with surfing, that is exponentially more vivid. I love the word "verve." It's one of those examples of a term whose combination of letters and sound matches the meaning behind it. The verve of surfing is what makes it an experience for life. But after a while, you start to refine the adventure, wanting and seeking different angles and edges to the whole moment. The collection of different surfing experiences includes adding travels, lone sessions , heavenly, sunny days, dark, rainy afternoons, party waves, tube rides that no one saw you ride, wave pools, river waves, episodes of artificial surfing in a Finnish forest, and naming never-before-ridden surf breaks. The list goes on and will grow as much as your time - and financial resources - allow it. For each new experience, the verve of surfing grows in you and, sometimes, it could cha...

Have you ever wondered how it feels to live in a place with an excess of waves? It sounds like a paradox, but it happens. I don't recall an autumn/winter season like the one of 2025. In November and December, the classical North Atlantic swells , fueled by back-to-back intense and very active low-pressure systems, have produced storms that have translated into large, nonstop movements of wave trains. When I mean nonstop, it is literally continuous, round-the-clock sea power hitting terra firma as if reminding us who's in charge. It's unprecedented, at least since I remember putting a wetsuit on on this rough stretch of coastline in the southwest of Europe. How weird is it to stay dry for a month due to too much supply of the scarce resource that are waves? As I write these words, I can witness giant waves slamming the massive stone breakwater of one of the busiest ports in western Europe. And it's been going like this for several consecutive weeks - all morning,...

The surfboard shaping industry has changed dramatically since polyurethane (PU) became the world's most popular core. Yes, computer numeric control (CNC) machines have been increasingly reducing production time , and alternative blanks such as polystyrene (PS), expanded polystyrene (EPS), and extruded polystyrene foam (XTR or XPS) have found niche markets. However, most surfboards today start as blocks of petroleum-based foam. Shapers cut away as much as 40 percent of that foam, and much of it ends up in landfills. Things are about to change slowly, thanks to the introduction of 3D printing hardware and, as SurferToday reported recently, 3D scanning . Inside a workshop near Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, there is a small company called Swellcycle chasing a new way to make surfboards. The startup flips the traditional surfboard-shaping process by using large-format 3D printers to build surfboard cores layer by layer, using only the material needed. It's important to stress...

On a sunny day along the California coast, it is hard to miss them. They're bright yellow dots bobbing on the horizon. They are trusted data providers to surfers, sailors, scientists, and even lifeguards. The wave buoys of the Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP) were born at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and are now part of America's shores. The story starts in 1975, long before wave forecasts lived on phones. Surfline , for instance, would only surface in 1985. Richard J. Seymour, an ocean engineer at Scripps, had a simple goal. He wanted better wave data close to shore. At the time, coastal engineers and planners had little reliable information to guide the design of harbors, beaches, and coastal structures. With seed funding from the California Sea Grant Program, Seymour and a small team in the Ocean Engineering Research Group built a system that could collect wave data and send it back to Scripps using regular telephone lines. Ingenious. That same year, ...

Lady Gaga can keep selling her Mayhem tour merch, and a federal judge just handed her a clear early win in a legal fight that has caught the attention of surfers and pop music fans alike. At the center of the case is one word: Mayhem. For many surfers, Mayhem is inseparable from ...Lost Surfboards, the California-based brand founded by Matt Biolos. The company has used the Mayhem name since 1986 and in commercial sales since 1992. Biolos says the name came from his own nickname, which itself was inspired by his 1980s band, Mayhem Ordnance. Over nearly 40 years, the brand has appeared on surfboards, clothing, and headwear sold around the world. But "Mayhem" is also the title of Lady Gaga's seventh studio album. Released on March 7, the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and has now spent 39 weeks on the chart. The record includes the singles "Disease" and "Abracadabra," along with "Die With a Smile," her Grammy-winning collabor...

It's one of a surfer's worst nightmares - being sucked over the falls. Now, imagine that in a 40-50 foot wave. Nazaré is the mother of all ocean waves. It's probably the biggest, the heaviest, and the most dangerous mountain of moving water on the planet. And if that ain't enough, throw in the title of the most unpredictable wave on Planet Earth, which only makes planning nearly impossible. At Praia do Norte, a wave that looks perfect and survivable can swiftly morph into a random nightmare of unlikely natural phenomena. The result is usually terrifying, even for professional big wave surfers. Despite the unchangeable nature of its underwater canyon that funnels swell energy to a more or less contained surf area, Nazaré will always have the beach break DNA in its genes. Having said so, trusting its "usual" patterns is never a sign of safety and predictability. Nazaré's hyper-sensitiveness to variables like wind, swell angle, backwash, and tides tu...

The backside air reverse is an advanced surfing maneuver that requires smart wave reading, speed, timing, and smooth body mechanics. It demands way more than just popping off a lip, especially if you want to impress and get closer to Gabriel Medina, Kelly Slater, and Josh Kerr's infamous airs. The backside air reverse requires reading the wave well, carrying speed, controlling rotation, and sticking a landing while riding away. According to experienced surfers, landing backwards and reconnecting with the wave is the hardest part, and not exactly the spin itself. But, as with everything, you may not feel that way. The truth is that to throw down this rather eye-catching move, you definitely need the right wave and then loads of forward momentum. The wave should also have a steep, peaky section. In other words, something that "jumps up" when it closes out. You'll want to approach that section on your backside, load up speed, and then launch yourself and your boa...

SurfLoch has been building artificial waves for more than four decades, but its newest design, the WaveBender, is easily the company's boldest turn yet. WaveBender is way more than just a refreshed footprint or a bigger pool. It's an attempt to make a mechanical reef behave like a real one, complete with a wave face that actually curves toward the surfer. "It is the culmination of 40 years of innovation. The easy road was a straight line, but that's not the best wave in nature," said founder Tom Lochtefeld." But before we learn more about WaveBender, we need to understand the brain behind it. Who is Tom Lochtefeld Tom Lochtefeld is the founder and CEO behind a family of companies: Wave Loch, Surf Loch, and Wave House. Born in Coronado, California - on the naval base at North Island - Tom grew up surfing around San Diego, spending many hours chasing waves at spots like Big Rock in La Jolla. He started his professional life in real estate law, but surfi...

Three main variables influence the size of waves arriving at the coastline: wind speed, wind duration, and fetch. Is there a way to establish a reasonable and fairly accurate nonlinear correlation between them? Yes, there is. The table below summarizes typical conditions under which wind generates waves over a consistent fetch. The fetch is the distance over water that the wind blows in a steady single direction. So, for each wind speed level featured in the Beaufort scale , the table shows how many hours of sustained blowing are needed for the sea surface to develop waves of a given height. The chart also includes the corresponding wave period - the time between successive wave crests - which increases as waves become larger and more organized. Because wave height and wave period depend not only on how strong the wind is but also on how long it acts on the water, the values shown represent approximate, idealized conditions assuming steady, uninterrupted wind over open water. It...