A couple of years ago, I was in Portugal for an event called Capitulo Perfeito. It’s one of the best events in all of surfing, and Clay Marzo was invited. We spent a week or so traipsing around the wonderful country with a handful of other surfers, but most of them were there for a day or two before heading off somewhere else.
Clay, along with his partner Leilani, were there for the whole time. We spent a lot of time in a van together, bouncing from town to town, planned activity to planned activity, and wave to wave, stopping sporadically for meals that only can be found in Portugal. Two things were very clear after that week. Clay Marzo loves food and surfing with great passion. Which, I’m guessing, is where the name for his most recent YouTube video came from. It’s called “A place with good breakfast is a good day for Clay Marzo.”
While I was amazing at the amount of food he could put back — no one’s bread is safe around Clay — I was even more amazed by his surfing. It’s easy to see it through the screen of your computer or phone or whatever and be impressed, but let me tell you, in real life, the things Clay does on a wave don’t seem possible.
He’s famously private, so we don’t see all that much from him, which is a shame. He surfs for the right reasons. Not for me or you or anyone else, but simply for himself. He would be doing exactly what he’s doing now even if a camera wasn’t recording him. But luckily enough for us, Leilani is amazing behind the camera and she films him surfing very often. But it’s not often that we see him on a twin fin.
In “A place with good breakfast is a good day for Clay Marzo,” Clay is on a twin from Album Surfboards. And although Clay could ride a piece of wood with style, he appears to be surfing particularly well on this board.
