Ours was work long before it was play.
This is the long way round.
Four generations of one family in the sea at Baleal — who they are, the stories behind them, the family album, and the club today.
From a lifeguard’s card in 1961 to a surf club on the same beach. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my uncles all worked as lifeguards on the beaches of Baleal.
011961 · Peniche
My great-grandfather, Acácio Francisco Grandela, fished this coast and became the first lifeguard in Peniche.
Before that card, if the sea took you, it took you. What he knew of this water, he passed on to his son.
His name on the map ↓02Baleal
My grandfather, Acácio Grandela, gave his whole life to fishing; my grandmother is the chef at Prainha.
He carried his father’s name and what his father knew of the sea, and there was never a tide he was not already thinking about.
The family table ↓03Peniche · Berlengas
My uncles Lélé and Bruno, my father and my mother: a freediver, a longboard champion, the surfer who taught me, and an international judge.
Lélé is my father’s eldest brother: Acácio Grandela, like my grandfather, though no one calls him that. Bruno is the family’s longboarder. My father, Hugo, had me standing on a board at three.
Read their stories ↓04Today · Baleal
Me: four generations in, I teach people to surf in the same water.
I grew up between Nazaré and Baleal and have been surfing since I was three. The sea has gone from the thing that fed this family to the thing that brings people to it.
The club today ↓
Our name on the map: a square at Lagide, a street on Baleal island.
My great-grandfather, Acácio Francisco Grandela, fished this coast, and on the sixth of November 1961 the Ministério da Marinha made him nadador-salvador number 181: the first lifeguard in Peniche. Today the square at the way down to Lagide and Prainha carries his name, and its plaque calls him the first lifeguard of Baleal. On the island, a street carries my grandfather’s: Rua Acácio Grandela.
The family restaurant, on the sand of the beach it is named after — and the world champions who came through its kitchen.
The restaurant is called Prainha, and so is the wave in front of it, one of the spots of Baleal. It has been ours for generations, and my grandmother is the chef: what comes out of her kitchen came off the boats that morning. For years Rip Curl held their Peniche party here, and the best surfers in the world came through the kitchen door like everyone else. Gabriel Medina and Mick Fanning were among them.
Acácio Grandela, my father’s eldest brother — but everyone knows him as Lélé.
He is the one who carries the family’s fishing on, and on this coast he is a legend of spearfishing on one breath: people say he lives like a fish. He goes out to the Berlengas, a nature reserve nine miles off the coast, for percebes — the luxury of Portuguese seafood, cut off the rock between two waves, under a law so strict that very few licences exist. He broke his leg doing it, thrown against the rocks. He went back. And the big blue barrel in the photograph is him too.
A Portuguese national longboard champion, more than once, and still in the water at Baleal.
My uncle Bruno has been national longboard champion more than once, and he has won stages of the European longboard championship. Not a name borrowed for a website: he lives here, and he is in the water.
My mother: an international surf judge.
It means I got the sport from both sides: how a wave feels, and how it is scored.
Championships, parties and the restaurant over the years: the photographs that did not fit above. Tap one to see it large.
A portrait in black and white
A printed photograph
A toast on the beach
My grandmother has been the chef here for as long as I have been alive.
Another barrel
In the water
In the air
Spray off the top
With the national team
On the podium in Cascais
Trophies at sunset
On the beach
Prainha, from the sand
A visit to the kitchen at Prainha
A full house
A night at the restaurant
On the terraceFour generations in, these are the people who will be in the water with you. Our instructors are certified by the Portuguese Surfing Federation, and teach in Portuguese, English and Spanish.
Surf instructor & guide
Surf instructor
Photography & social media
Four generations of my family have made their living from this water. We would like to show you what it feels like to be out in it.
