Understanding The Fajãs of Madeira

“Hey boys, check this 'ere left”, announced Steve as he burst through the door, wielding a magazine. It was December 1987 and I was in West Cornwall, sitting around the kitchen table of our small granite house, drinking tea with three friends. Outside, horizontal rain driven by gale-force onshore winds lashed the windows.

Steve was a travelling guru, always on the lookout for new places to surf. The picture he was showing us was in a travel brochure, advertising typical warm getaways for the British: Greece, Tunisia, Tenerife and beyond. The photo was Madeira. There was a left-hander of indeterminable size, surrounded by giant vertical cliffs, and, just behind the peak, a small island with an arch on one side of it.

Area Guide: Madeira

Everybody I had spoken to about Madeira always said there was no surfing there. It had sheer, vertical cliffs all around the island, so there was nowhere for the waves to break. We were doubtful about that left – it probably wasn’t even Madeira. The photos had probably been accidently swapped with some place in Tahiti or Hawaii. But we still fantasized about having enough money to just book a flight to Madeira and go have a look.

Fajã is a Portuguese word meaning ‘low flat ground’. In Spanish the word faja means ‘belt’ or ‘girdle.' On Madeira and other volcanic islands, most notably the Azores, you can see fajãs everywhere.

Six years later, in December 1993, João Valente did just that. He jumped on a flight to Madeira just to check it out without having a clue whether there would be surf or not. João lived in Lisbon and was the editor of the long-running magazine, Surf Portugal. He had heard the same story about the steep cliffs on Madeira:

“Everybody would say that there were no waves here, because the island was too steep and there are no beaches, because normal people tend to believe that you can only ride waves on beaches,” he said. “We didn’t tell anybody that we were coming, so this way it was a win-win situation, because, if we didn’t score, nobody would make fun of us, and, if we did score, we would have a secret.”

When he got there, he was blown away. There were quality surf spots all around the island, even though there were no beaches. Most of the waves broke fairly close to the shore on reefs that skirted around the island at the bottom of those huge cliffs.

Now, of course, everybody knows there are great waves on Madeira (albeit some of the best ones destroyed by coastal structures, but that’s another story). The lefthander that my friend Steve showed us in 1987 really was Madeira; the photos hadn’t been accidentally swapped. It was a place called Ribeira da Janela, which you have probably heard of, or might have even surfed.

Related Content: Save Madeira! Waves Once Again Under Serious Threat

Madeira does have steep cliffs practically all around the island, some of which rise up out of the ocean for 300 metres. And there are no sandy beaches, the waves break on flat, tongue-shaped platforms called fajãs that stick out a short distance below the cliffs.

Fajã is a Portuguese word meaning ‘low flat ground’. In Spanish the word faja means ‘belt’ or ‘girdle’, which also gives you a clue. On Madeira and other volcanic islands, most notably the Azores, you can see fajãs everywhere. Houses, churches, terraces where people grow crops, and even entire villages and airports are all built on fajãs.

Forecast: Achadas Da Cruz

That is, of course, the part of the fajã that is above the water line. The rest extends out under the water, and is often the right shape to create long, hollow, powerful pointbreaks. Often, the shape of the platform is such that the waves are focused onto the reef before they break.

The way fajãs form is not exactly rocket science, but worth explaining. At first sight, the surf spots in places like Madeira and the Azores look like typical cobblestone pointbreaks such as those Southern California, Ireland, and many, many other places. However, most of these pointbreaks rely on rivers or ravines to deposit those cobblestones along the shoreline.

When he got there, he was blown away. There were quality surf spots all around the island, even though there were no beaches. Most of the waves broke fairly close to the shore on reefs that skirted around the island at the bottom of those huge cliffs.

With fajãs, the ‘cobblestones’, instead of coming from rivers, come from rocks that have fallen down from the top of the cliff over geological time. The rocks in fajã reefs are typically bigger than on ‘normal’ cobblestone pointbreaks. This means two things: the spot is more likely to hold a bigger swell, and getting in and out of the water can be a nightmare.

As the rocks accumulate at the bottom of the cliff, they are acted upon by the force of the waves and currents. The smaller rocks move more readily, and, therefore, are more likely to end up getting washed away down the coast or out to sea. The larger rocks are only moved by larger, less-frequent storm events, so they only adjust their position over long periods of time.

In the end, the shape of a fajã is the result of the dynamic equilibrium between the long-term behaviour of the waves in that area, and the rate of supply of new rocks from the cliff. Luckily, the balance of these forces has been just right over the past few thousand years to produce those tongue-shaped fajãs that you see all around Madeira and the Azores. When you think about it that way, you realise that fajãs are another marvel of Nature that should be preserved and not destroyed by human intervention.

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