When he’s not towing into monster Nazaré North Canyon bombs with Garrett McNamara or training up hot young talent on how to become accomplished pros, Portugal’s four time national surf champ Ruben Gonzales can most likely be found in the baz at Coxos.

Hi Ruben, that’s a nice little edit you’ve put together, when was this from?

Most of this was shot in January 2011 but there’s also one or two days from last November. Last winter was pretty epic and all the spots around Ericeira were working. But of course Coxos was the spot. The quality of the waves at Coxos depends a lot on the direction of the swell, and this one swell was just ideal. There weren’t many waves during the session but that day I guess I just got lucky!

November was a pretty special month too, when Garrett McNamara took that huge wave in Nazaré and Supertubes was pumping at the Rip Curl Pro.

So what have you been up to this winter?
The end of 2011had some great swells and I spent all my time in Ericeira until now. We haven’t really had any big swells this winter, but it’s been really consistent with lots of smaller, clean, perfect days.

It’s been good for working on perfecting technique, really working on your manoeuvres. Many of the top Euro guys came to train here, Jeremy Flores, Patrick Beven, Gony Zubizarreta, Hodei Collazo, and of course Tiago to prepare for another season on the WT. So I surfed a lot with them and otherwise was training in the gym and doing yoga.
The forecast for the next weeks looks pretty similar. We haven’t had rain in 3 months and the wind has been perfect. So what more can you ask for!

What about that Pico do Futuro session?
Pico do Futuro is a special wave that breaks a couple meters from rocks and needs a real big swell to light up. It was us that named it Pico do Futuro. In English it means “The Spot of the Future” because when we were young, there were perfect days there but nobody surfed it. We were like 14 years old and afraid to surf. We were always saying, “One day we’ll surf that wave, that’s the wave of the future”. And when in our 20s we started to surf this beautiful spot our dream came true. Other guys out during this session included Marlon, Gony, Tiago, the big local Miguel Fortes and some other Portuguese surfers. Coxos was too big.

When it’s pumping it seems like the whole of Ericeira comes out of their houses and go there to appreciate the show. It’s pretty funny, old people, fishermen, all kinds of people go there to watch. We got some great footage that day.

Any plans for the next few months?

I will stay in Ericeira, take part in a few comps and just take advantage of the good run of surf. I’m also continuing with my training camp project with Billabong, which consists in training young kids (8-15 years old). In total there are four training camps and I spend 3 days in each explaining the routines of pro surfers and the tools you need to be a good competitor and a better surfer. As far as trips go, there’s talk of a surf trip to Indo in June with some of the Euro crew but we’ll see…

Edited by Rodrigo Caetano. For more info, visit Go-s.tv
Music by Tool – Vicarious

For Ruben’s blog, see www.rubengonzalez.com.pt.