Finding the Nazaré Notebook

The Nazaré Notebook, shortly after being found in a shipping container in Coleraine Harbour.

While clearing out a storage container in early July, I came across a notebook in a drawer. The drawers had belonged to my father. They were part of his office furniture and had eventually become mine. The cabinets were too heavy to lift, so I was pulling the drawers out individually to make them easier to move. When I pulled out the top drawer of one cabinet, the notebook was sitting amongst stickers, keys, chequebooks and other random things. I didn’t pay much attention to it. I’ve written a lot over the years, and there are notebooks and bits of writing scattered amongst my belongings.

This wasn’t a special book kept in a special place. At that moment, I was mainly concerned with getting the furniture moved. It was later that I looked at it again and thought, hang on, what is this? Inside were handwritten notes from my big-wave surfing, including my time in Nazaré during the North Canyon Project.

The cover was heavily marked with white mould. The cabinet had been towards the back of the container, alongside old furniture, and damp had affected quite a few things over the years. Being inside the drawer hadn’t entirely protected it. These were notes I’d made for myself at the time. They weren’t written for publication or with the expectation that anyone else would read them. They had ended up in a drawer with the rest of the everyday clutter, and that was where I found them, years later, while trying to make a cabinet light enough to lift.