Surfing in Madeira the title track of his debut album. The beaches off Funchal, Madeira’s capital, sometimes have fun left-handers. Surfing in Madeira Surfing first started in the Portuguese island of Madeira in the 1970s off the villages of Paul do Mar, Jardim do Mar and Ponta Pequena. Almost every surfspot is rocky and powerful. No waves seem to break under six feet in the winter months. Madeira did not really come to the attention of foreign surfers until articles in surfing magazines in the mid-1990s. Since 1996, top Portuguese surfers from the mainland compete in the Madeira regional edition of the 'Billabong'
Geology of Madeira to the end of the Pleistocene ice ages means that some Quaternary marine terraces are as much as 100 meters above sea level. Groundwater on Madeira is held in fractured volcanic rock aquifers, with widely varying transmissivity and dissolved mineral content. Water is generally slightly acidic to slightly alkaline and cold, although there are small quantities of thermal water near fault zones. Much of the water on the island comes from high-discharge springs. Leptosols, cambisols and andisols are the three main soil types on the island. Madeira has few natural resources and no mining, aside from small-scale extraction of sand