Brazil Hosts First Gay Surf Camp Exclusive to Lesbians

A travel agency is organizing a surf camp exclusive to lesbians this year in May on the island of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Its organizer, Marta Dalla Chiesa, the 48-year-old director/partner from Brazil Ecojourneys, has already set up two surf camp for the gay public in the same Brazilian town. This year, the experience will be exclusive for women.

Marta says the intention of the camp is to make women feel well and away from stereotypes. “There’s a sexist image that a woman has to be good-looking to ride waves and that bothers women, especially the pros,” she explained. Although she has always been well-accepted in the line-up, she notes that there’s not many women in the water as men.

The idea for a surf camp focused on the gay community was born from a partnership with Thomas Castets, founder of the website Gaysurfers.net, in which he discovered that gay people wanted to make a surf trip together. “I created the website in 2010 hoping to find one another gay surfer. I ended up finding five thousand,” explained Castets. He has also produced the film Out In The Lineup, that tells the journey of two surfers who come out of the shadows to create an acceptance culture in surfing. The documentary also shows that homosexual surfers who compete professionaly tend to come out only after competitions, for fear of having their image impaired. A part of the income achieved by the two first surf camps organized by Brazil Ecojourneys was to help the production of the documentary.

The camp will be held for the third time in 2015 and this time, it will be exclusive to lesbians and female friends, from all countries. Open to women for all levels of surfing, there will be surf and yoga classes and five days of surfing in the best surf spots of Florianópolis. The camp runs from May 9th to the 16th, and costs from $1300 to $1800 dollars.

Canadian Tanya Churchmuch, 45, went to the camp in 2013 and had a great experience. “It was my second time surfing but I had already fallen in love by the sport,” she said. “I’m from Eastern Canada, so surfing isn’t part of our culture here.”

The camaraderie at the camp in Florianópolis made Tanya feel comfortable in the water. “To be part of a group of gays and lesbians made us get along very well. The teachers were very patient to help us, and that’s what I needed.”

Tanya says she has always been intimidated for being a middle-aged lesbian trying to surf, but knows that in the ocean there’s space for everyone. “Whenever I’d been in surfing areas just to hang out and watch, it was always a pretty straight, male-centric environment, really not the most inviting environment to want to join. Even when we were at the camp a couple of years ago, there were guys trying to get in front of us and ride the waves we were waiting for. Our teachers were great, they talked to them and made sure there was space for us.”

A study published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statics in 2010 revealed that Florianópolis has Brazil’s highest concentration of  gays, with 0.11% of the population–around 418 thousand people–being homosexual. “The crowd is very receptive and the city is so amicable,” Marta Dalla Chiesa said. And in a place known for its gay-friendliness with numbers of homophobic violence close to zero, it’s the right destiny for the trip.