Lewis Samuel's 10-part Borrowed Boards series ran in SURFER in 2011 and 2012. The debut, below, is from the March 2011 issue.

The concept was simple. Around the world on one-way tickets, bought one at a time. Luggage limited to a single carry-on. No surfboards. What sounded like a problem was intended to be a solution. I aimed to reframe my relationship with surfing by removing all expectations, freeing myself from the self-imposed shackles of high-performance and heavy boardbags. This shambling odyssey would not be another red-lipsticked rehash of The Endless Summer underwritten by the brands. I was not going to discover the next Mavericks or the next Mentawais, or do so traveling by bicycle, camel, or hovercraft. I was not going to lug a Sprout-inspired quiver of retro boards to West Africa accompanied by the most soulful professional surfers on Earth. Instead, I settled on a stupidly simple strategy of addition by subtraction: around the world on borrowed boards. For no good reason at all, the madness started in Greece.

We'd just finished dinner, well past 2 a m., right on schedule for Greece. It was a schedule that only worked if you slept until noon, napped at 3, and drank espresso at 8 p.m. After dinner we moved on to raki. "You know the first surfer was Greek," Phoebus told us as he poured drinks. "Aphrodite! The mythologies say that she was the first surfer. She came on an oyster from the waves, onto the beach. How? How did she come from the sea? Riding the waves, on her oyster— she surfed!"

Phoebus smiled, nodded, waited for my response. His friend, Dimitris, waved off the story with a shrug of embarrassment. "We Greeks think we invented everything!" he explained. In Phoebus' defense, the Greeks did make many contributions to the advancement of Western civilization—philosophy, democracy, Euclidean geometry, trigonometry...but surfing? As recently as the early 1990s, Greece was considered devoid of surf, even by Greeks who surfed. Meanwhile, Great Lakes locals were decades deep into their surf history. Yet in an elegant sleight of hand, Phoebus had expanded Greek surfing from decades to millennia.

My own Greek surf history began in 2005, when I visited Tinos, a small island in the Cyclades. I'd attempted to sell my surfboard before arriving, but when a buyer never materialized, I dragged it to Greece—uselessly, I expected. I knew that there was surf in the Mediterranean, but Tinos is blocked from Med swell by a minefield of other Greek Islands. What I didn't know was that the north shore faced directly into an uninterrupted fetch of about 200 miles. Although smaller than Lake Michigan, the Aegean Sea benefits from Meltemi winds, a consistent and persistent flow of north wind that regularly reaches 7 Beaufort and above. Wind means windswell, even over a fetch that small. I ended up riding overhead, bowly waves in the lee of whitewashed, blue-shuttered tavernas, never once spotting any signs of another surfer.

Upon my return five years later, I found something quite different. The fetid, primordial windswell of Kolibithra Bay had given rise to surf life. A wooden, thatched-roof shack had been erected in the lee of the headland. On the driftwood steps someone had scrawled "Surfers Only" in wax. Inside were about 15 surfboards, along with surf magazines, leashes, and liquor bottles. The sign out front read "Kolibithra Surf Lessons." Sponsors' flags blew in the steady wind. It was suddenly clear that Aegean surf culture was experiencing its genesis and fall in the same instant, spurred on by the growing cancer of surf industry.

Surf commercialism seemed premature on an island with approximately seven local surfers, in a nation with only 300 surfers out of 11 million residents, and an average deficit of a quarter-million dollars per working adult. But I ignored these statistics, along with the riots in Athens, and the looming threat of economic collapse. Why dwell on such things when there were boards to borrow, and windswell to ride?

The resident guru-owner, Ioannis Vidalis, listened as I explained my project, in all its whimsical, harebrained glory.

"Traveling is about experiencing other cultures," I began, "yet most surfers bring the comforts of home with them—iPod, laptop, multiple surfboards. But you don't bring all your food with you. You eat the food that is locally available. Why not do the same with surfboards?" Ioannis nodded encouragingly. I forged ahead, explaining why I wouldn't be compensating him for the use of his board. "This project is about surfers being a tribe. We love the same thing, you and I. I love surfing, but today I have no surfboard. So I am asking to borrow yours."

Ioannis handed me a 5'10“, Lis-inspired deep swallow twin-fin fish. It was a hand-shape from Greece's only surfboard manufacturer, Cohete. The plan was working—instead of lugging my own McDonald's pop-out to Greece, I was loaned a locally made slab of twin-finned Moussaka. We surfed together on a surprisingly rippable left bank and discussed the story of Ioannis' descent into surf obsession. He'd fallen in love with an Australian girl, on Mykonos, and followed her home to Brisbane. While there, he tried surfing. "When I left Australia, I bought minimal to take home, as souvenir." It took me a moment to realize that Ioannis meant "mini-mal"—Australian slang for funboard. He continued his story. "She said to me, 'Why you a take a surfboard in Greece?' I said, 'Just for souvenir for in bedroom.'"

Upon returning to Tinos, Ioannis looked on his home with new eyes. He noticed that there were waves, despite what everyone said. "The local people, they are negative," Ioannis explained. "They don't want to believe it. 'Why you surf here? What is this, California?' They don't want it. They are jealous, probably." But Ioannis persevered, surfing alone until he became proficient, recreating himself in the Hollywood image of a surfer: long, curly blond hair, deep tan, surf brand clothing, wide shoulders, and shaved chest. This newly minted Greek Spicoli then traveled to Cornwall to be trained in surf instructing, Ioannis opened the first surf school in Greece earlier this year. I asked him about clientele. "Germans!" he told me. "And many other tourists. New Zealanders. Canadians. Californians! Not so many Greeks."

My finest day of Greek surfing came on a postcard-perfect south-facing beach, protected from the Meltemi wind, which both creates waves and blows sand in your face. As I lay on the beach, slowly drying off after a swim in the gin-clear, Xanax-calm Aegean Sea, I gazed out at the Kansas-flat waters with typical regret. Then something incredible happened: a set of 3-foot lefts appeared. They arrived in ruler-edged, even lines, seemingly out of a myth. They arrived beyond logic, beyond reproach, beyond expectation. Tinos is known throughout Greece as an island of miracles—in 1822, a nun found an icon of the Virgin Mary buried in the ground. To this day, most tourists visit Tinos in order to touch this icon and be healed. It is the North Shore of Virgin Mary worship. Old women stream off the ferry each day, crawling on their hands and knees directly uphill, two kilometers, to arrive at the church.

At first, I whimsically wondered if the Virgin Mary had brought the set. Only when I noticed the next ferry go by did the mystery resolve itself. Indirectly, it was the Virgin Mary—she attracted pilgrims, who created the demand for high-speed ferries. The ferries made waves. Sometimes 20 ferries pass Tinos in one day. It became apparent that for Greek surfers, ferries might be their most consistent source of waves.

When I called Ioannis Vidalis, ranting and raving about ferry waves, he was nonplussed, preferring Meltemi windswell. Nonetheless, he agreed to meet me with longboards. After checking the ferry schedule, we ascertained that the next set would arrive at exactly 11:50 a.m.

Ferry surfing is a decidedly relaxed endeavor in comparison to ocean surfing. Between sets there is no need to sit in the lineup. Instead, a ferry surfer sits on a reed mat in the shade of olive trees, on the edge of the beach, snacking, talking, drinking local white wine.

Even the Greek surfers, with their limited command of English, snickered relentlessly when I talked about riding ferry waves. "You a meen waves made by a mageecal fairy?" Phoebus laughed. One thing that Greeks do not have a limited command of is leisure. They are quite adept at pleasantly passing the time, in cafes, in long naps, over sweets, small, strong coffees, and cigarettes. Greece's recent economic woes have been blamed on this proclivity to enjoy life. The retirement age for professions labeled by the government as "arduous" is 55 for men and a chivalrous 50 for women. Some of the many careers officially designated as "arduous" include hairdresser and musician.

With that in mind, in modern times, when a ferry appears on the horizon, a Greek ferry surfer lazily stands up, stretches idly, perhaps waxes their board, perhaps finishes their cigarette, perhaps finishes their glass of wine. Only when the ferry passes directly in front of the beach does a Greek surfer paddle into the warm lineup, hair still dry.

When the sets come, bloated German tourists and squealing Greek schoolchildren are caught by surprise. If the ferry is going to Mykonos, you get rights. If the ferry is coming from Mykonos, its wake creates clean peeling lefts. Most ferries give you the opportunity to ride two or three waves. As the foam settles, and the ocean again goes flat, you simply return to your picnic and pick up your still cold box of wine. Forty-five minutes until the next ferry. Plenty of time to slice that tomato and place it on a piece of feta cheese. Surfing in Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, is an appropriately civilized affair.

"BORROWED BOARDS: GREECE," BY LEWIS SAMUELS (2011)

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