In 2001 — twenty-five years ago — Frithjof Gauss swapped Sylt for Ericeira and opened a surf school. That was ten years before this coast was named a World Surfing Reserve.
September 1, 2026 · 7 min read
Some schools opened because Ericeira got famous. One opened in 2001 — ten years before that happened.
In the spring of 2001, Frithjof Gauss set up a surf school in a fishing town north of Lisbon. He had come from Sylt, in northern Germany. Ericeira would only be declared a World Surfing Reserve in 2011 — Europe's first. By the time the plaque arrived, he had been there a decade.
The story before the school explains the school. Gauss entered his first contest in 1994 and, the school itself recounts, two years later won the German longboard championship in the event's first running, with three years on the national team after that. And it was while competing — teaching at a surf school in France to pay his way — that he worked out something many very good surfers never do: that he liked teaching more than scoring.
Asking why the school is called 3 Ondas — three waves — is the fastest way to understand how it teaches. The name comes from an old contest rule: a surfer's three best waves were scored. Not the ones they caught. The best ones.
What that does to a surfer is change the question. It stops being how many did I catch and becomes which one was worth it. Choosing the wave counts as much as riding it. A beginner who leaves the water knowing which wave was theirs has learned more than one who scrambled into thirty.
The house motto is short: small group, big fun. Behind it sits a technical decision worth saying out loud: 3 Ondas does not always teach at the same beach.
That sounds like a detail and isn't. The Ericeira coast has beaches that work on different tides, winds and swells — and a school that always meets on the same sand is putting logistics ahead of the ocean. Choosing the beach on the day is more work for whoever organises it and a better lesson for whoever paddles out. It is the three-waves idea one level up: choosing is half of surfing.
Courses are progressive — five days is the house format, with single and private lessons for shorter stays. Accommodation is available for those coming from abroad.
Rafa, a Level 2 coach, has been at the school for ten years — in a trade where instructors change house every season, ten years is a whole sentence about the place. Alex, Brazilian, and Nuno, who knows the Ericeira coast inch by inch, complete the team; Carl grew up by the sea and helps out over school holidays. Frithjof still runs it and still shows his face.
Out of the water, Gauss is an author. He wrote the surf manual Wellenreiten, published in Germany by Delius Klasing, and the novel Portuguese Lines — that one about how Ericeira's surf spots were found and earned. It is an uncommon thing: the person teaching you to stand up is also the person who wrote that coastline's history.
That count is not ours: the school is marking its 25th year — there is an anniversary badge on their site since early 2026, and lycras carrying the number in this season's lesson photos. Twenty-five seasons in a row in the same town, with the same owner still showing his face.
The school sits on Estrada da Ribeira d'Ilhas, no. 86, in Santo Isidoro, Mafra — on the road that gives Portugal's best-known wave its name. Lisbon is 45 minutes away by car.
Because twenty-five years in one place cannot be bought. A school that crossed Ericeira before it was a World Surfing Reserve, and kept going after the town filled with surf schools, knows things about that ocean no forecast writes down: where the wind lands first, which beach saves a bad day, and when to tell a student that today is a no.
And lessons are taught in German — which, for anyone coming from Germany, Austria or Switzerland, means learning to surf in your own language, from someone who made the same journey.
3 Ondas Surf School Ericeira
Ericeira · Santo Isidoro, Mafra · since 2001
Available on Surf Booking