The signing of teen Jack Robinson is just one of the
smart commercial decisions made by Billabong in the past two years.
| Photo: Morgan Maassen
Opinion: To surf or not to surf
By Scott Valor
It's the most profound decision you'll ever have to
make. It's life or death!
I am frothing.
I pull up to the waist-high beach break with you and immediately
jump out to grab my board. You say wait a minute it’s not so good
because it’s small and the swell is not here yet and the wind has
just come up. I say I see waist high A-frames with rampy peaks and
blow-tail end sections. You do not go out. I definitely go out
because I am frothing.
I am 12 years old and out of school for the summer. I am not
doing Junior Lifeguards so I will not miss the best dawn patrol
waves because I have to swim around a buoy or run on the sand. I am
frothing.
I am 18 years old and I am going to college on the California
coast (or University of Hawaii if I can get in). I will live in the
Oceanside or Ocean Beach or Cayucos ghetto so I can be the first on
it and check it after classes. I am frothing.
I am 24 years old and I turn down a good paying job inland
because I will not commute away from the ocean. I make ends meet at
a lower wage job but I surf every day before work. I am
frothing.
I am 46 years old and I make about half the amount of money as
other people my age. But I have twice the hair and I am healthy and
fit because my work schedule is second to my surf schedule. I surf
five to seven days a week before or after work. I am in the best
shape of my life. I am frothing.
I am 65 years old and I am collecting social security. I surf
every day because I never stopped and now I never have to because I
have saved some money to go along with the retirement check. I am
in the best shape of any senior citizen I know because I am in
touch with the ocean every day. I am frothing.
I am frothing and you have decided not to paddle out.
I’ll text you to let you know how good it is and what you have
been missing all this time…
… when I get out.
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When Big-Wave Surfers Find Love
By Anthony Pancia
Garrett McNamara likes to plough down the world's
mighty waves! And now he's in love!
Critics? Sure, Garrett McNamara has a few. He
knows it, you know it but here’s the thing… he ain’t gonna die
wondering.
A quick Google search in the wake of those last two gigantic
swells that hit Nazaré and Mavericks will throw up endless images
of G-Mac ploughing down the face. At Naz, Garrett and Australian
big-waver Ross Clarke-Jones not only traded waves but also a trip
underwater after Garrett went in to rescue Ross after a heavy
wipe-out.
“It’s really cool what Garrett’s done both with his surfing and
moving surfing into the mainstream,” says Ross. “I am so proud of
him and a bit envious I guess given his association with Mercedes,
I’d love to have something like with Porsche!”
The respect goes both ways, with Garrett claiming Ross, “is the
only big wave surfer I’ve ever looked up to. His Aussie approach to
the riding big waves is just perfect. He never runs from the wave
and always goes as deep as possible. I love the guy and I was so,
so stoked he made it to Portugal.”
But it was perhaps the Mavericks swell that may have surprised
Garrett’s harshest critics, who lavished him with scorn after the
drop-in incident and subsequent near drowning of Greg Long in 2012.
Indeed it was Long, says Garrett, who convinced him the swell
headed to Mavericks would be worth the trip. “I started getting
excited by that swell while I still in Portugal,” says Garrett.
“And I spoke to Greg about it and he convinced me it was going to a
A plus swell and worth it. So I went.”
And went he did, relying solely on paddle power to catch some of
the day’s biggest waves. Not that Garrett didn’t give a passing
thought to the potential of being towed in though. “There were so
many waves that went unridden and if we were towing we would have
gotten the biggest barrels you’d ever get at Mavericks,’’ he says.
“But paddling was just the most exciting fun and really, really
challenging and the thing is, despite the crowds, there were so
many waves that if you wanted a bomb, they were there for the
taking.”
Wth two swells worth of XXL waves under his belt, the man known
as G-Mac finds himself at home on Oahu, surrounded by kids, his
wife and like so many others this time of year, a long list of jobs
to do.
“I’m so so stoked there’s no major swells on the horizon for the
time being,” he says. “I get to spend time with my kids, time with
my wife and just put my feet up for a while.”
But don’t be alarm big-wave surf fans. Y’still get your slice of
G-Mac! Click on the play button up top and bathe in his
unselfconscious, non-ironic surfer-falls-in-love short…
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So here's the jam. The Duke came to Australia in 1915
for a little surf-riding exhibition. He takes a gal out at Dee Why
for a tandem ride. Oral storytelling switches Dee Why for
Freshwater. The girl, Isabel Letham, never marries and claims her
heart was stolen by the Duke. But maybe Iz didn't dig buck
Hawaiians at all! Maybe she liked a little beaver! Who
doesn't!
Shattered: Australia’s Most Enduring Surf
Myth!
By Derek Rielly
Hawaiian legend fails to turn closet lesbian;
Australia's first-ever surfer ain't who it seems!
In a sizzling reveal,The
Australian newspaper reported yesterday that Australia’s
first-ever surfer wasn’t Isabel Letham nor the Hawaiian Duke
Kahanamoku but a Manly surfer, Tommy Walker, who exhibited the
sport on a two-dollar surfboard three years earlier.
“Oral storytelling, particularly about new and radical
experiences, forms a large part of surf culture,” writes Fred
Pawle. “As a result, surfers, who are not the most literary bunch,
are prone to exaggeration. But even by their hyperbolic standards,
the Letham story is extraordinary. The truth, as usual, is even
more fascinating .
“A reassessment of Letham is overdue, partly because her status
in surfing has become ludicrously high, and partly because the
centenary of her alleged achievement is approaching, and it would
be a shame if the planned celebrations on Sydney’s Freshwater beach
on January 8 commemorated a fallacy.”
Even better, writes Pawle, the now-legendary Ms Letham hid her
sapphic tendencies behind a wall of supposed longing for the former
Olympian.
“Letham herself repeatedly gave the impression that she, if not
Kahanamoku, established a deep emotional bond on the day they
supposedly rode together at Freshwater,” writes Fred Pawle. “But
Sandra Kimberley Hall, Kahanamoku’s official biographer, is not
convinced. ‘Any romantic interaction between a 15-year-old white
girl and a 24-year-old dark-skinned Hawaiian in Australia in 1915
stretches the bounds of plausibility,’ she says. ‘Nowhere in Duke
or Isabel’s archives is there anything that would lead researchers
to believe there was a romance, a fling, or even a friendship
between the two of them. It’s laughably ridiculous.’”
The story really is a remarkable piece, in its research and its
shattering of an enduring myth.
Mick Fanning is from Australia's east. Kolohe Andino
from America's west. Kolohe is a better person. | Photo: Morgan
Maassen
Australia’s east coast vs. America’s
west
By Chas Smith
Which one is better? Come inside and be floored by
irrefutable evidence
Every coastal nation has a best coast, north, south,
east or west. One coast trumps the other. In France, the
west coast is better than the south Mediterranean coast. In Panama
the east Caribbean coast is better than the west Pacific. In the
United States’ California west is better than the urbane Eastern
Seaboard. And in Australia the urbane east coast is better than its
wild wild west. But when California is pitted against Australia’s
Gold, Sunshine, Sydney coast which wins? Which is best of all?
Australia’s east coast features one very fine town and that town
is Sydney. Some will say Byron Bay or Nambucca Heads or Forster
(pronounced “Foster”) are equally fine but they are wrong. And
Sydney is dreamy. There is shopping, dining, delicious models and
surf. Australia’s east coast also features the Gold Coast and while
Surfers Paradise is both a grammatical and architectural travesty
the surf is amazing. There are waves for every desire.
California features two very fine towns, Los Angeles and San
Francisco. Los Angeles may be perfect. It has everything including
the film industry and all the actresses who come for it. Everything
except good surf but good surf is easily accessible via automobile.
San Francisco is called the Paris of the west and it, too, has
everything except attractive women. Australia’s east coast has
Snapper Rocks. California has Trestles. Australia’s east coast has
Nicole Kidman. California has her too.
Australia’s east coast has beer. California has wine country.
Australia’s east coast has Splendour in the Grass. California has
Coachella. Australia’s east coast has that harsh, unfiltered east
coast light. The sort that makes a man feel bad about his past and
not dreamy. The same sort as New York City. California has golden
light filtered in that way that all light is filtered on west
coasts. The past is forgotten. Only the future exists.
And, therefore, California is better than Australia’s east
coast. California might be better than anywhere else on earth.
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…and this is the collision of Dominic Mosqueira's
wide-angle work, eight-foot Teahupoo and John John Florence who's
steered upwards on the face to avoid another surfer duck diving.
The spit of the tube that is coming straight at the camera, dulls
the sharpness of the photo but gives it a dynamism often missing
from water photos. The irony here is Dom, who is super critical of
his own work, didn't send the shot to any magazine, any advertiser
although it has since become one of his favourites. BeachGrit too!
| Photo: Dom Mosqueira
When Domenic Met John John
By Derek Rielly
The Tahitian photographic ace Domenic Mosqueira and
his superstar muse…
When your game is wide-angle surf photography, your muse
is John John Florence and your home ground is Teahupoo and the
psycho reefs that surround it, it ain’t all high-fives in
the channel.
And, so here, and for just a moment, let’s place ourselves in
the mind of the 36-year-old Mexico-born photographer Domenic
Mosqueira as he endeavours to snatch a water photo, with wide-angle
lens, of John John Florence at a wave we’ll refer to as The Right.
Not far from Teahupoo, it is a wave suited to North Shore Hawaiians
and natives of French Polynesia, specifically, those surfers of
better than average talent around Teahupoo.
The wave has elements of Pipeline, in its unpredictability. Will
it break here, there? Will the wave closeout or will it allow entry
and exit? The reef, meanwhile, is what Domenic calls “pure
evil.”
On the day pictured, below, Dom was swimming, always a brave
thing to do at The Right, for two reasons. One, you can’t see
clearly much above a few feet out of the water and, two, if there’s
a 15-foot closeout set, there isn’t a lot you can do except,
perhaps, find solace in the arms of your God.
And this day, the 15-foot closeout appeared. Dom could hear all
the jet-skis revving and thought, ‘What’s happening?’ He turned
around and the wave was almost on top of him. He dived underneath
the wave and saw a tiny space where the violent columns of
whitewater weren’t hitting and grabbed hold of the bottom. He knew
he must not let go until the wave had passed him. Slowly he dragged
one hand in front of the other to gain distance. All the time he
was waiting for that bolt of whitewater to land on top and
“obliterate me. I waited as long as I could, and I made it. I made
it. I survived the nightmare wave. I was the happiest kid
ever.”
Mostly a straight closeout, this righthander not
far from Teahupoo occasionally lines up across the reef, giving an
entry and an exit. And when it does? It’s as perfect as they come,
although the simple lines and calmness of John John do belie its
danger.
“That wave is scary,” says Dom, who believed he
was to die during this session when he was caught inside while
trying to shoot, crazily enough, wide-angle water photos.
Twelve-to-15 feet and John rode it on a 5’10” with a busted-off
nose, effectively five feet and eight inches between him and the
reef.
But who isn’t going to try a little harder when they’ve become
the go-to water guy for the best surfer in the world? Dom
was put on John’s radar when the Hawaiian photographer Daniel
Russo (see his outrageous work here) asked him to
shoot the stills for an O’Neill campaign while he shot RED slow-mo.
That was three years ago. And, now, whenever a swell is about to
hit, Dom ain’t surprised when the name John illuminates on
his iPhone 5.
This stall in the mist was for an O’Neill
campaign in 2011. Dom was introduced to John by the great Daniel
Russo, who was shooting RED video and needed a stills photographer
with game. “This photo motivated me to keep going. It made me
think, maybe I… can… do it.”
“When I see his name I feel adrenalin,” says Dom, “’cause as
soon as he calls, it’s go-time. He’s always excited to surf and you
know you’re going to have your hands full for a week. It’s exciting
and motivating to have that much talent and you don’t want to let
him down. It lights a fire under your ass.”
This is John, with shaved head from the swell of
2011. “That wave will forever be ingrained in my mind,” says Dom.
“I knew that wave would define that swell. He stood so talk and
tranquil inside it while I was panicking about being sucked
over.”
Dom ain’t one to boast and if you ask him why he thinks John has
made him his number one shooter in Tahiti, he says, “I think that
I’m discreet. I don’t make too much of a fuss and I respect what he
wants to do with the images. He’s a wonderful man, a nice guy,
that’s calm and not sped up.”
Nice, sure, but in rhythm like no one else, as least far as the
Fly-in-Fly-Out gang goes. “The wonderful thing about John is he
shows up and he seems to be in rhythm with Teahupoo every time.
He’s always on the best wave and the way that he surfs it is as
stylish and it is apparently simple. He seems to stroke and paddle
a lot less than most people. He draws such amazing lines on the
wave and he looks so casual when most people are fearing for their
lives, the Kamikaze look at the bottom turn, the strung-out look on
their face as they grab the rail… John is calm from beginning to
end. It’s obvious he’s got some sort of link to Teahupoo. It’s in
synch with him.”
