Abomination: SurfTech surfboards!

Chas Smith

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The worst ever invention?

I am still in Cabo and every day is like paradise. Margaritas chased by 86 degree nugget waves chased by more margaritas. My hair is so blonde and my skin is so brown and my smile is so wide. But there is one problem. I have a surfboard here, a gorgeous little Mayhem number dropped off a few years ago, but I can’t currently get it (complicated) and, thus, am forced to ride a rented SurfTech.

When was the last time you paddled one of those out? Mine is a 6’3 Merrick Biscut and it is absolutely hideous. The other day I rode a twinnie something rather else and today I also rode a 5’10 Robert August thing and they were absolutely hideous too. Because they were all SurfTech.

And riding SurfTech is not actual surfing I have come to realize. The boards, so plastic-y stiff, don’t respond at all. The best one can hope for is a general slide down the line. Putting it on a rail? Milking a section? Finding the sweet spot? Forget it all! SurfTechs are “like having sex with your pants on” a wonderful friend told me and is he ever right.

I remember the controversy, back in the day, about boards being rolled off assembly lines in Thailand, or wherever, and the shapers getting angry because no soul maybe or something and I remember being not interested. I didn’t have one and wasn’t going to get one.

Now I am interested. Because they are absolutely hideous! When water slaps their bottoms they make some weirdly annoying pinny sound and when you paddle for a wave they hold in the lip and when you finally build speed in an open section there is no slowing them down to keep pace with the wave.

Riding SurfTech is not actually surfing. It should be called water tabling. And water tabling on a SurfTech is sort of fun. It involves running over dry reef, people and other SurfTechs. It involves letting children throw rocks at them and smiling wide.

freediving

Freediving will kill you!

Rory Parker

By

But what a way to go!

Freediving is an inherently dangerous activity, even more so when you add a competitive aspect. Diving deep on a single breath, dealing with your body’s reactions to pressure, oxygen deprivation, and carbon dioxide saturation is always a potential recipe for disaster.

Fortunately, the vast majority of risk can be eliminated by employing proper safety protocol and, in a competitive scenario, by ensuring the presence of trained medical personnel.

Unfortunately, humans are prone to error, and even the most accomplished divers, perhaps most especially the most accomplished divers, can easily grow complacent and lose their lives at routine, relatively shallow, depths.

No Limits, a documentary produced by ESPN about Audrey Mestre as part of its Nine for IX series is an amazing piece of film that illustrates the dedication and determination necessary to push the limits of human physicality, as well as show how quickly everything can go wrong.

At fifty minutes long it’s an easy watch, though, fair warning, there’s no happy ending.

“No Limits” – The Audrey Mestre Documentary from DeeperBlue.com on Vimeo.

Sir Richard Branson never has problems with his boards. He flies Virgin!
Sir Richard Branson never has problems with his boards. He flies Virgin!

Fuss: British Airways vs. British surfers

Chas Smith

By

The island nation set afire by allegations of mismanagement!

The Euro Surf competition just ran to completion outside Casablanca, Morocco and the English surf team did very poorly, finishing ninth out of thirteen teams including Denmark, Sweden, Glenn Hall’s Ireland, Norway and Holland.

But wait! Was their ugly result against many countries without any sort of surf whatsoever the dastardly work of British Airways? The six member “elite squad” traveled to Casablanca on BA due to a “surfer-friendly” policy the airline has. No extra charge for boards! Except their boards never arrived. It took two full days for the airline to sort the mistake out and that gutted practice time. The team manager told the Mirror, “I believe BA has cost us dearly. The entire team missed out on two days of training the wave they had to compete on. This potentially had disastrous consequences.”

But wait! Were those disastrous consequences the product of boggy cutbacks, mistimed snaps and generally English surfing?

BeachGrit will get to the bottom of this developing story (after I go out and do a few boggy cutbacks and mistimed snaps. I’m still in Cabo!)

surf dog
Do you take surfing for granted?

Perspective: Surf Dog Thrills Dying Sisters!

Chas Smith

By

Maybe think about this next time you're weeping about crummy waves or a snapped board…

Do you take your surfing for granted? Do you grumble most days in the water?

Oh be very honest.

It is rarely steep enough, hollow enough, fast enough, good enough, uncrowded enough, etc. to keep our feeble hearts sated. And so we surf but always find fault.

Two teenage girls dying of Friedreich’s ataxia, a rare and terminal degenerative muscular disorder, flew to San Diego and surfed Del Mar with a SURFice dog named Ricochet on Wednesday.

It is rarely steep enough, hollow enough, fast enough, good enough, uncrowded enough, etc. to keep our feeble hearts sated. And so we surf but always find fault.

SURFice dogs, for those who don’t know, surf with people who cannot move properly. They counterbalance the board and allow the disabled to surf.

Those who witnessed the event said the girls’ joy was uncontainable. They surfed many waves each and one remarked afterward, “I’ve always wanted to surf and then I found out about Ricochet and it made it more special. It just felt so good, like I was free.”

The surf though out San Diego County was crap on Wednesday but I will never complain again.

John John Florence
He falls? | Photo: Chris Bryan

Movie: A Compendium of John John Fails!

Derek Rielly

By

Who doesn't want to watch a two-minute reel of the BSITW wiping out?

It really does depend on the crowd you swing with but, mostly, you could say that John John Florence is the best surfer in the world or BSITW.

Do you remember one year ago, almost to the day, when he danced all over six-to-eight-foot Hossegor as if it were a two-foot Rio beachbreak? And his sangfroid at 10-foot Teahupoo, at 15-foot Pipe, at 20-foot Jaws?

But to get to the highest rung, y’gotta fall down a few. To get a 10-foot tube you gotta eat it in the worst ways imaginable.

The following two-minute clip of John John Fails was compiled by the excellent Hawaiian mag Freesurf. Pick one up next time you’re in Town!

…when he’s not falling, JJ is going…backwards, inverted…

Photo: Jack English
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