Watch: Sirens of Kauai!

Rory Parker

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Watch girls in bikinis be shore pounded! Story includes dubious link to Greek classics.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve read any Greek mythology. At least since I was forced to in a scholarly setting, which was, again, a long time ago.

I remember the sirens, though.

Super hot ladies, singing beautiful songs and luring dumb-dumb sailors to their deaths. I think they were inspired by seals. Addled horn-dog sailors saw a bunch of ocean dogs flopping around yelling, “Arf! Arf! Arf!” and all they could think was, “Man, I can’t wait to dip my dick in that.”

I may be confusing sirens with mermaids.

Instead of pinnipeds we’ve got lithe tanned young ladies in teensy weensy bikinis flopping around in huge surging shorepound, some obnoxious safety minded filmer fills in for Orpheus’s lute, and the sailors are replaced by pasty skin tourists who lack the sense to stay far far far away from the shoreline.

 

Hows about an updated version?

Instead of pinnipeds we’ve got lithe tanned young ladies in teensy weensy bikinis flopping around in huge surging shorepound, some obnoxious safety minded filmer fills in for Orpheus’s lute, and the sailors are replaced by pasty skin tourists who lack the sense to stay far far far away from the shoreline.

Maybe not quite as dumb as wanting to fuck a seal, but close enough for government work.

 

Black Nazare
"It was a nasty and ugly session, unridable," says the filmmaker Pedro Miranda. "We call it 'Black Naza' when it's like that. The conditions were extreme, not because of the size, it was huge, although we’ve seen bigger, but because things were a bit more out of control than usual: strong onshore winds, biggest waves closing out and the inside was impossible for the security team. " | Photo: Pedro Miranda

Watch: Dirty, ugly Black Nazaré!

Derek Rielly

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And the Australian Mick Corbett gets tossed like a salad!

Whatever your feelings about the “biggest wave in the world”, Portugal’s Nazaré, y’gotta admit it’s a photogenic sonofabitch.

Like most of us, I figured it was a giant burger operated, mostly, by semi-kooks dazzled by the idea of big-wave surfing, but then Shane Dorian, who was surprised by the ferocity of Nazaré, set me straight.

“The place is a logistical nightmare,” said Shane. “We lost a couple of skis. And, it’s really hard to do rescues there, really really hard. Each surfer needs his own water rescue guy on a ski. At all times. It’s really super dangerous. There’s a cliff there. All that shit. Once, I caught a wave and we lost one of the skis in the shore break. I finally got back out there an hour later. I got a couple more waves and then we had to ditch another ski on the sand. It is just chaotic. I had one of those feelings that I should be happy with the two waves I caught. It’s a full on beach break. It’s like these big wedges down the beach so every time you catch a wave there’s no way to paddle back out. You need a jet ski to come and get you right away and there’s a rip sucking you straight into a big cliff. It’s a lot like the north shore when the waves are big. The water’s really angry.”

The video, below, is from the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Miranda.

“It was a nasty and ugly session, unridable,” says Pedro. “We call it ‘Black Naza’ when it’s like that… the conditions were extreme, not because of the size, but because things were more out of control than usual: strong onshore winds, biggest waves closing out and the inside was impossible for the security team.”

In the water there was the Australian Mick Corbett, another Australian,  Jarryd Foster, Portugal’s Nuno Santos and the Italian stud Alessandro Marciano.

“But only Mick got waves,” says Pedro. “That was that kind of day where you’re not expecting them to go in, but these guys are from Australia… man… it was a sick show to watch. Big respect to the Aussies! Overall, Mick charged into three waves which are all in the video. One was a WSL Big Wave entry few days ago, two of them he couldn’t make. The bigger ones were killers so the waves he got were like the mid-size from the session…”

 

Volcom House
Say, you ever dreamed of sitting…here…at the Volcom House watching in real-time a pumping winter swell at Pipe? Today you can! Open a can of tuna, maybe a blister pack of smoked ham, mix a cocktail and…w atch!

Live: Epic Pipe from the Volcom House!

Derek Rielly

By

Pipeline is pumping… now. Watch here!

This is novel idea. The Austrian energy drink company Red Bull is broadcasting today’s epic Pipe swell from the Volcom House at Pipe.

No panelists, no commentators, no judges. Just pure vision of a building four-to-six-foot swell operated by the best surfers on the North Shore.

From Red Bull’s PR division:

“THIS IS LIVE is a simple concept: Livestream a day of freesurfing at Pipeline and Backdoor using the famed Volcom Houses and their unobstructed beachfront view of the waves as our vantage point.  Intentionally a low fi project, this livestream won’t have commentators and heat analyzers. No panelists and pundits. And no VOD. When the cameras turn off, that’s it. This is live sums up what the experience is all about in three little words. Tune in, and it should feel like your’re sitting on the back porch of the Volcom House, watching Pipeline go off right there in front of you.”

The broadcast is coming from the three-storey, four-bedroom Gerry Lopez house Volcom bought in 2007 for $US4.2 million (see the setup below) and not the little house where a BeachGrit correspondent once took a gal and never saw her again.

image1

 

Watch here!

Rumor: Mikey Wright your wildcard!

Chas Smith

By

The Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast is less than one month away and Mikey Wright might don the singlet!

BeachGrit runs off your fumes. Without you we are but clanging gongs, empty vessels, and this may seem mealy-mouthed but it is entirely true. There was a time in my life when I refused to respond to online comments, Twitter things, etc. or even read them. It felt less cool to go and mix in the lowly places. How wrong I was. The lowly places are the only ones that truly exist. There is no highbrow art being created in our surf world. No cloistered few elevating the conversation. There is only this and this is very fun.

Yesterday, for example, the wonderful longtom had a legitimate question below an illegitimate post. He asked:

Sorry to change the subject, but will Quik hand out another wildcard to Dane for Snapper? Or have they now all OD’d on disappointment?Anyone got any inside info? Nick Carroll: you’re in bed with Quiksilver, do you know?

And I thought, yeah! I wonder too! Nick Carroll is so esteemed but I thought take this little morsel off his plate so reached out to a well-placed surf industry source as handsome as he is spirited. And guess who else reads your comments! He said:

My people there are telling me that, after reading all the comments on BeachGrit, there is some serious thought about giving it to Mikey Wright. Nothing official yet…

Mikey Wright would be so welcomed, no? Dane is, of course, so very exciting, but longtom is also so very right. Almost always disappointing. And older. And motivated? The internal fire in that boy seemed choked even in the best of years. Do you think he is looking back at his decision to step away from Quiksilver, right now, and thinking, “Hmmmmmmmm.” Do you think Ando is looking back at his own decision and saying, “SHIT! Shit shit shit shit shit SHIT!”

Quiksilver does look so very reinvigorated, fresh, young, happy, free. I am excited for the Snapper event. I am excited to see Mikey unofficially soar. The future is bright!

Top of the totem pole? You'd be smiling too!
Top of the totem pole? You’d be smiling too!
Brandon "Laserwolf" Campbell by Rodney Odgaard.
And this is the photographer himself, Brandon "Laserwolf" Campbell at the heaviest wave in the Mentawai Islands, as captured by Rodney Odgaard. | Photo: Rodney Odgaard

Report: Mentawai* to be Crowd Controlled!

Derek Rielly

By

Pay $75 fee and surf in crowds of 20 surfers or less… 

Let’s ask: who wants to go the Mentawai?

All of you?

Maybe you want to go on one of those dazzling boats like the Ratu Motu where the monied surfer radios in his aprés gin-and-tonics as he sails back in his tender to a mother vessel skippered by a worldly cap who shows off his quiver of Rollies and tells stories of being kidnapped by pirates in the Amazon? 

Or maybe you’re thrilled to be on a trad Indo sailer that’s slow but eschews modern comforts for a more cosmic experience.

However you swing, the Mentawai islands, with its perfectly foiled reef waves popularised by the Australian boat captain Martin Daly in the nineties with movies for Rip Curl (The Search, Tripping the Planet) and Quiksilver (No Destination, The Hole, Young Guns), is as much a rite of passage for surfers, maybe even more so, than the North Shore.

So you sling your three thousand (minimum) at a good boat, add a grand-and-a-half for any airfare and you wait for your turn in the boat charter cycle. And maybe you’ve got a good skipper and surf guide and you cut off your own slice of paradise, accumulating memories you’ll still be talking about in a decade.

Or maybe you wind up surfing Lances Right, Macaronis and every other name spot and you’re astonished to discover y’ain’t in paradise but’ve arrived to some kind of overcrowded, surf capitalist dystopia.

Sixty surfers… here?

But all that might be changing in August 2106, or so says the English-language daily The Jakarta Post.

In a story headed, Surfers Charged a Little More for Extra Fun in Mentawai, it reveals that the Mentawai Islands regional administration issued a bylaw last year on the “management of surfing excursions that stipulates, among other things, the imposition of ‘surfing fees’ for both domestic and foreign tourists… Under the bylaw, all foreign and local surfers visiting Mentawai are required to pay Rp 1 million (US$75) and Rp 250,000, respectively, for a 15-day period.”

Seventy-five bucks ain’t nothing when you sling it onto the five gees or whatever it is the trip costs. So what’s it get you?

Let’s examine.

“Such fees, for example, would give surfers a fair chance to ride the most sought-after waves in the region, said Mentawai Islands Tourism Agency head Desti Seminora.’Currently, many surfers must compete against each other to secure surf spots on particular beaches,’ she said. ‘By paying certain fees, surfers will be guaranteed spots on the beach as our officers will allow a maximum of 20 surfers to surf in a particular spot every morning and afternoon.’

How’s it work? Wrist bands!

“Payments are to be made online, while identification wristbands are to be collected at the provincial capital of Padang or Mentawai. The new regulation is scheduled to take effect in August after the regional administration completes supporting regulations that detail fee collection procedures.”

Wrist bands and some kinda policing to keep numbers down?

You really think that’s going to happen?

You really think it’s going to work?

Non.

Will the levy still be charged?

Let’s do a little math: 7000 visitors multiplied by $75 gives the Mentawai Islands regional administration an ongoing yearly injection of $US525,000.

I think, yes!

Read the story here. 

* (And what do you think of referring to the Mentawai Islands as Mentawai, as is the custom in those parts, and not Mentawais? Does it sound odd to you?)

Photo: Jack English
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