Classic Indonesian surf charter boat hits reef and
burns to the waterline…
I doubt if there is a surf experience quite like that
served by the flotilla of charter boats in the Mentawai
Islands. Choose your boat well and life’s choices become as easy as
Negroni or gin-and-tonic for sundowner and whether to select the
five-nine or six-o for the easy-as-anything tubes.
You know how it works: sling a few thousand US into some distant
bank, get a plane to Padang, peel off your shirt and marvel as the
oyster opens.
Life is easy. Until it isn’t.
A couple of night ago, the surf charter boat Star
Koat, an eighty-foot trad Indonesian wooden boat built
in Sibolga for twelve passengers, ran aground while taking a short
cut in the Mentawai’s deep south a little before eight pm.
The twelve Brazilian guests, the Australian and Brazilian guide
and the six-man crew slept on the beach, and the reef, as it rained
through the night.
Assistance was called the following morning.
The wonderful Ratu Motu, skippered by
Captain John Shawcross and owned by Quiksilver founder Al Green,
salvaged what they could (Mentawai locals had already inspected and
taken what they needed), and the guests were brought aboard.
Shortly afterwards, the Star Koat caught fire and burnt to the
waterline.
What happened?
Skipper error.
“Missed the gap between two islands and drove straight up on the
reef,” said Captain Shawcross.
Which ain’t as hard as it sounds.
If you’ve ever driven a boat at night, you’ll know it’s a
haunted world full of mirages and false flags. Where figures appear
and dance before your eyes and where reef passes suddenly appear
where they shouldn’t be.
Do you want to heed the call and captain a Mentawai boat
charter?
Stab magazine featured a very odd story today
titled Go Home Pops, You’re
Drunk. It was a savage description of Jack Robinson’s
dad, Trevor, getting drunk in a Tahitian bar and behaving poorly.
The writer, Jake Howard, went over Mr. Robinson’s various offenses,
twisting the knife this way and that, summing it up:
The scene was heartbreaking. Jack’s a great kid. He’s
clearly got the talent to be one of the best surfers in the world.
When I first met him some years ago, he was bright-eyed and eager
to learn and see the world. It was so clear he possessed everything
he needed to go far in his surf life. Now that he’s on the verge of
stepping into the big leagues, he deserves better than his old man
swindling free beers on his sponsor’s dime.
And then writing about how he wished he’d said something about
Andy Irons’s issues when Andy was still alive.
Very odd indeed and I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything
quite like this. A real gut punch to an extremely periphery figure
who hadn’t actually done anything other than getting drunk and
bragging about driving drunk. Not too cool, to be sure but worth a
story about the evils of drink and stage parenting?
I suppose it is a demand for action but what action is supposed
to be taken? Is Billabong supposed to hammer…Jack for… his dad’s
behavior in order to… get him into rehab? Or… hammer Trevor
directly by… firing his son? Or… what?
Maybe it’s not a demand for action just a snapshot of life on
tour… of parents.
In any case, this is BeachGrit and we’re nothing if
we’re not anti-depressive! So here’s a happy Trevor Robinson
annecdote!
The man once told me a long but funny story, standing at North
Point, about how the magnetic properties of Western Australia’s
rocks gave Jack surfing super powers. I found it to be one of the
most wonderfully eclectic things I had ever heard in all surfdom
and wonder if there is any truth in it and if I should move to
Western Australia.
Later that day I got drunk on many Carlton Draughts.
Carlton Draught is the best beer in Australia.
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Surfer mag: I call total bullshit!
By Chas Smith
Surfer magazine Editor-in-Chief spins a wild
yarn!
For all of surf media’s many many many many
many many many mandy (sorry) many many many many failures, I think
one of its grand strengths is accurate descriptions of what happens
in the water. Surf stories are not like fishing stories. Wave
heights are either described accurately or slightly under-reported.
Outside the WSL booth, surf action is detailed in generally subdued
terms. The weather, crowd, people in the lineup, etc. specified
exactly. Or as exact as can be.
Enter Surfer’s Editor and Chief Todd
Marinovich.
In the latest magazine, dubbed The Community
Issue, Todd opens with this tale:
The midweek crowd at Ala Moana Bowls on the south shore of
Oahu was light despite the dreamy shoulder-high left-handers
consistently peeling along the reef. But even with plenty of waves
to go around, the small local crew fell into an exclusive rotation,
taking turns picking off the best set waves while outsiders were
mostly left with scraps.
I couldn’t have cared less about being relegated to
second-tier waves; after all, as a visiting San Diegan, what was my
alternative? The locals likely surfed that break every day, had
intimate knowledge of every piece of coral on the reef and
therefore had earned the right to the best sets, so sayeth
surfing’s unwritten code of wave worthiness. But not everyone in
the lineup shared my perspective.
A slightly overweight, sunscreen-caked, rashguard-wearing
tourist seemed a bit perturbed by the pecking order. He seethed as
one of the locals — a tall, tan fellow with rippling muscles and
traditional Polynesian tattoos on his face — paddled right past us
and back to the peak after getting a long, almond-shaped barrel through to the
inside.
“Unbelievable,” the tourist said, shaking his head as he
started edging deeper. On the very next set wave, the same tattooed
local stood up, tickling the lip as a green cylinder formed around
him. The tourist had had enough; he scratched into the shoulder and
locked into a stink-bug crouch while a series of expletives echoed
from the tube behind him. In that moment, I hoped the tourist was
thoroughly enjoying the ride, because it seemed that his day would
only go downhill from there.
Unsurprisingly, a sense of shared culture and community was
the furthest thing from anyone’s mind in the lineup that day at Ala
Moana as the local paddled full speed toward the tourist who had
burned him.
“BRA, WHAT THE F–K YOU DOING?!” he shouted mere inches from
the tourist’s face.
“Well,” the tourist started, chin up with a misplaced sense
of confidence, “I noticed that you kept taking all of the good
waves for yourself, and I’d like to have some good waves too, you
know.”
There was a pregnant pause as the local looked the tourist
over, trying to discern if he had any idea of the numerous bylaws
he’d broken and the potential consequences. Suddenly, the local
craned his head back and let out the kind of cackling,
coming-apart-at-the seams laugh typically reserved for the single
funniest thing you’ve ever heard. The tourist stared at him,
awestruck as the local turned and started paddling back to the
peak, struggling to catch his breath.
Perhaps that facially tattooed local had figured out
something that eludes many surfers: Sure, the surf community may be
inherently conflicted, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a sense
of humor about it.
And that right there is some egregious bullshit. There is
absolutely no way in the world this actually happened.
Zero way.
But how do you think Mr. Todd Marinovich came to it? Did he:
a) Get high and think it really happened.
b) Watch 50 First Dates too many times.
c) Accidentally listen to A Prairie Home Companion before
writing.
d) Accidentally listen to What the World Needs Now is Love (the
Glee version) while writing.
e) Get his twelve-year-old emo sister to write it.
f) All of the above.
Has Todd every actually been to Hawaii?
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Faux/Real: Novelty Waves!
By James Booth
Waves for kooks looking for cool backgrounds for
their next Instagram chop-hop? Or no?
Tell me.
In your considered opinion, are novelty wave exciting and
intrepid and adventurous?
Are they cool?
Or are they the epitome of millennial douchbaggery?
If I were a Gen X contrarian, I’d
be inclined to write novelty waves off as the domain of
self-absorbed kooks who sacrifice size, length of ride, and the
ability to manoeuvre just to get a cool background for their next
Insta chop-hop.
But guess what?
I’m a millennial!
I love chop hops and quirky backdrops, and I reckon we get
plenty of ‘manoeuvre’ training from all those daily surfs we get,
while novelty wave haters sit in office cubicles pondering whether
they still have the dexterity (and the immune system) to
successfully navigate a wave like this.
Also, snaking seven year olds in Newquay harbour made me realise
that no matter how shitty a wave, nor how many times you bog a
rail, if you do it near something hard and full of barnacles, it’s
kind of fun.
Fun?
Sure.
And if the threat of bacterial infection and stitches don’t get
your juices flowing, novelty waves often provide an audience of
non-surfers who ohh and ahh at every botched cutback and flailing
highline.
Good for ego? Yes!
Bottom line.
Are novelty waves faux by definition?
Or does their inherent thrill make up for their inconsistency,
tendency to be polluted, meagre size and so forth?
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Finally: The Inertia comes clean!
By Chas Smith
Founder Zach Weisberg admits, "I have sucked my
entire life!"
In what has been long rumored, Steve Bannon
today resigned/was fired from his position as President Donald J.
Trump’s chief strategist. The Failing New York Times
reports:
Earlier on Friday, the president had told senior aides that
he had decided to remove Mr. Bannon, according to two
administration officials briefed on the discussion. But a person
close to Mr. Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea,
and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug.
7, to be announced at the start of this week. But the move was
delayed after the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
The loss of Mr. Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who
helped propel some of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises into policy
reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism
from the conservative news media base that supported him over the
past year.
In other more explosive news Zach Weisberg, founder and chief
strategist of Venice-adjacent log rolling blog The
Inertia, admitted today what has whispered for years though
never explicitly admitted.
I didn’t read the story,
but remember watching HBO’s Entourage for the first time and seeing
Vincent Chase, played by Adrian Grenier, and thinking, “Ugh.”
Adrian G. might be a fantastic guy but Vinnie was unbelievable
as a fictional Hollywood star, though entirely believable as a
world-class douche. He sucked and sucked badly. I hate watched
almost every episode of Entourage after that, plumbing the depths
of my own masochism.
Much in the same way that I regularly visit The
Inertia. And it makes complete sense that Zach Weisberg would
hitch his suck cart to Adrian Grenier. Both horribly malign
otherwise purely superficial pursuits (surfing/acting).