Today, in waves Albee Layer described as “windy, small,
average”, Billy Kemper won his third Jaws Challenge, another trophy
to stack alongside his two XXL Ride of the Year cups, his XXL
Wipeout of the Year and his 2017 Big Wave Tour Champion
trinket.
Little Billy, who is twenty eight and looks like the kinda man
dogs kick, finished the final ahead of Kai Lenny, Albee Layer,
Tyler Larronde and Grant Baker.
In an emotional speech and in response to a question about his
apparent calm, Billy said,
“There’s so much behind the calm and collective and seriousness.
A month and a half ago, less, I was sitting in LA getting MRI’s and
wondering if I’d surf this winter. I didn’t do this on my own.”
(Billy thanks various doctors.)
And,
“My fucking beautiful wife and children, I love you so much…a
few years ago, I was a wildcard and I won it. I told myself I’d
never stop doing it. Every time I surf a heat my goal is first and
only first. I put blood, sweat and tears into it. It’s my pride and
joy.
“Everyone of these athletes are not just surfers. This is our
livelihood out here. Yesterday was the most radical day of surfing
competition in history. I’m glad I got to kick that day off and I’m
glad I got to end this event.
“(Yesterday) we set the bar for this event. I was bummed out
that not everyone else had to surf the conditions we did, and push
the limits, but I’m over the moon.”
“This is for my mom. I know you’re looking down on me mom. This
is for you.”
Weeps.
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Jen See: “A Vindication of the Rights of
Women!”
By Jen See
Come and have your mind changed!
One of the lasting images of yesterday’s
contest at Honolua must surely be that of Steph, world title
secured, standing tall in the barrel. A hint of a soul arch bathed
in golden afternoon light. You could instantly imagine it on the
wall of a Roxy store, Queen Steph, larger than life.
That she fell rather than make it out clean is perhaps
emblematic of the women’s contest at Honolua. There were moments of
beautiful surfing, moments where we saw how far the women’s sport
has come and where it’s headed next. But Hanaloa’s perfection also
shows every weakness in high relief. In the morning in particular,
many of the women struggled as their boards chattered across the
face and the wave’s power threatened to send them flying off into
the next county.
Lakey’s early exit in round two came as a surprise to just about
everyone — including Steph. While Lakey’s world title chances felt
like a long-shot, she has determinedly pushed Steph to fight for
every last heat. But like many of the women in the draw, Lakey has
yet to sort out how to surf Honolua and it revealed a brittleness
in her approach. She’s athletic, talented, and well-coached, but
she often struggles when the waves don’t do quite what she expects
— and Honolua offered way more speed than Lakey quite knew what to
do with.
The match-up between Steph and Lakey for the world title has
offered a study in contrasts. Steph makes it all look easy, even
when it isn’t. She doesn’t look coached, or even coachable. Steph’s
surfing looks intuitive and inevitable. Lakey is competitive and
she trains hard. She hasn’t yet learned the secret to putting all
that aside and letting her surfing flow when it needs to. When
Steph doesn’t quite know what to do on a wave, she slows down. When
Lakey is uncertain, she tries to do more and do it faster. But she
has time and she’ll only get better.
What’s true for Lakey is true of the women’s side of the sport,
as a whole. Yes, there remains a significant gap between the top
end of the draw and the rest. The barrel dodging isn’t a great
look. Worse, there were many times when perfect sets rolled through
the lineup and the competitors sat on their hands and watched them.
Did you want to yell at them? I confess, I did. Fucking go! What
are you waiting for?
It’s the unique burden of women athletes that they have to argue
for the existence of their sports. If an event isn’t interesting,
critics are quick to jump to the conclusion that women shouldn’t
have contests and shouldn’t compete at all. Men’s sports, well, of
course, we have men’s sports. Men are considered the default. No
one would really argue that men’s sports shouldn’t exist. And yet,
it happens all the time with women’s events. No one got barreled?
Well, why do they even have a contest of their own. Or at least, so
runs the argument.
But we all know that the nature of heat surfing imposes a
certain conservatism. You can go for broke, try to get barreled,
and get nothing. Or, you can throw a few turns, get a six, and
paddle comfortably back to the lineup. We see this dynamic play out
in men’s surfing all the time. Safety surfing is hardly just a girl
thing.
Though Steph won the world title yesterday, Carissa provided the
gold standard. She has the power and technical finesse to turn
Honolua into her playground. She found a couple barrels and threw
big turns. Her boards looked exactly right for her without the
speed wobbles and chatter that some of the other women experienced.
But Carissa has grown up surfing in Hawaii. She’s competed in
Triple Crown events. This is, in fact, her playground.
How many of the other women have the time and resources to put
into surfing Hawaii regularly? Arguably, not many. The marketing
narrative around women athletes has remained focused on lifestyle
and fashion. The incentive structures in many of their contracts
almost certainly reflect that way of thinking. How often have you
seen a women’s brand send their surfers on a boat trip? Not too
often. How many edits of women just surfing — no narrative, no
lifestyle — have you seen? Again, not many.
There’s a sea change coming, though. You can already see it in
how some of the brands have begun to shift their marketing and in
how some of the younger surfers approach their sport. It’s only
been a generation since Title IX in the United States, which opened
the way for women to participate in sports on an equal level in
high school and college. As those women have grown up and had girls
of their own, the cultural attitudes around women athletes have
steadily shifted. And they will shift even further still.
When I think of Steph’s world title run, sure, her timeless
style stands out. That golden soul arch. Morgan Maassen’s magic
pictures of J-Bay, Steph jiving along those glorious green walls.
What a beautiful highlight reel.
But the heat that stands out to me was not about any of those
things. It was a semi-final match-up between Steph and Carissa in
ferociously mediocre Huntington. The thing was a fucking
bare-knuckle street fight. Steph needed to advance to hold her lead
in the title race against Lakey. Carissa was trying to dig her way
out of an early season slide down the rankings. They must have
ridden a dozen waves each. Fierce, no holds-barred contest surfing
that went all the way to the buzzer.
In a rare glimpse behind the curtain, the webcast showed us
Carissa as she waited for Steph’s final wave score to drop. The
producers must have thought Carissa had it won. But in fact, the
judges handed the heat to Steph. In that moment, we saw just how
much Carissa wanted it, just how much was at stake for the athletes
involved.
Yes, the absolute level in women’s surfing has room to grow.
Sure, it does. But that white-hot competitive fire. I’m so here for
that.
And it’s only going to get better.
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"I'm an opportunist who roams a thirty-k
stretch of coastline on the daily, sharing an ecological niche with
an increasingly territorial white shark and a spectrum of surf
spots that includes punchy breakwall wedges, ledgey little slabs,
world-class and not so world-class pointbreaks and tons of variable
beachbreak. With the Rocket Wide in the back of the car I had
(mostly) the small wave spectrum fully covered." Here, BeachGrit's
anonymous pro surfer inhales a little of the Rocket Wide's spice.
Billy Lee-Pope
CI Rocket Wide Spine-Tek Board Review:
“Disrupts the flow of sexual energy between a man and a woman, or a
man and a man, woman and woman.
By Longtom
I made a three-foot left my little bitch on this
board…
Took this brand new CI Rocket Wide with Spine-Tek
construction, unwaxed, down to Iluka. Iluka, if you live
in America, Eurasia, or the UK is a regional shithole in
sub-tropical northern NSW full of fishermen who love to get punchy
drunk at eight am, sand dunes infested with brown snakes (true) and
brown water surf probably infected with nuclear debris from
Fukushima.
White sharks? Yes ma’am. My pal Abe got his JS snapped in two
when an over-swoled goldfish with teeth launched him like a scud
missile September 2 years ago.
“Fuck off,” he said, as it ragdolled him around the line-up.
“Fuck off!”
White sharks? Yes ma’am. My pal Abe got his JS snapped in two
when an over-swoled goldfish with teeth launched him like a scud
missile September 2 years ago.
“Fuck off,” he said, as it ragdolled him around the line-up.
“Fuck off!”
I only go there because the spring flathead bite is insanely
good, my wife loves the pub and it’s the last place on the east
coast of Australia where you can find an instant coffee in a cafe
served by a surly teenaged waitress with volcanic acne.
Placed on the marital bed, on an anniversary weekend away the
board presented a very sexy combination of curves. Full figured
nose, curvy outline and a tight-ish swallow. New boards are a
problem like that. They disrupt the flow of sexual energy between a
man and a woman, or a man and a man, woman and woman.
I know both Chas and Derek have experienced marital strife
because of this fact. Also why I need to quit pro surfing coverage
next year: it’s a major boner killer. The lady lies in bed naked
while the man watches Keanu Asing throw a six at Pat Gudauskas and
nothing moves, if you get my drift. Thats all fine for neo-puritans
coming from the Oprah Winfrey network but not so good for worker
daddies who need and want to keep a woman sweet.
Family friendly website and kids think it’s yuck, but it’s true.
Surfboards are objects of lust, adventures in polyamory. You can
love them. S’why grown-ups hide them from their partners. Stout
Scotsmen build locked sheds to house them like mistresses. Nick
Carroll leaves his lying about in the long grass, so a tryst might
happen accidentally.
“Hello, fancy stumbling over you today, how bout a quick ride?”
etc etc.
All of which is to say, like Jamie Brisick and his martinis, I
approached this board with very high expectations. Tumid, even.
The first surf at Ilukan beachbreak was sizzling but short. I
was so destroyed physically and mentally from pro surfing sleep
deprivation and marital disharmony that a couple whacks on a
running left and a shorebreak hit was about the size of it. Felt
loose, very reactive, very whippy. Tight. I was excited, very, to
surf again.
Placed on the marital bed, on an anniversary weekend away the
board presented a very sexy combination of curves. Full figured
nose, curvy outline and a tight-ish swallow. New boards are a
problem like that. They disrupt the flow of sexual energy between a
man and a woman, or a man and a man, woman and woman.
Then things went south over the next few days. I wrote the
following on a US surf forum, after some very disappointing
consecutive surfs.
Could not generate speed. Could not drive this board into or out
of turns. Stopped dead in any dead sections. Felt weirdly
like I could not engage the front rail in speed generating pumps at
all. Felt like the nose kept wanting to rise up and I was left with
this strange feeling of pushing water and surfing off the
fins. I felt with the Rocket Wide like I was trying to start a
secondhand lawn mower. I could not get the motor running.
Three surfs in a row went horribly wrong. I felt like LBJ’s
“Jackass caught in a Texas
hailstorm”. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide and I
couldn’t make it stop. Well, I could make it stop, I just couldn’t
make it go.
Helpful Americans including someone connected with CI California
suggested the issue was with the rocker curve.
All those surfs were in shonky b/c grade pointbreak. Mid-period
swells, lots of dead sections. Picture high-tide Rincon Bells and
you’re in the ballpark.
The next go out went differently. The problem had to be me.
I reported it thusly: Rocket Wide in punchy two-to-three-foot
beachbreak, mostly weird but steep little lefts breaking into a
rip. The kind of low-energy swell but steep faced surf that is
daily bread here in summer.
I think I figured it out. At least a minor
breakthrough. I knew it was a rocker issue and it had to do
with the front foot and the planing area around the front foot.
That felt so bad. Clues were in the posts about narrow stances
and boards that were stance sensitive. Probably in Indo, I
got a bit too used to a little more forward stance for tuberiding
and since I’ve been back I’ve mostly been fucking around on a
six-foot foamy where you can stand wherever you want.
So, I just shuffled the front foot back… a couple of inches,
maybe. Instantly the brake came off and the board lit up. Little
top turns became fully whipped frontside wraps… the board started
to feel really good turning. really good. Still didn’t feel
gold-standard to me at generating speed as a groveller, and I’m
deeply sceptical this board will plane in knee-high surf. But
fun as hell.
From there, I made Tallows my little bitch on this board.
Jumped-up little lefts got mown down. Three pumps into a section
and I launched a little straight front-side air that caused a dutch
chick to exclaim, “Whoa, nice board man”.
(Fins used, if you’re curious, were Futures AM1’s and AM2’s. I’m a heavy-footed clod
who likes to push. And Futures is a superior fin box, no
doubt.)
Hunter gatherers had no dentistry or iPhones but did have
tremendous sexual freedom. Gals were often free to choose sexual
partners. Agriculture and private property rights fucked all that
up for good. As such, polyamory today is mired in risk and mostly
doomed to bad feelings all round, Mormons and some Muslims
excepted. Surfboard selection remains one avenue where an appetite
for variety can be pursued in a morally risk free environment.
Is this a sled that would make a good partner for you?
Where and how do you surf?
Not why, that’s meaningless.
I’m an opportunist who roams a thirty-k stretch of coastline on
the daily, sharing an ecological niche with an increasingly
territorial white shark and a spectrum of surf spots that includes
punchy breakwall wedges, ledgey little slabs, world-class and not
so world-class pointbreaks and tons of variable beachbreak. With
the Rocket Wide in the back of the car I had (mostly) the
small-wave spectrum fully covered.
Backside on my local points I continued to struggle.
I think the materials factor in. Spine-Tek is a carbon strip
that is routed into an EPS blank and stiffens and controls the flex
of the board. With epoxy glassing it makes for an incredibly
reactive and lively board. On my forehand in punchy beachbreak it
was like a three am Ritalin buzz on the dance floor. If you
like/love the feeling of EPS/epoxy; you’ll love Spine-Tek. If
you’re a PU/PE kind of gal, it’s worth tuning in for zest in a
small-wave board.
On my backhand, I surfed like a love child of Michel Bourez and
Pat Gudauskas born with a genetic defect that caused epileptic fits
on contact with saltwater. My spastic limbs made board control
difficult.
On my backhand, I surfed like a love child of Michel Bourez and
Pat Gudauskas born with a genetic defect that caused epileptic fits
on contact with saltwater. My spastic limbs made board control
difficult. Quietening everything down and throwing very simple
shapes at the wave made everything happen. Not every wave, but I
felt fins going out the back where I had been bogging or
over-rotating.
This board will be a feel-good hit of the summer. Globally, I
predict. It has Fishy DNA but surfs like a high-perf. shortboard in
small surf.
My Bribie friend, best one in the world, and I, share a lot of
things. We’re like Aboriginals in that respect. Common ownership,
especially of surfboards, is assumed. And he’s been eyeing off and
angling to get his hands on the Rocket Wide for a while now.
We both ended up down the inside of the Point, on Sunday, down
near the hut.
“Hey,” he said, “give me a go on that board”.
“Um, later,” I said, “I’m keeping it”.
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Watch before it’s too late: “Jaws is a
pitbull the size of an elephant!”
By Chas Smith
But not as big as yesterday. So maybe a mid-sized
elephant.
If you blinked, yesterday, you missed a very
fine few minutes of professional big wave surfing. There were
thrills, there were chills, there were spills and then the whole
thing got called off so Kai Lenny could go and do this…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqsDpC5HKpu/
Was it the right call? We will never know but you had certainly
better tune in right now because it may disappear again without
warning, without hint or head nod.
But can we talk about Dave Kalama in the booth? I am a very big
fan, I think. He’s got a sort of woodsy charm coupled with an
inflection that sounds boozy. Like he has been up all night
drinking before wandering into the booth. Right now he is talking
about the size of bumps on the wave and… I’m just gonna spend a few
seconds transcribing exactly what he says
“Yeah I mean the start of a boxing match, right? You don’t come
swinging haymakers. You swing a couple jabs, seeing what the
water’s like, seeing how the bumps are like…”
“If you stick your hand out the window going 40… now picture
holding your surfboard out the window going 40. You can’t!”
Good yeah? Folksy and boozy.
Anyhow, let’s not waste any more time here. Click now and
watch because who knows when mean ol’ dad Mike Parsons
will shut it all down.
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Listen: “I sometimes wish Shea and Cory
Lopez’s dad was my dad too!”
By Chas Smith
And much chatter about bad surfing!
I’m not a good surfer but I expect good surfing
from my professionals. Is this so wrong? Is this so egregious?
Maybe yes but I crave excellence. I need excellence especially when
confronted with legitimately perfect waves in a legitimately
perfect arena like Honolua Bay. I need for the professional surfer
to do what I can’t. I need them to float my dreams and yesterday,
outside of Steph Gilmore, Carrisa Moore, Sally Fitz and a
smattering of others, professional surfing let me down.
Oh how many glorious waves went unridden? Oh many barrels opened
their mouths wide yet found no partner willing to dance?
I’ll answer. Too many. Too too many and Stephanie Gilmore’s
performance emphasized the disparity. She had a marvelous season
and has seemed to find another gear altogether. She snared her 7th
title yesterday but at this rate who could say that 12 World Titles
are out of the question? Even 13?
Back to the rest of the field, though, whose fault was the
general lack of performance? Did the athletes simply not step up,
having a collective off day? Does the World Surf League not provide
enough world class waves on tour?
Or maybe this is all my own personal problem, my own private
Idaho.
I spoke with David Lee yesterday morning right as Jaws and
Honolua were getting underway. He had been in Florida, planning on
a month long tour though had to hurry back for Thanksgiving which
worked well since we were able to spend a few hours talking about
the Pastime of Kings.
I shared with him that I just began surfing again, like really
surfing, after a whole year off and the results have been less than
pretty. First, my mind is broken and fearful. I paddle for waves
with my surgically repaired left shoulder whilst an internal voice
screams, “It’s going to blow! It’s going to blow!” Of course it
cannot blow seeing as my bicep has been severed then screwed in
front of the ball joint making it an almost possibility but I am,
apparently, traumatized. Like an old Vietnam vet.
Second, my pop is rusty and lame. I struggle to my feet,
partially due weakness that I am trying to remedy with pushups at
home, partially due to rust. I teeter and totter all out of sorts,
having dropped officially from low intermediate to middle
beginner.
Third, my feet are all wrong. I don’t remember where they’re
supposed to go not that I ever really knew in the first place.
David Lee told me a story about Shea and Cory Lopez’s dad. He said
that he put duct tape for where the boys’ feet were supposed to go.
I wish he would do that for me now. I wish he would put duct tape
on a board appropriate for me which, at this point, may well be an
egg (damn that Devon Howard).
I’m trying to keep positive. I was never that great to begin
with and maybe this is my chance to rebuild from the ground up. Do
you think that’s possible? I hope and until then I hope everyone
surfs better at Honolua today.
