Overnight customs delay in Ensenada: Kids with no moms and no notarized authorizations. A boat held in corporate name. The quintessential human trafficking operation…

And what the in the world happened to Todos Santos? It used to be such a fine big wave.

Picturesque. Dangerous. Wonderfully intense painted upon most perfectly by the great Evan Slater.

I remember examining photos in Surfing magazine when I was a young Oregonian and thinking “Oooooee Kelly Slater’s brother sure is brave. He surfs a wave that must be accessed by tugboat.”

And he was brave but then Todos Santos became erased and I don’t know why.

Is it because of Mavericks? Jaws? Because Evan Slater wasn’t really Kelly Slater’s brother and Kelly made sure both Evan and his wave were disappeared in order to hold the spotlight firm?

We may never know but the good ship Sunset and its hearty crew are passing straight by in order to search for clews*.

It took much time to leave Ensenada.

Kids with no moms and no notarized authorizations. A boat held in corporate name. The quintessential human trafficking operation but paperwork sorted and off to find the ghost of Evan Slater then on to Cabo. Windy.com promises strong winds.

Kelly Slater be damned.

*A little sailing humor there for you

"And then he hammered a roofer's nail up his nostril!"

Live in the US? Want to see a surf film that’ll apparently make you suck the lipstick from the boundaries of your mouth, stretch the front panel of your red panties etc?

Across three hundred cinemas in the US, and for tonight only, Heavy Water is having an advance screening before its premiere in a couple of weeks. Click here for locations. 

There’s an advance screening tonight in Melbourne and in Coolangatta on Sunday, June 16.

Heavy Water is about Nathan Fletcher, the once too cute little bro of Christian, and son of Herb, who first rode the North Shore when he was eight and who, in 2011, was almost claimed by the devil during that year’s Code Red swell at Teahupoo. 

The director of The Hurt Locker and Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow, has described it, apparently ’cause I’m getting this second-hand from Heavy Water director Oblowitz, as “magnificently cinematic.”

(Update: Mr Oblowitz emailed a screenshot of the exchange with the following note, “Please publish some form of retraction for implying that I might be creating fake news  or lying or acting in a duplicitous manner concerning Ms Bigelow’s comment with respect to Heavy Water.)

The noted painter and director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) calls it “a profound insight into the heart and spirit of what it takes to be one of the greatest surfers of all time. If surfing is art, which I believe it is, we get to see the great artist Nathan Fletcher paint his masterpiece. The best surfing film I’ve ever seen.”

I’ve seen that text so I guess it’s true although Schnabel is a man prone to hyperbole and who don’t get out much, clearly.

In this five-minute short, director and subject behave in a manner that suggests the air has been laced with an agent that induces euphoria and relaxation, Nathan talking as if he’s a ventriloquist, teeth never separating, lips never moving, and Oblowitz is his hairy little doll.

(Long-form review coming shortly.)

And do bribes still work in Mex?

Ohhhh sweet Mexico, I see you there off the port side glimmering in the early morning darkness. Like a dusting of flippy sequins flipped to silver and are your children involved in the flippy sequin craze?

The crew of the good ship Sunset certainly are.

Of all mankind’s greatest accomplishments, I believe that continually inventing fads is the most honorable.

Flojos, Hypercolor, Garbage Pail Kids… I thought we had chewed through every last fad possible by 1992 but these days we have squishies, DIY slime and flippy sequins.

The first wetsuit company to employ in kiddie sizes will make a mint but I digress.

Morale is currently high.

Many blue whales frolic in the still chilly water and mini dolphins jump to greet us. Yesterday the crew decided it was a good idea to feed the snacks to a greedy seagull and then tried to make DIY slime with some other snacks.

We will see how it all goes trying to clear customs in Ensenada without paperwork from the mothers.

Do bribes still work in Mexico?

The crew wants to surf Tacos in at Scorpion Bay and I smell a mutiny if it is rendered impossible due bureaucratic shenanigans.

Tacos, again, are what my daughter calls barrels and, speaking of fads I’m shocked that various names for the barrel stopped evolving in 1992.

Green room? Tube? Sugar Shack?

Ugh.

What do millennials call them? What about The Pepsi Generation?

More later.

The day after a mass bull shark appearance down the road, Steve "Longtom" Shearer comes face to face with a Great White at Lennox Head…

Odd to see the joint I chose to live at transformed into one of the shark attack capitals of the World.

I say attack but behind every attack are untold encounters/circlings/bumpings/drive bys blah blah blah.

I never pretend to be a local here. I’m a blow-in, a Bribie redneck through and through. No amount of Dostoevsky, no Borsalino flat cap will ever change that dog.

When we was little scumbags running riot on Bribie our mentor and God Peter B told us about this place. Epic pointbreak, rocks that would shred you, locals who got punchy at the drop of a hat. First look at the place and I knew it was for me.

Peter smoked too much weed, started hearing voices and ended up swinging from the end of a rope. He was only 16. None of us ever recovered from that, not really, but when I got a chance I moved down.

Now we got Whites, we’ve got Bulls. Mostly polite compared to the Reunion ones. They get nasty in the dirty water when the mullet are running but in clear water? That’s surf on and keep your eyes open.

Big tigers, too. Twelve-footer caught on the South Ballina drum line today, a red buoy just out the back at South Wall. Again, compared to the Hawaiian tiger ours seem strangely relaxed. Majestically indifferent.

We get days, like today, of such vibrancy, such purity that you get a go out regardless. Hypeless swells swinging under the surf forecast radar, no one around.

Well one guy. On a mat. I won’t say his name. Before the courts and all that.

We go back in time a long way. Just me and him sharing perfect rock runners. Warm water clear and as full of life as an aquarium, set waves standing up turquoise on the bank before spiralling down the rocks. A sub-tropical dream without a soccer Mum in sight.

My compadre is pissed, as the American saying goes. Spitting chips in the Australian vernacular.

Things ain’t so black and white as the media have made out and the day in court, when it comes, might surprise people. Let’s just say, after seeing and hearing all the evidence I am not totally unsympathetic to his position. We trade waves.

There’s shit to be done. I start thinking I should get home. It’s hard not to play one more wave. Just one more. It’s so pretty in the mid-morning sunlight. Sparkling like diamonds. Fairy wrens still in their summer plumage twittering in the coastal rosemary. Companion rides the first wave of a beautiful set and I bomb the second wave. Just a lazy cutback into the white water and the back foot slipped off. He’s way down the line.

Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it. It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop.

I paddle back out for one more. Definitely taking the next one in now.

I only got used to surfing solo again this year. Mostly at this spot. Close to the rocks, an easy escape route. But I’m not thinking that, now. I’m wracking my brain trying to think if I’ve written things about my surf buddy, things that might come back and bite me on the arse.

Flick. Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other.

There is no fear, no frozen feelings, no panic. Just a profound moment of inter-species communication across the gulf of millions of years of evolution. In that black eye I can already see it has decided I am not prey.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks.

It rolls under me, rights itself and continues on down the line. I paddle in to the rocks, stop about a metre out and begin hooting to old mate. The White shark is heading straight towards him now. Making the sign of the fin is clearly understood around here. Seconds later we are both on the rocks.

“Get a good look at it?” he said.

“Yeah, really good. Juvie White, seven-or-eight-foot long, frisky.”

“Oh well, it’s probably gone now, surf still looks really good.”

“All yours, I’m out for the day.”

It never came to me in my dreams which makes me think I ain’t bullshitting myself when I said there was no fear.

You never know how you’re going to react.

Ain’t it the queerest thing?