"What you gonna do about it Kelly?"

Breaking: “Savage” 10-foot Great White Shark swims into Cocoa Beach lagoon, mocks precious memory of native son Kelly Slater!

By Chas Smith

5 years ago

Extremely Homeric.

The Coronavirus Gestapo’s iron grip on the world’s surfing community has loosened, slightly, this past week with beaches opening or whispers of them opening soon. The Reign of Terror being, at least momentarily, paused.

Oh, many will flock to the sand, to the waves, and try to re-create the simple pleasures of days before a Chinese bat destroyed freedom but those in Cocoa Beach, Florida should exercise extreme caution and probably not surf at all for it is there that a savage 10-foot Great White shark is swimming in a lagoon very close to people.

Very close to their toes, ankles and calf muscles.

But you certainly know Cocoa Beach as hometown of the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater. He is not there. He is in Australia not being allowed to look at the ocean and the shark is certainly mocking him. Mocking him exactly like Odysseus’s suitors mocked him whilst he was on his great Odyssey, trying to get with his wife and whatnot.

Per the shark tracking organization OCEARCH:

Surprise Brevard County! A near 10-foot male Great White Shark named ‘Cabot’ has registered inside the Indian River Lagoon near SR 528 in Cocoa on Saturday, according to Ocearch.

The ‘ping’ came in at 11:14 a.m. on Saturday which registers a satellite tracker attached to the shark’s dorsal fin when it breaks the surface of the water.

‘Cabot’ was recorded as a 9-foot-eight inch, sub-adult white shark, and weighing in around 533-pounds when it was tagged October 5, 2018 in Nova Scotia.

Ocearch’s partner, SeaWorld, named him using suggestions from Nova Scotians after the explorer John Cabot.

Since being tagged in 2018, ‘Cabot’ has logged more than 6,700 miles of distance covered.

This is the first known recording of an Ocearch tagged Great White Shark pinging inside the Indian River Lagoon, since Ocearch began tagging sharks in 2007.

Great mockery seeing that Kelly Slater had a very lousy 2007 only winning the Boost Mobile Pro across the country at Lower Trestles.

But how will Kelly respond? Like Odysseus and eventually coming back to claim his rightful place as husband and lover or like Steve Harvey and just leave the old gal behind forever?

Much to ponder.

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Explosive: Surfing royal “murdered” in his North Shore bath-tub claims author!

By Derek Rielly

5 years ago

New books reveals “The epic life and mysterious death” of a wanna-be pro surfing British viscount…

Twenty-three years ago, the 11th Earl of Coventry, and wanna-be pro surfer, Ted Deerhurst was found dead in the tub of his condo at the Kuilima, the residential development that surrounds the Turtle Bay Hotel on the North Shore.

Deerhurst’s celebrity, if you can call it that, had peaked fifteen years earlier in 1982 when filmmakers Dick Hoole and Jackie McCoy devoted a hunk of their classic surf movie Storm Riders to Lord Ted.

If we peer into the corners of surf history via Warshaw’s impeccable archive, we find,

Despite the fact that he had only middling success as an amateur, Deerhurst turned pro in 1977. He was handsome and likable, and while some pros resented the fact that he had essentially bought his way into the profession, he was for the most part a popular addition to the world tour. For years, Deerhurst was the only touring British pro. He came to the attention of the surfing world in 1982, when he was featured on the cover of Surfer magazine, posed with five custom surfboards and two hunting hounds on the rolling lawn in front of the family manor. He was nicknamed “The British Lion,” although his world tour friends called him “Lord Ted.”

Deerhust world tour trials and tribulations, year after year, became both a source of amusement and inspiration. “Try as he might,” surf journalist Nick Carroll later remembered, “Ted could not get through a heat. Even when he was in form, something would go wrong; he’d miss his third wave, snap his leash, lose the shorebreak reform. But somhow, next event, Ted would be back, the British Lion, trying as hard as ever.

Deerhurst died of heart failure in 1997, brought on by an epileptic seizure, in a North Shore hotel room.”

So far so ordinary, no?

Now, a new book by British author Andy Martin, whose 1991 surf memoir Walking on Water won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, claims Deerhurst was murdered in his tub at the behest of a shadowy North Shore gangster.

In Surf, Sweat and Tears, the epic life and mysterious death of Edward George William Omar Deerhurst, which has just been released on OR Books, buy here etc, we find Deerhurst, besotted by a Honolulu stripper to the point where he loses his mind over her, and even when he’s warned away by a nicknamed “Pit Bull”, he keeps coming back.

Now falling in love with strippers ain’t uncommon.

Who can blame a man when he falls under the spell of those women with the big velvety eyes and the heavy animal perfume and sinuous snaky bodies and with sparks no ordinary woman can match.

But, in Deerhurst’s case, he wants to marry his stripper, and he winds up breathing his last breath, in an empty bath tub.

In SST, Martin talks to a man who found the royal’s body.

“Dan got back to 100 East Kuilima around 7:30 pm. The house was quiet…Ted was in the bath. He was naked. And he was dead. But he hadn’t been having a peaceful bath and sailed away into the great beyond. Something violent had happened to him. There was no water in the bath for one thing… Ted is face down in the bath with his legs sticking out at the side. He is not breathing. His lips have turned blue and rigorous mortis has set in. There is blood in the bath. There is a “contusion” (as it says in the report) at the back of his head. And there are injuries to his face too: cuts on his nose, a black eye. He looks, prima facie, as if he has been beaten up. But, say the price, Ted beat himself up.”

It’s a wild ride.

“In death,” writes Martin, “Ted had finally become the hero he always wanted to be.”

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Revealed: You can go on a surfing and yoga retreat from the safe space safe space of your very own home!

By Chas Smith

5 years ago

#HomeBreakChallenge

Do you recall, just a few short months ago, when the phrase “safe space” entered the English lexicon and meant, “Places created for individuals who feel marginalized to come together to communicate regarding their experiences with marginalization” where no violence, harassment, hate speech were tolerated?

A golden era but too soon eclipsed by the current definition of “safe space” which means, “Places where no other dirty human beings are allowed with their various novel coughs, sneezes, yuck, yuck.”

Well, the two safe spaces have recently merged and shall we read about a very wonderful new surfing and yoga retreat that you can attend from the clean comfort of your very own home?

It’d be violent, harassing, hateful to keep it from you.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m polishing my surfing “pop up” technique under the instructor’s watchful gaze. I lie prone, elbows in, chest raised and push off the balls of my feet, jumping into a wobbly high crouch. It’s not the most graceful move, but coach Rachel shouts encouragement at my efforts.

I’m on a “retreat” with Soul & Surf, which runs yoga and surfing holidays in Portugal, India and Sri Lanka, but this weekend we’re not in an exotic location by the sea. I’m trying out its new Soul & Surf Pause – a two-day “virtual holiday” with the action taking place in my living room via Zoom.

“We wanted to recreate the elements of a retreat with us – and stay connected while we can’t travel,” said co-founder Ed Templeton. “There’s the yoga and surfing, but that sense of community too.”

Boom.

A new golden era and one that VALs, WSLers, The Inertia should embrace with pasty but toned arms.

The ocean is deadly. It has Coronavirus and will continue to have it. Plus sharks.

No more surfing.

Ever.

Perpetual #HomeBreakChallenge.

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"There are bigger things to worry about than a damn virus, Charlie. There's Commies somewhere out there. They're worse than anyone. I heard they eat babies and have sex with dogs. I mean, like, that's bad, right?" | Photo: Derek Rielly

Listen: Master shaper Matt “Mayhem” Biolos on Californian life under the “commie” Jackboot; the perfection of pure Marxism; getting drunk watching Larry David!

By Derek Rielly

5 years ago

A virtual three-way! Episode five of podcast, Dirty Water.

Yesterday, on a warm Californian spring afternoon, the writer Chas Smith, the shaper Matt “Mayhem” Biolos and I took our places around our computing machines for a virtual three-way.

This is hardly ideal, given myriad distractions, in Biolos’ case a modest crowd throwing dishes back and forth and someone, a child I think, doing gymnastics, but we got a little something in the course of the conversation, I think.

We ask Biolos,

What he hates about communism and socialism now that the capitalist west is on its knees, head on the block, with the CCP’s blade on our necks; if he is voting for Bad Grandpa or Pinky Trump in the November election; to tell the story of the time he broke Jon Pyzel’s heart; if Johnny Cabianca and Timmy Patterson are the world’s most underrated shapers; the five best boards he’s owned…

…and a few more things he hits with gusto.

Strike button below.

Or here.

Rate Dirty Water on Apple podcasts, if y’don’t mind. Top five funniest reviews win tail-pad and t-shirt and air freshener impregnated with our specially formulated Heartbreak Beach™ scent that is both sweet and sickly.

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Watch: “Covid crazed” Great White shark first attempts to eat bodyboarder before turning vicious wrath on surfer!

By Chas Smith

5 years ago

"This is the type of event that happens every day..."

But did you read the very new report that this mad, mad novel Coronavirus can live on eyeballs for weeks at a time?

Weeks.

First we lost dominion over our hands, then we lost charge of our mouths/noses and now eyeballs are evil carriers of the world’s most deadly disease ever.

Eyeballs.

And it must be assumed that the sinister Covid-19 does not discriminate re. eyeballs. That a bat’s are as good as a human’s are as good as a Great White Shark but let us travel, at once, to Ballina there in Australia’s New South Wales. A place that teems with man-eaters even during non-pandemic times. Let us witness what happens when a crazed beast mixes amongst socially distant bodyboarders and surfers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_YYeseBDOf/

Close call or just normal? @nsw_sharksmart
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Curious white shark amongst surfers is normal.
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During our research we saw some amazing footage. In this instance the swell was pumping at Ballina on the NSW north coast. There were plenty of surfers out and our research pilot from @scoutaerial filmed this footage of a white shark (great white to most) checking out some surfers.
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It had already made its way past many surfers but decide to visit the first body boarder then the surfer. If that’s you on that surfboard we would love to hear from you.
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Our research has shown that white sharks tend to swim in perfect straight lines along our beaches but if there us something in the water they love to see what it is.
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After this ‘interaction’ the shark made its way further along the beach and out to see. .
This is the type of event that happens every day but we don’t have drones in the sky to see.
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Our drone program has learnt a lot in the last five years with @nsw_dpi Dr Paul Butcher and #southerncrossuni PhD candidate Andrew Colefax leading the way to use drones as a non lethal bather protection tool as used by @slsnsw now and a device to collect behavioural data.

All research out the window now, though.

Damned Wuhan.

Which would have been tastier though? Bodyboarder or surfer?

I, for one, would prefer a bodyboarder’s thick, juicy thighs and buttocks over a surfer’s emaciated cocaine-riddled sinews.

You?

More as the story develops.

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Eat beach grit spam!