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

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!

#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!

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!

"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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Igarashi's clever not-going-surfing red herring, as it appeared on Instagram. | Photo: @kanoaigarashi

Portugal turns on adopted surf hero Kanoa Igarashi: “(He’s) Shitting on everything!”

World number six has car tyres slashed, warnings of beat-downs etc..

Portuguese surfers, including at least one of its noted pros, have turned on the Japan-born, US-raised, Dior Homme sponsored Kanoa Igarashi, a resident of Portugal since he was eighteen.

Kanoa, who is twenty-two, has lived, on and off, in a beachfront mansion at Ericeria, on Portugal’s west coast and just north of its capital, Lisbon, ever since he “felt a really positive energy” after a junior contest there.

As he told a local magazine, “The food is amazing; the people are so welcoming, so happy, I think the quality of life is really good. I travel all year, I really know these things, when a place is good or bad, there is something special here, whenever I leave Portugal I leave with more energy.”

Well, as we all know, that energy ain’t always of the happy sort.

Now, and as reported by Paul Evans for Wavelength magazine, locals have turned on Igarashi for surfing outside his postcode, despite a clever, although perhaps accidental, red herring on his Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-pu6uPHKAK/

From Wavelength,

There has been much less of a debate as to whether anybody should be driving up and down the coast in the hunt for a wave, an apparent area of consensus among surfers.

So when world no.6 Kanoa Igarashi felt the ire of Peniche locals earlier this month, driving to the area’s more secluded breaks to surf and getting all 4 tyres slashed while in the water, you might have expected the Lisbon-based Japanese surfer to stick closer to home.

And yet apparently undeterred by the incident, reports came through this week that Igarashi drove the 400km from his home in Cascais to surf in the Algarve, where he was met with further disapproval from members of the local surfing community.

Former CT surfer Marlon Lipke reposted a video on his IG showing Kanoa surfing a 2ft onshore right while being heckled from the cliff by a local.

The chorus of disapproval translates as, “(If you) Live in Lagos? Can’t surf. I can’t surf, but the American can come and surf anyway.”

Marlon wrote: “I don’t even believe in all the media but I have respect for all the people going through hard times and I’m staying at home”

“And then you have idiots driving from Lisbon to the Algarve surfing our home spots and shitting on everything #norespect”

Other disapproving Algarve locals wasted little time in letting Kanoa know their feelings through an exchange of DM’s in which Kanoa made lengthy, reasoned explanations as to why he’d made the journey to surf, as well as explaining his vision of the new reality we’re set to be living in for the forseable future.

Unsurprisingly, his arguments were given very short shrift. “Next time you come here, you better hope you don’t run into me, etc etc.”

Read the rest of it here.

 

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