"This will be the most-watched event in Australian surfing history," says ambitious presser. 

Back in March, when the coronavirus first started wrapping its fingers around the world’s neck, my boardriders club committee got together to discuss what it was all gonna mean for the rest of our season.

Comps weren’t looking like much of a chance and we wanted to keep that sweet esprit de corps singing through the dead zone.

“How ‘bout we run something online for the groms, at least?” came one suggestion. “Everyone’s got an iPhone. Let them submit clips of them surfing during lockdown and we can judge them all virtually. Keep things moving for the club even if we can’t get together in person. Plus, it’s a piece of piss to run.”

Think Taylor Steele’s Innersection, but with $100 voucher and a few cakes of wax up for grabs, as opposed to worldwide exposure and major sponsorship contract.

Shit’s easy.

Engaging.

Fun to do.

Why wouldn’t ya?

And so the ‘”Instagrom Challenge” was born (I’ll let you know the winners in September).

As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones who had the idea.

The concept popped up in different clubs across Australia, and has now culminated in RIVALS – Surfing Australia’s made for TV broadcast surf comp.

Eleven of Australia’s iconic competitive male surfers will open up old battle scars in an innovative three month, 13 consecutive episode TV series set to air on Channel Nine from 12 pm on Saturday the 8th August 2020.

“This will be the most-watched event in Australian surfing history,” says the presser. 

SURFERS AND LOCATIONS:

MICK FANNING – Snapper Rocks – Queensland

JOEL PARKINSON – Snapper Rocks – Queensland

DEAN MORRISON – Snapper Rocks – Queensland

BEDE DURBIDGE – South Stradbroke Island – Queensland

JOSH KERR – Duranbah Beach – New South Wales

DANNY WILLS – Broken Head – New South Wales

SHAUN CANSDELL – Coffs Harbour – New South Wales

JAY THOMPSON – Burleigh Heads – Queensland

GLEN HALL – Avoca Point – New South Wales

KAI OTTON – South Coast Slab – New South Wales

NATHAN HEDGE – North Narrabeen – New South Wales

Each surfer has two hours at their ‘local’ wave to surf however they want, on as many waves as they want, with their best three rides to be scored by the public via online platform www.clippero.com and Olympic Surfing Head Judge Glen Elliott.

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You’ll know I’m the biggest fan girl going when it comes to nineties and noughties Australian power surfing.

This line-up’s got me gooeyer in the fork than a big government intervention during an unprecedented fiscal downturn.

(Though, where’s Mick Campbell?)

But also, this concept, as pointed out in my boardrider’s committee meeting, is an absolute piece of piss to run.

So easy that it took a few volunteers all of five minutes to set up an amatuer version.

So easy that Surfing Fucking Australia have signed on two former world champs and Australia’s largest commercial television station within a matter of months for the same format.

How good would it be if you set the same challenge for the top 16?

Yet, we’re still putting up with re-runs of the quarter finals at France 2009 and motherfucking Lawn Patrol.

WSL.

The ball’s in your court.

WSL?

Hello?

Erik?

Pat?

I know you guys are there somewhere.

Chris?

Mate, we all just want to know you’re all ok.

Kick-flip three times in your next Insta vid if you need us to send help.

Hot, older model waitresses were not scared to flirt. Ugly waitresses were not scared to flirt in between ciggy breaks. Glory days etc.

Newport Beach, Ca. 1993: Divorced, living in my warehouse in a business park on the cliff above River Jetties, I decided to move back into the surf hood.

Smallest one-bedroom on earth… living room was literally a surfboard rack.

No TV.

Donated couch and I had my mattress on the floor, no box spring or bed frame.

Two dinner plates, two knives (thank you Carl’s Jr), two forks, two drinking glasses and a hibachi.

That’s all I needed.

Women always tripped out seeing the bed (top grade mattress, btw) on the floor.

Clothes relatively neatly folded, also against the wall on the ground.

Magic boards lie awake in the closet inside the primitive coffin of that day.

The Cave was austerity on steroids except for the obscene amount of surfboards piled about.

Shower was clean, but the neighboring bath tub was filled with wetsuits “drying”…. Lucky the pad always smelled like weed.

Good waves one block west, bar district one block inland.

The obvious pubs with food, Malarky’s, Cassidy’s, Mutt Lynch’s, Ho Sum Bistro. All places to pluck a bird, varying food and nightly specials, tap beers.

Another short two blocks away, nestled against the harbor warehouses in a district soon to gentrified into homogeny, was the divest dive of dive bars known to Orange County.

Snug Harbor.

Over the years, surfers began infiltrating the commercial fisherman hang out. Maybe 40 square feet and a third of that was a circular bar.

One of those small english billiard tables, forgot the name. That’s it.

The real estate became so valuable, the commercial fishing industry went away and our crew took over the bar. I never had to call anyone or make plans, just peddled the beach cruiser to Snug.

Never had to lock it, everyone knew it was mine.

Bartender was a relic… looked like Herman Munster on heroin. His face was a cartoon and he was grumpy as all fuck, we had replaced his drinking buddies.

Unsettled scores from the water were settled outside Snug.

Fights were no longer settled on the sand during altercations. Lawyers had litigated in favor of chaos.

In the mornings, the best grub breakfast in town by yards.

Hot, slutty, older model waitresses were not scared to flirt. Ugly slutty waitresses were not scared to flirt in between ciggy breaks and it was exceptionally rowdy at times.

It was said that you could tell if the surf was good by who was eating breakie (good swell, joint empty).

Today, Snug has been mowed down to build a sterile live/work/loft two-bedroom one-and-a-half bath, vertical and skinny, ugly row of glass, reclaimed wood, stone and cement walls.

Too many to count.

None of the residents remember Snug Harbor.

Lemoore Goat Rodeo does.

"I felt like surfing at Teahupoo when it’s ten-to-twelve foot!"

French Polynesian surfer Michel Bourez has posted a breathless account of being hit by a “three-to-four-metre hammerhead shark” while piloting a foil-board thereby confirming the summer of 2020 as the season of the shark.

Or, more colourfully, The Summer of Blood.

See here, here and here. 

“I was doing a down wind from Tahiti (Mahina ) to Moorea (Vaiare) when a hammer shark chased my foil and bite it. He broke the tail of my @signaturefoils so I could not keep going,” wrote Michel, employing excellent use of Instagram handles.

“Then I sat on my @firewiresurfboards and waved at my friends on the boat to come and pick me up. After two-to-three minutes by myself, I felt something was wrong so I looked around me and stayed in alert just in case the shark would come back again.

“I was right!

“The three-to-four-metre hammer shark came back again at me so I put my foil in between him and I to protect myself. He bit my foil for the second time realizing it was definitely not eatable and swam back away from me. The boat picked me up a few minutes after and I was safe.

“Fifteen minutes later I decided to go foil again and finished the race we had.

“I felt like surfing at Teahupoo when it’s ten-to-twelve foot! We know the risk to get hurt or even dying but the love of our sport is too strong. EVERY TIME I go foiling in the deep blue, I’ve seen hammers sharks cruising around so I know the risk since the beginning. The ocean is their world and I respect that! No bad feelings at all! He just owe me a new foil…”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCHEwklnB6p/

Hammerheads are unfathomably rare.

According to the International Shark Attack File there have only been seventeen recorded attacks (make that eighteen) since 1580, none fatal.