Watch: Brave Coast Guard enforcement specialist opens fire on “widow maker” 8-foot shark as it attempts to eat crew members splashing helplessly in the water!

Very intense.

Unspeakable tragedy almost befell the crew of the Coast Guard national security cutter Kimball, yesterday afternoon, as most the able bodied men took a refreshing swim break in the cool Pacific, replete with an inflatable unicorn.

There they splashed, talked about the gals left behind, about the dirty tricksters likely taking them out on dates when an 8-foot mako or pelagic thresher decided to make a few widows.

While Coastie Bouillabaisse is not considered quite the delicacy of Sailor Stew amongst most species of sharks, it is still very delicious, to them, and worth enjoying.

The shark made a direct line for the group when Maritime Enforcement Specialist 1st Class Cintron saved the day by stealing his nerve and opening fire from his lookout post.

Momentarily confused, the shark pulled away but those tender Coastie thighs, lightly brined, were very much too tempting and so it made another attempt. ME1 Cintron let another burst fly. That’s when the shark turned its attention to crew members who were swimming for the ladder.

Another burst.

After an intense few more minutes, all the Coasties made it back aboard, the only injury occurring from a bonked knee, ironically maybe, in the middle of a shark jaw tattoo.

Very scary but is there something we surfers, we watermen, can learn from the incident? Both the Coast Guard and Navy employ “shark watches” and “polar bear watches” when their fellow men-at-arms are frolicking.

Should we?

Any volunteers for the BeachGrit Defense Force?

We will have very cool uniforms, that I guarantee (shop here).

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Paramedics, busy.

Australian surfer saved from Great White by hero boyfriend recalls attack, “It readjusted its jaws three times… intense pressure and squeezing and crushing.”

"I thought, whale or shark…"

A woman who was hit by a Great White twelve days ago, the third attack on a surfer by a White on roughly the same stretch of coast in two months, has recalled the event in an interview with The Guardian.

Environmental scientist Chantelle Doyle, who is thirty-five, was surfing a weak two-foot swell at Shelley Beach in Port Macquarie with her boyfriend Mark Rapley when the White hit.

“As I was paddling, something hit me underneath the board with enough thrust to throw me up and off the board,” Doyle told The Guardian. “I just thought – ‘whale or shark’ – and I looked down and there was nothing grey. I felt something grab my leg – I think I yelled ‘Shark, shark, shark’. It grabbed me and I grabbed the board and it readjusted … There were three distinct readjustments of the jaws. I was holding on to the nose of my board. It was like being bitten by a dog – it’s painful but it’s more this intense pressure and squeezing and crushing.”

Rapley climbed onto the animal and started belting what he describes as feeling like “a professional boxing bag.”

“I was just flailing – Hail Mary punches – and I’m thinking ‘Just get the bloody hell off’. I was connecting, but after the first two it felt ineffectual… Chon’s leg was completely in its mouth,” said Rapley, who is haunted by the vision of the shark’s head and eyes.

The hit severed a nerve in Doyle’s leg. No moment and only limited feeling despite two major operations, the first a seven-hour marathon to repair damage to muscle, tendons, bone and nerves.

The second operation was a skin graft to cover a hole the size of an orange in Doyle’s calf.

It ain’t clear what’s going to happen to the stilt, but a prosthetic limb isn’t out of the picture.

Despite the injury, Doyle is using her new-found profile to raise money for a marine charity via crowdfunding.

The hashtag?

#punchingforhealthyoceans.

“We’re not suddenly shark evangelists,” says Doyle. “But they are a keystone species and we want our kids to have a nicer environment. I’m actually proud that Australia has marine systems that are healthy and sharks are an integral part of that. Having sharks means you have higher densities of fish, and so we should be proud of that.”

Read full story here. 

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Peter Schroff, the most incredible artist and shaper the Venice ghetto has produced!

Listen: Sissy Boy shaper and artist Peter Schroff on doing “sh*tloads of blow”, “King-sh*t Kelly Slater sending his boards to Thailand” and his joy at opening a “sexually confused” themed hotel in San Pedro…

Man in tattered underwear cinched by Hermes belt holds court…

Today’s guest on Dirty Water is a surfboard shaper and artist who self describes as a” stick of dynamite” and a sissy boy, the latter epithet donated by your writer in an earlier post and enthusiastically adopted.

Peter Schroff was born and raised in Newport Beach California although he now lives in San Pedro, near Los Angeles International Airport and very close to Long Beach, one of America’s most ethnically diverse cities.

At his mid-nineteen-eighties peak he was making custom surfboards as well as an “anti-surf” clothing line, both boards and t-shirts emblazoned in luminous pinks and patterned like happy tropical fish.

Lately, Schroff has fashioned himself as the anti-imported surfboard and fiercely anti-Asian, provocateur.

“Ask our foundin fathers wud day think of chinese junk?” he wrote in one Instagram post.

“As we march forward let’s keep our dignity in this battle for an Asian import free nation” he wrote in another.

Schroff throws his online barbs at the Kelly Slater-owned Firewire Surfboards (although he often targets the company’s CEO Mark Price, whom he describes as the “most beautiful surfer I’ve ever seen”) and Slater Designs, companies that manufacture the bulk of their surfboards in south-east Asia.

Last week, Kelly Slater, in reference to our guest, noted that it “must be great to be in your mid-late 60’s, on drugs, sexually confused and dying for any kind of attention.”

Leave a review, kind of otherwise on Apple podcasts and we’ll send trinkets.

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Happier days etc.

Details of John John Florence v Monster Energy lawsuit revealed: “fraud, oppression, and malice . . . with the intention of causing and/or reckless disregard of causing Florence to experience embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.”

The fascinating insider machinations of a lawsuit between surfer and one-time sugar daddy…

Back in January 2017, fresh off his second World Surf League Men’s Championship, John John Florence entered into a three-year agreement with Monster Energy Company, formally Hansen Beverage Company (quite the pivot there).

The agreement was slated to run from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2019.

The agreement granted Monster the right to use “Florence’s name, imagery, nickname” among other things. Florence in part agreed “to promote and endorse these beverages” in return for a minimum of $500,000 per year, which consisted of a base salary of $350,000 plus an additional $150,000 per year for a “media production recounting Florence’s pursuit of the world surfing title.” Florence also could have made an additional $150,000 in incentives.

The agreement is notably devoid of any mention of the commercialization of Florence’s trademark goatee/neckbeard hybrid.

In May 2017, Monster allegedly sent a new draft of the original agreement which stipulated that Monster would only pay Florence $150,000 during the first year of the contract for the media production.

The initial complaint, filed May 18, 2018 in California state court, alleged that after “Monster’s refusal to honor the 2017 Agreement,” Monster continued to use Florence in its advertisements, “causing Florence . . . embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.” Monster allegedly used Florence’s name into 2018 “and possibly later.”

The complaint further alleged that Monster’s misconduct “was undertaken with fraud, oppression, and malice . . . with the intention of causing and/or reckless disregard of causing Florence to experience embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.”

In Monster’s answer filed September 20, 2018, Monster denied “each and every allegation of the Complaint, both generally and specifically.”

Monster challenged the suit and the validity of the purported contract on numerous grounds.

Among them, Monster asserted the doctrine of unclean hands, which bars relief to a party who has (allegedly) engaged in inequitable behavior, including fraud, deceit, or bad faith.

Monster also asserted that “Monster was unaware that Florence concealed or suppressed material facts and would not have signed the contract if Monster had known such representations by Florence were false.”

The answer did not substantiate what the alleged suppressed material facts were.

For context, Florence sustained a knee injury in early 2018 before reinjuring that knee in 2019.

Much of the litigation is confidential, as the parties stipulated to a protective order in May 2018.

On August 5, 2019, the parties reached a settlement agreement for an unknown sum.

The case was dismissed the following month, leaving several highly technical legal questions unanswered.

What did John John allegedly misrepresent?

A noted health nut, has John John ever actually tasted a Monster Energy drink?

What was John John so embarrassed about?

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"It says here in my book that you need to leave NOW."
"It says here in my book that you need to leave NOW."

Heartbreak: “Island of the Gods” Bali extends closure through year crushing the hopes and dreams of aspiring bikini designer/influencers, tube-starved surfers!

Unwanted in many languages.

Yesterday, when it was announced that Bells Beach there in Torquay, Australia had lost its singular claim to fame, hosting the longest running surf contest in the world, many tears flowed from Maurice Cole’s house to Love & Dysfunction pop up bar in Melbourne’s tony St. Kilda.

The new crown, resting jauntily on Virginia Beach’s head, glimmered and gleamed as the East Coast Surfing Championships removed “2nd longest running surf contest in the world” from its website’s masthead and replaced it with USA! USA! USA! along with Covid-adjusted rules including, “Unlike in typical years, no international surfers will take place in competition.”

Many more tears from Australian QS warrior Mitch Crews to Australian QS warrior Jacob Willcox.

And now, the “Island of the Gods” Bali has declared it does not want any Australian surfers or aspiring bikini designer/instagram models with dreams of opening unique concept stores somewhere in Seminyak.

Tears positively gushing from Bondi’s Rosenbaum and Fuller to Perth’s Bell Tower.

Enough tears to entirely flood Australia.

Indonesian officials, who just let locals back in the water in July, declared that due a spike of Covid cases, the entire country, Bali very much included, would be keeping its doors closed to foreigners for the foreseeable future.Bali’s governor adding, “Bali cannot fail because it could adversely impact the image of Indonesia including Bali in the eyes of the world, which could prove counterproductive to the recovery of travel.”

The island makes up one-third of Indonesia’s tourism industry and was expected to lose more that $10b with the existing closure. That number certain to jump with the extension.

But do you feel travel fever yet? The desire to leave on a jet plane with no country willing to accept you?

Should we all crash New Zealand’s Covid-free party?

Should we all launch bikini shops in Christchurch?

Success is but a great idea away.

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