Surfer (pictured) being taken to beach for heat.
Surfer (pictured) being taken to beach for heat.

Reported: World Surf League considering adding fourth Championship Tour stop in Australia, creating a “competitive bubble” seven months too late!

The Thrilla in Vanilla.

There is progressive and then there is our World Surf League. Wave forecasting website Surfline has reported, in the early hours of the morning, that Santa Monica is considering sandwiching a fourth Championship Tour event in the upcoming Australian leg of an already-truncated 2020/21 season.

Australian quarantine laws are extremely strict, for those entering the country from abroad, and not bent even for tennis stars who were forced to stay in hotel rooms for a full two weeks ahead of being able to ply their craft.

Polite, mild-mannered, well-behaved, wealthy tennis stars.

Professional surfers are set to get back in the water April 1st, or thereabouts, for the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach followed by Margaret River (April 16 – 26) and Snapper (May 3 – 13).

Surfline is suggesting the fourth event will likely be in Sydney and a “double-header.”

The idea of a “bubble” is not new as it relates to the current pandemic.

The NBA restarted its season in an Orlando bubble in July and successfully crowned a champion in October.

The NBA plays its game indoors where men breathe in each other’s faces whilst sweating profusely.

The World Surf League plays its outdoors in the ocean where two women, or men, sit very far apart from each other unless one of them is named Gabriel Medina.

The rumored Sydney event will likely favor Pip Toledo.

Exciting days ahead.


Loophole of the century: South African surfers circumvent beach ban by vaulting shark nets, “Today we made a public stand against the silly law making it illegal to walk across the sand to practice our sport!”

Surfers stomp a righteous flamenco on South Africa's level 3 lockdown laws… 

Ain’t no secret that it’s wild times for South African surfers who want to ride or even examine waves. 

One month ago at Jeffreys Bay, a man was arrested under South Africa’s level 3 lockdown laws for checking the surf with his fourteen-year-old son and, on the beach, two surfers were busted, had their boards confiscated and were threatened with jail time. 

Cop tries to stop man’s son from filming dad’s arrest at Jeffreys Bay.

Six month ago, beachgoers were forced to flee a Durban beach when cops arrived en masse.

Now, wave-starved surfers in Durban have joined together to circumvent the ban by paddling into the lineup after being deposited beyond the shark nets by boat.

From The Surf HQ, “Today we made a public stand against the silly law allowing surfing as a sport , but making it illegal to walk across the sand to practice our sport. so this is a huge shout out to the 7 brothers who took the BIG risk of coming along for the ride with me knowing full well tonights bed could have been in a jail cell, for chartering a Boat and being dropped out deep sea beyond the shark nets to paddle over them to surf “without touching the sand” for an hour and a half,
paddling all the way back over the nets to get back onto the boat then be Police escorted to Dock to face the Law enforcement officers.”

Oddly electric, yes?


Breaking: World Surf League strips iconic Tom Curren of one of his three titles following explosive popularity of new film “Free Scrubber!”

More questions than answers.

Tom Curren re-introduced himself to a surf-entertainment starved world, days ago, in the form of a fifteen-minute work of art from the minds of Vaughn Blakey and Nick Pollet.

Free Scrubber may well be the finest surf film of the decade and if you have not yet watched you must pause, right now, and so do.

Marvelous and impossible not to love…
…for everyone outside the World Surf League’s Santa Monica headquarters.

Inside the virtually empty offices hurt and rage, vengeful thoughts and angry anger, must be percolating for the WSL posted the film, like all other surf media, but also stripped Curren of a title.

“Enjoy a little of that old Tom Curren magic in Rip Curl’s new film “free scrubber” the headline reads, followed by, “From twin-fins to skimboards, the two-time World Champ’s quest to find the perfect…”

Everyone, legitimately seriously everyone, knows that Tom Curren won three titles (1985, 1986, 1990) and free scrubbing one of them was clearly done purposefully but why?

Because World Surf League announcing is gently mocked in the film?

Because Tom Curren is not wearing a competition singlet?

Because the work is vastly superior to Unboxing with Koa Smith?

Currently, more questions than answers and also unclear which of the three titles was disappeared but, as always, more as the story develops.


Suck it, Jaws.
Suck it, Jaws.

New electric boat promises to “match the size and feel of Maui’s finest rollers” while “revolutionizing wake surfing into a sport that even Kelly Slater would love!”

Suck it, Jaws.

“Did we get into the wave tank game too quickly?” will be the question asked around mahogany boardroom tables from Santa Monica, California to San Sebastián, Spain, today, as the new wake boat Gigawave hits the market.

The brainchild of boat builder Matthew Blew, the electric marvel (which you first learned about here some months ago) features a pair of high-torque, zero-emission 300-hp electric motors that will be powered by a bank of lithium-ion batteries.

Blew says, “We’ve upped the battery capacity since our original concept. Now we’re looking at a full megawatt of power—the equivalent of a million watts. The goal is a run-time of six to eight hours between charges, and a quick two-hour charge time with industrial chargers.”

What does a full megawatt of power get you?

“Head-height barrel that will match the size and feel of Maui’s finest rollers.” And “…revolutionize wake surfing into a sport that even Kelly Slater would love.”

And all for $600,000 which will certainly make Kelly Slater recoil with heavy regret.

Imagine how much his technology costs. First one must buy a lake, then one must drop a big blue train in its middle, then one must constantly repair it and greenwash much diesel.

Minimum 8 million dollars?

10 million?

One could buy 16 Gigawaves, drive them to a public lake and rent them out while not spewing exhaust into the air and making Maui jealous for that price.

Rich.

Heavy, heavy regret.


Sack Lunch 2.0 singer (right) and fan.

Listen: While professional surfing gasps its dying breaths, Gabriel Medina, Kanoa Igarashi, Leonardo Fioravanti and Kelly Slater are well advised to start their boy band!

And they shall call themselves "Sack Lunch 2.0."

Oh we’ve all been saying “it’s over” for months now, as it relates to our World Surf League, but it is now, right? Blunders followed by silence followed by longest-serving-employee Dave Prodan being disappeared followed by the same Dave Prodan being awkwardly sandwiched in between Ross-Clarke Williams and Mick Fanning followed by unfortunate “opinions” followed by more silence followed by Dirk Ziff stomping out of the room, screaming “GRUMPY SURFERS BOUGHT GAMESTOP STOCK JUST TO SCREW ME AND I’M DONE!”

Congratulations, Grumpy Surfers, but what then should ex-professional surfers do?

The smart ones will hitch carts to fabulous “friends” and/or start a boy band together.

Boy bands trend in every single economic climate or are you not a student of history?

The Beatles, Menudo, New Kids on the Block, NSync, One Direction, Blackpink.

A forever up market, like GameStop, and who better to form up a brand new super group than Gabriel Medina, Kanoa Igarashi, Leonardo Fioravanti and Kelly Slater?

They shall call themselves Sack Lunch 2.0 and they shall make millions.

David Lee Scales and I also discussed suicide on today’s 101st podcast.

101 podcasts.

Oops.

Listen here.