“The pitch seemed irresistible. Save humanity and the planet, and make a fortune in one fell swoop…"

You ever hear of the former shaper to the stars Nev Hyman? Maybe not. Short memories.

Nev is a pioneering surfboard shaper, first with Nev Surfboards, later with Firewire, who has caused a ruckus with his plan to make billions out of selling pre-fab houses to Third World countries.

In a lengthy investigation by the Australian Financial Review, Nev, sixty-two and who still wears a reddish afro, claimed that within five years his pre-fab company Nev House would be worth eleven billion-plus (US) and spitting out over a billion US in aftertax profits.

Seven-time world champ Layne Beachley and INXS guitarist husband Kirk Pengilly threw $US250k into the venture; Sally FItzgibbons and her dad and bros tossed in another five hundred k.

“The pitch seemed irresistible,” writes the AFR’s Carrie LaFrenz. “Save humanity and the planet, and make a fortune in one fell swoop… But after eight years and $8 million in multiple fund raisings, the promise of the sale of tens of thousands of homes by Nev House’s founder has evaporated. Now, a group of angry shareholders is demanding answers after raising serious questions about how the company is operated.”

Nev’s plan? Sell cheap flat-packed houses to Third World countries, Vanuatu, the Philippines, Indonesia and so on, at an enormous profit.

“Glossy pictures in the investor slide pack show poverty-stricken areas and Hyman posing in a slum with plastic rubbish bags. The group said it wanted to be present in more than 50 countries by 2025. Investors were being offered the opportunity to buy in at $US30 a share.”

“When asked about high salaries paid in the early days, he acknowledges that from time to time he drew wages based on advice from the CEO. “Perhaps the digital age of social media and internet companies making billions in a very short timeframe has skewed today’s investors thinking that anything they put money into will do the same,” he says.

On and on it goes.

Read the story here.

An elementary and graphic lesson in surf etiquette… 

The German big-wave surfer Sebastian Steudtner has released a graphic clip of what can happen when, panic-stricken, you throw away your board to get under a wave.

Steudtner, who has been a regular at Nazaré since 2012, was whipped into a set and, “setting up my line, saw a friend of @maya paddling out and thought I’m gonna go around him and give him space. He jumped off his board to dive under the wave, shooting the board right in my direction as I passed him. My right arm prevented damage to my face but redirected all the force to my chest.”

The collision dislocated Steudtner’s clavicular, fractured his ribs and tore hell out of the muscles in his neck and chest. 

Two months later, Steudtner is only just back in the water.

The handsome German, who is thirty-five and from Nuremberg, famous in the thirties and forties for its lavish Hitler rallies and for the post-World War II trials that strung up as many of the bastards as the Allies could find, moved to Hawaii when he was thirteen to pursue his dream of becoming a big-wave surfer.

He is a two-time winner of the XXL Biggest Wave award, in 2010 and 2014.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKtrvsDKz8U/

"A gaping hole near the limb’s brachial artery, the arm’s flexor muscle exposed."

Here’s a little reminder of what can happen when you’re wrangling twelve-to-fifteen foot waves at a wild offshore reef.

Russell Bierke, twenty-three, is the diminutive and deceptively fragile looking son of noted Californian-born shaper Kirk Bierke whose boards are sold under the label KB Surf and made in Ulladulla, three hours south of Sydney.

On Thursday, Jan 21, much of Australia’s east coast was raked by a powerful south swell, igniting a bonfire in the loins of Russ who planned on cavorting at a reef nearish to home.

This is his second wave, paddled into on his seven-eight at seven-thirty am. Russ swung for a double-up, hit a little backwash from the previous wave and, as Russ explains, “bodysurfed straight onto the bottom on my elbows with arms out in front of me.”

Russ, wearing an impact suit, figured it wasn’t too bad. He’d been dragged along the bottom before, which is mostly barnacles and cungeboi, and figured he’d have a little reef rash.

Then he saw the blood pouring out of his wetsuit.

“I pulled it off and got a shock,” he says.

A gaping hole near the limb’s brachial artery, the arm’s flexor muscle exposed.

Russ is a practical sorta cat and had a stretch tourniquet handy.

Immediately, Russ was thinking about nerve damage or muscle that could keep him out of the big-wave game for months.

In the clip, here, we see the moment, upon his return to shore, where he examines the wound with his friend Sean Mawson and filmer Andrew Kaineder.

At a nearby hospital, Russ was relieved to learn he’d avoided nerve or muscle damage and, after eleven stitches and a couple of weeks kept dry, he’d be back in the ocean.

Still, ask him what he hit and he still doesn’t know, definitely wasn’t a fin, he says, and theorises that it might’ve been a pressure split, where the skin splits upon impact.

Russ is no stranger to injury, of course.

He is one surfer who is prepared to pay, what Hawaiians call, “the ultimate price.”

In 2017, he was “blue as a Smurf” and “on all fours spewing” after a wipeout in fifteen waves in Victoria, an injury that put him in intensive care.