Once again, in the lineup I felt like order had returned, a return to normality for a few short hours. So I’m back in hospital this week. More complications. The waves of samsara keep crashing.

Say goodbye to BeachGrit habitué Offrocker, hit with cancer, age 35: “I am four-fifths salt water and I may be going back to Mother Earth after my three dozen goes around the sun”

"BeachGrit has been such a big part of Sean's surf journey, it gave him a place to relax, a sense of community, and connectedness with the ocean, even if he can't physically immerse himself in it."

A little over a year back, BeachGrit commenter Offrocker wrote about being hit with cancer, aged thirty-five. 

His story Quit-Lit in the Face of Cancer: Reflections on my Last Surf Ever (Maybe) sure hit the buttons. 

“I am four-fifths salt water and I may be going back to Mother Earth after my three dozen goes around the sun. I’ve done my time watching the tides. Sandbars form and melt away. Storms. Rock ledges. Learning winds, and how they swirl down valleys, equating it to long period swell wrapping around seafloor features. All little tidbits of info with no relevance to my now landlocked life, but it gives me joy to know the natural world by force of confronting it and understanding my place in it.”

Offrocker, real name Sean Mitchell, followed up his quit-lit with a story about getting a little taste of the ocean after being floored by his cancer treatments.

“The slow meat grinder of being poisoned every two weeks and watching your body break down in front of you. The chemo port implanted over your pec burrows down all the way into your heart. How the port tugs when you lift your arm above your head.

How to shower with a needle hanging out of your chest attached to a bottle of the same poison that’s killing you, and hopefully the cancer.

A thousand little adjustments.

My life is walking the dogs around and around the block, exercise bikes, core strength rehabilitation, hypervigilent handwashing. All very important, but monochrome.

No, not monochrome, but like when you adjust the filter on a photo… desaturated.

And then last week, out of the blue, I got the reprieve.

After a few rounds of chemo, my bloods were stable and my oncologist let me go in the ocean.”

(Read the full story here) 

A couple of hours ago, Sean’s wife Michelle wrote to tell me that he’s in a hospice, has a couple of days left. 

He has been more drowsy but has periods of lucidity, however, these periods are getting shorter and fewer.  

I just want to let you know that BeachGrit has been such a big part of Sean’s surf journey, it gave him a place to relax, a sense of community, and connectedness with the ocean, even if he can’t physically immerse himself in it. Thank you for creating such a great community. 

We have set up a typeform for messages and photos, please feel free to send through a message and pass on the link to anyone who wants to send a message to Offrocker (click here for link.

We read him messages from this form and show him pictures during his periods of lucidity. It will also become a keepsake for the family. Please pass on our gratitude to the BeachGrit community. 

Jump in, say goodbye to a well-loved brother.


Open Thread: Comment Live elimination rounds of Rip Curl Newcastle Cup presented by Corona!

There might be blood.

Apologies for the lateness, here. I was out enjoying my life unlike the competitors currently experiencing an elimination round in Newcastle, Australia.

Much clenched jaws.

You can watch them, enjoy them, chat about them to your best friends in the whole world below.

What could be better than live professional surfing?

Oh, don’t be rude.

Watch here.


Star of hit Hulu documentary, founder of WeWork, Adam Neumann reveals incredible secret: “This is harder than 20-foot waves, you know why? Because I control the 20-foot waves!”

"I'll take a 20-foot wave everyday for the next ten days."

Surfing’s modern renaissance is entirely undeniable, even to the grumpiest of locals, the grouchiest of saltwater kinks. Our game is officially in the Olympics, Duke Kahanamoku re-incarnated as a handsome Japanese-by-way-of-Huntington Beach boy, more participants splashing around than ever before and on Mr. Pipeline foam boards, purchased exclusively at Costco.

Very famous people carrying this mantle including Jonah Hill and star of new Hulu documentary Adam Neumann.

You may remember the latter as the very rich founder of WeWork, investor in Laird’s SuperFoods and big wave maven, once breaking a finger on an 18-foot wave.

The most important man in surf?

BeachGrit’s Derek Rielly, forever ahead of the game, called it two years ago.

But only recently was it revealed that Neumann actually controls 20-foot waves.

New video of him in front of a room, preparing for an upcoming appearance, telling the group, “I’m preparing for the world show right now so I hope my hair is good. Ok. This is harder than 20-foot waves. (room laughs). You know why? Because I control the 20-foot waves. I’ll take a 20-foot wave everyday for the next ten days.”

Then he does a little bottom turn with his hand.

Extremely cool.

Though what is the most extremely cool thing you have ever revealed about your own surfing?

In high school, I once told a girl at Christian summer camp that I was sponsored by Coos Bay’s local surf shop because they gave me a t-shirt.

It was actually a dive shop that had two used surfboards.

I bought the t-shirt.

Controlling 20-foot waves much more extremely cool.


U.S. Olympic Committee reverses decades-long policy of banning protests at the games allowing Kolohe Andino to take knee and raise fist, John Florence to wear “Trans Lives Matter” hat during anthem!

Caroline Marks and Carissa Moore rallying for the historically oppressed!

In a move likely to send shockwaves through international sport, the U.S. Olympic Committee quietly reversed a decades-long policy disallowing protest during the playing of the National Anthem at this summer’s Japan Games and will allow its athletes to rally as they see fit.

A nine-page “guidance” was released detailing the changes and what gold medal winners will now be able to do on the podium including taking a knee, raising a fist or wearing a hat with phrases such as “Trans Lives Matter,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Equality,” or “Justice.”

U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirchland wrote, “This guidance defines latitude for athletes to express their personal perspectives on racial and social justice in a respectful way, and without fear of sanction from the USOPC.”

It also warned athletes not to use any hate language or phrases deemed “impermissible” by the Anti-Defamation League.

All very fine and good, also just in time for surfing’s first-ever appearance in the Olympic Games.

As you know, the U.S. Olympic Surf Team consists of Kolohe Andino and John John Florence, for the men, Caroline Marks and Carissa Moore, for the women.

Which will do what, do you think?

Kolohe Andino on knee, fist in air?

John John Florence sporting a “Trans Lives Matter” hat?

Hmmmm.

The more I ponder, the more unlikely it seems.

In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a more un-protesty group anywhere on earth.

Anywhere historically even.

Kolohe Andino, John John Florence, Caroline Marks, Carissa Moore.

Wow.


10 Goodwin Terrace, Burleigh Heads.

Iconic Australian beach shack bought for $7 million in 2020 sells for $11 million less than one year later!

A bullish market in once dirty-as-anything Burleigh Heads… 

A couple of months back, BeachGrit reported the sale of a one-hundred-year-old wooden shack on six-thousand square feet at 10 Goodwin Terrace, Burleigh Heads, for seven million bucks, almost two-and-a-half mill more than it sold for in 2016.

The couple who bought the joint, Brian and Lauren McMaster, had been trying to buy it for three years. After the last refusal by the owner to sell, the pair bought a six-mill penthouse a little further down the street.

Burleigh Heads in 1920, when eleven mill would’ve bought you the headland and the land behind it all the way to Perth on the far western coast.

The agent that sold ‘em the penthouse then  convinced the owner of 10 Goodwin to sell ‘em the house, too, for seven mill.

A nice little pair of boltholes, although the plan for the historic house was to flatten the thing to make way for a “standout family home.”

Now, the place is believed to be under contract to the developer, Spyre group, for eleven mill or twenty gees for every hundred square feet. 

A four-mill profit in eleven months.

It ain’t bad.

The land is zoned medium density and has a three-storey, fifty-feet feet height limit, which means the developer ain’t gonna toss a tower on the land, although developers have been known to work many behind-the-scenes miracles.

Once one of the grittier parts of the Gold Coast, third in shittiness behind Coolangatta and perennial winner Palm Beach, Burkeigh Heads has been transformed into a paradise for investors, including the Chinese man who bought the Old Burleigh Theatre Arcade, the former home of Surfing Life magazine, for eighteen-mill.