"Team work truly is the dream work!"

Ten years ago, eleven-year-old Costa Rican Dariel Meléndez Davila was hit by a train while trying to escape a thief, his leg so mangled it had to be amputated in hospital, the kid conscious the whole time. 

Seven years later, Dariel got hit by a different train, this time the desire to surf.

He’d seen all the surfers around his home town of Puerto Viejo, but it wasn’t until he spoke to a pal who’d been to an Adaptive Surfing Camp that he realised there was a network out there of surfers dealing with disabilities and who could help him get into the game. 

Little by little, Dariel worked out how to balance on his one stilt, where to weight, where to unweight, until he got to a point where he surfs rings around plenty of us with two legs, hitting even Costa Rica’s heavier waves. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CPY2vsWBkMI/

Now, thanks to the intervention of noted filmmaker Logan Dulien (Snapt series) who created a gofundme to raise cash for a prosthetic limb and travel to the US to get the appendage fitted, Dariel is gonna get a custom titanium prothesis from Russ Molina, owner of Advanced Kinematics and one of the best in the biz. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQcFrihhy2h/

Four hundred and twenty five donors hit the 25k goal in less than three days, the pot currently spilling over at $26,042. 

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

“He will come out start of September compete in the adaptive surf competition in Oceanside first week of September then after the comp he will spend 10 days in Palm Springs with Russel Molina getting a custom mold fit for the titanium leg,” Dulien told BeachGrit. “Then after that attend the Snapt4 world premiere in HB September 25th and then fly back to Costa Rica a few days later.” 

It ain’t gonna all be plain sailing, howevs. Dariel has never used a prosthesis. 

“He will first have to learn to walk and eventually surf. Will be work in progress,” says Dulien. 

"Surf Ranch does not seem to 'spark joy' amongst the world's best. They look exhausted and depressed after a ride…"

Pursuant to watching every single wave of the 2021 Surf Ranch Pro which followed from watching every single wave of 2019 Freshwater Pro and 2018 Surf Ranch Pro and 2018 Founders Cup a comment from former surfer and Surfer Magazine caption writer Ben Marcus got me thinking.

Marcus claimed in a comment directed at critics of the Tub that we were all essentially pseudo-intellectual blowhards who would “kill to surf the thing”.

Kill?

Kill what, kill who?

The only thing I felt like killing after Surf Ranch was myself.

It made me realise though, that I really and truly wanted no part of Kelly’s power-hungry, water-wasting machine wave. In fact, you’d have to pay me to go there and surf it.

You scoff Kelly, but I’ve got a figure in mind.

You won’t like it but I think it’s fair and reasonable.

Ten thousand. US dollars.

Plus expenses and travel, of course.

This miracle of modern technology which causes technophiles like Marcus to spasm with envy and admiration, is it really so special?

Creating waves, in the end, turned out to be a relatively simple engineering challenge. At last count, there were about twenty different methods creating commercially viable wavepools.

This ain’t the I-phone or birth control pill. Anyone who has watched a boat wake break on a shallow bank has seen the template for the so-called “groundswell” technology used by the Surf Ranch. Basically, put a hull through the water and surf the wake as it breaks down a shallow edge. The Kelly Slater Surf Ranch is a glorified boat wake.

Twenty.

This ain’t the I-phone or birth control pill. Anyone who has watched a boat wake break on a shallow bank has seen the template for the so-called “groundswell” technology used by the Surf Ranch. Basically, put a hull through the water and surf the wake as it breaks down a shallow edge.

The Kelly Slater Surf Ranch is a glorified boat wake.

The tub, now that we are well past the blitzkrieg marketing and every pro has had a swing at it, does not seem to “spark joy” amongst the world’s best. They look exhausted and depressed after a ride, unless they just won of course.

Watching Strider Wasilewski live commentate a ride made me realise I would surf it worse than him, but make the wave. Which means I’d safety surf my four waves probably without the intellectual balls to kick out early on the left. I’d get two half barrels on the right, probably get necked on the end section or dodge it all together like Jadson Andre did.

Magical thinking persists with the pool fans, though.

What is miraculous about waves is the physics of water. It’s dense, 830 times more dense than air. It’s incredible how much energy it takes to heat it, cool it, make waves in it.

The physics of water ain’t gunna change.

Which means all the guff about “just wait until the next one when it’s eight foot and barrelling” etc etc is pissing in the cosmic wind.

Already, Slater’s power hungry tub is sucking out Solar power from PG and E’s solar plants which could power homes etc etc. Until a tub can be hooked up to a nuclear power plant we’re going to be squatting right down to fit it into those tiny toobs. The increase in energy required is logarithmic, not linear. Which means to make a wave twice as big takes eight times as much energy etc etc.

Or something like that, don’t quote me on the math.

What do you get for your ten grand, Kelly? You get to humiliate me in public.

Get a loudhailer, or get on the mike and heckle me live as I’m up and riding. It will very much be an enjoyable experience for you, I promise you. I will sign an NDA, promising never again to mention the Tub in any way, shape or form. Nothing. You get silence for life.

Ten grand. That’s pocket change, even for someone as notoriously short armed and deep pocketed as your self.

They are fighting a proposal to bulldoze bushland on floodplain in the heart of a “blue zone” to build a wavepool and enormous canal estate development in your name, which they call a “Trojan Horse for ill-conceived urban sprawl” , which must be “rejected outright”.

And the money?

I won’t even take a cent of it. I intend to donate the entire ten grand to a grassroots environmental organisation. A real one, not a second-rate Greenwasher.

Maybe you’ve heard of the Sunshine Coast Environment Council? They are the peak environmental advocacy group dedicated to protecting the beautiful Sunshine Coast. There are a lot of environmental threats there.

They are fighting a proposal to bulldoze bushland on floodplain in the heart of a “blue zone” to build a wavepool and enormous canal estate development in your name, which they call a “Trojan Horse for ill-conceived urban sprawl” , which must be “rejected outright”.

So what do you say Kelly?

I know you are reading this.

Ten grand won’t get your soul back but it will be one less annoying mosquito to have to respond to, and we know that keeps you up at night.