Heartbreak.

ESPN has reported that South Africa’s Jordy Smith has officially pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics after just being accepted by an independent review panel citing knee injury.

In a media statement, the current world number 7 said, “It was tough to make the decision to withdraw. I’ve been looking forward to the Olympics a long time now and my build up was going so well. However, this decision is the only way to ensure I have a long career in professional surfing and reach my ultimate goal of winning the WSL Championship Tour.”

Smith had elected to have knee surgery in just weeks ago instead of waiting until after the Olympics, stating that if he would have waiting he would have had to have a full knee construction telling the international sporting outlet, “At that point, it would have been anything from eight months to a year and a half out after that, as opposed to a month and a half to two months, maybe three months max — and that’s [for] your average person. So I opted for the repair. I’ve got 10 years plus of my professional surfing career and my entire life that I want to continue surfing. I wanted to keep my knee in its most original state instead of having full knee construction. At that point, who knows how long things are going to take? It would put next year out for me. It would put a lot more at risk for me. I think the biggest goal for me is to be able to surf for as long as possible in my life with a healthy knee.”

The move, while very sad for South Africa, guarantees Italy’s Leonardo Fioravanti will surf.

Also, the Office of Journalistic Integrity is looking into the World Surf League’s bald-faced steal of “more as the story develops.”

More as the story develops™.

Un-chill.

A few months ago, now, four great friends and I sailed around the entirety of Catalina. We started at the southeastern end, a heavily strip-mined corner, anchored and slept of a rock-n-rolly small cove, moved on to Ben Weston, after breakfast, anchored again in Two Harbors for a luncheon of chips, guacamole and Buffalo Milk, made it around the northeastern end sometime after noon then made the traditional way down past Two Harbors, from the mainland-facing side, Empire Landing, Moonstone before heading back to Newport Beach.

It is very odd that such large, mostly desolate, island floats off Southern California. The Wrigley family, of gum fame, built a few beautiful buildings in the largest city, Avalon, and a few more in Two Harbors but overall the architecture leaves something to be desired and the scene is downright unchill.

Day tourists zipping in from Long Beach. Newlyweds too poor to go on a proper honeymoon getting wasted in dank beach bars.

Messy.

I often wonder how the whole place didn’t get colonized by Los Angeles’s uber-elite and walled off from the unwashed. What could be more exclusive than an island a hop, skip and sail away?

Bizarre.

In any case, a kayaker who dipped his or her hand in the water off the northeastern end had it bitten by a shark. According to the Los Angeles Fire Department the beast had been bumping the kayak, before the incident, which sounds needlessly aggressive.

A mile of the island was promptly shuttered for 24 hours.

No other details given.

Damning evidence.

You cannot, under any circumstances, trust Big Surf. It has been one of my mantras for many years, now, and has never done me wrong. Days ago it was revealed, here, that a World Surf League, Costco, Olympic cabal was maybe actively scrubbing brave shaper names, logos, from the surfboards to be used on ABC’s Ultimate Surfer and in Tokyo.

Today, very shocking photographic evidence proves the accusation true.

Study the two images (first the only one sent out across WSL/ABC channels, the second real and true):

A proper Stalinist scrubbing.

What did poor Jon Pyzel ever do to get disappeared?

What did he ever do to get vanished?

Is Matt Biolos next?

Matt Parker?

First they came for the high-performance board maker but I was not a high-performance board maker so I remained quiet etc?

We must rise up, all of us, and demand shaper names, logos, be always included or else how will history remember the grumpy local?

May the odds ever be in our favor.