"I'm returning to my roots."

The Australian Olympian or Irukanji Julian Wilson has lit up Instagram with his shock decision to, well, not exactly retire he says, but draw the curtain on his pro surfing career immediately following the Olympics. 

Wilson, who turns thirty-four in November, is currently rated seventeenth on the tour after a pretty ordinary start to the year, two seventeenths, two ninths and a fifths.

It ain’t exactly the world tour year Wilson was hoping for before the window of opportunity closes for the class of 1988, which also includes South African Jordy Smith.  

“I’m returning to my roots,” Wilson told the WSL. “I’ll be found surfing the points at Noosa on my longboard and I will also be found chasing some fun high-performance waves around Australia. I have a few projects coming to life that I’m really excited about and I’m just really looking forward to take a step back for a little while.

Wilson has orbited the tour since 2011, was a rookie of the year, made Gabriel Medina cry when he beat him in Portugal in 2012, he beat Medina in the final of the Pipe Masters in 2014 and three years later beat Medina to win the 2017 Tahiti Pro. 

Whether or not he comes back as nears forty,  if there’ll even be a tour to come back to or if this sparks an exodus of pro’s from a fading tour, will be revealed over the next year or so.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRZ3W3xrJ3z/

 

A typhoon brings proper, gorgeous barrels. Pipes throaty enough to give Brazilian Pip Toledo second thought.

Panic hit at five pm on the isle of Capri.

I had just stumbled across a Michelin starred restaurant in Marina Picola, after lunch, and thought, “We must eat there tonight,” so marched right in and made a reservation.

The problem?

Our dinghy was very low on gasoline and it was extremely unlikely that we’d be able to make it back to the yacht back to Marina Picola for dinner and back to the yacht again after. An emergency meeting was called and we all stood in the small sidewalk overlooking a beach club.

Andrew, who makes the finest boardshorts on earth, was tired and voted to nap on the Mediterranean fronting rocks. Nate and Josh, feeling the warm wind of fate, puzzled options. Micah, a longshoreman on his way to law school, was up for anything.

After a few minutes, it was decided we would take a cab to Marina Grande, get gas, cab back, then be set.

The other problem?

We left our jerry can in the dinghy but that issue could certainly be solved later. We hailed a convertible Fiat taxi, winded up the cliff and found a petit gas station with no cans.

After puzzling more, Nate went into a nearby shop, bought water bottles and we drank as much as we could, dumped the rest on deep purple bougainvillea then filled them with that precious gas.

The taxi ride down, in a different Fiat convertible, was marked by quiet head nods of triumph.

La dolce soddisfazione.

A deep sense of all things working out perfectly that International Surfing Association chief Fernando Aguerre may soon feel.

Rumor has it from shaper to the stars Matt Biolos that a typhoon just may be headed Japan’s way ahead of surfing’s grand Olympic debut mere weeks away.

Aguerre, who pushed so hard for surfing inclusion and also pushed hard for surfing to be in the ocean and not a wave tank, was making a serious gamble.

Chiba, the host region, has generally small waves in the summer, extremely small, maybe unsurfable to non-Brazilians but a typhoon?

Oh, a typhoon brings proper, gorgeous barrels. Pipes throaty enough to give Brazilian Pip Toledo second thought.

Certainly an already frustrated Japan will cop much damage, an expensive add-on to an expensive bill, but for Aguerre?

For the future of Olympic surfing?

John John Florence roof dragging on broken knee to gold?

Bellisimo.

"Unlikely to be any miraculous recovery."

The popular Sunshine Coast surfer Joe Hoffman, who was attacked by a ten-foot Great White at Crescent Head on July 5, ain’t one to complain.

In between thirty hours of surgeries, Joe told his ol boy Bill that he was “glad it was me and not one of the young kids out there.”

Surgeons expect Joe, who is twenty-five and whose arm was mauled from the wrist to his bicep, will, at best, only regain a limited use of his right arm, if at all.

“Everything was destroyed,” Bill told the Murdoch press in his only interview. “His body as he knew it won’t return.”

Leg nerves have been transplanted to his arm, a vein taken from a foot, a piece of artery replaced.

“Rehab is going to be lengthy and it’s going to ask a lot of questions of him. He’s got a big challenge in front of him. They’ve borrowed bits from all over his body (to repair his arm),” said Bill, adding his kid isn’t one for killing Whites,

“There is absolutely no shark hate in our family, Joe accepts that surfers enter their environment. We’re always aware of their presence and the risk of injury is slight. He was brought up in the surf 400m from our family home. People who don’t want to surf with sharks should go to a wave pool.”

A GoFundMe page set up to help cover Joe’s cost post-recovery, this being Australia costs ain’t as catastrophic as the US, has so far raised $61,000 with a seventy-k goal. 

Gross.

As things happen on the Amalfi coast, my wonderful friend Josh left his sunglasses at a cliff-side restaurant called Atrani.

We had all shared a fabulous dinner the night before, low-warm seafood starter, various risottos and pastas, a chilled bottle of white wine then dinghied out to our yacht firmly anchored. The next morning, as the Italian sun rose and bathed the green-brown cliffs and and pink-yellow homes in splendor we stood on the deck and enjoyed except for Josh who stood and squinted.

After a quick search, it was determined that his glasses had been left at the restaurant.

A phone call confirmed and there we were dinghying to its base which had a rock pool just above the sea and various lounges on staggered rock decks. The pool manager did not wish for us to tie up and so I jumped into the cool blue with Euros clenched in my teeth to be used for ice.

That water is so remarkably clean and clear as to boggle the mind.

It is perfect water very much unlike the water off Los Angeles, which just received a massive sewage dump that officials did not inform the public for many hours leading to many happy beach goers unwittingly swimming in filth.

According to The Los Angeles Times, “The delay occurred even though officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which is responsible for notifying the public, were at the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Playa del Rey during the emergency discharge procedure that began Sunday evening and ended Monday around 4:30 a.m., according to interviews.”

Julio Rodriguez, a captain with the county Fire Department Lifeguard Division at Dockweiler Beach, told The Los Angeles Times that his brave men and women found out about the beach closure around noon — after seeing a county worker posting a sign on a lifeguard tower.

“That’s how we received official notification of the closure of the beaches,” he said, likely feeling sad about all the filth swimming that had occurred on his watch.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, also likely feeling sad, released a statement reading, “What happened yesterday was unacceptable and irresponsible. We need answers from L.A. City Sanitation about what went wrong and led to this massive spill, but we also need to recognize that L.A. County Public Health did not effectively communicate with the public and could have put swimmers in danger.”

Gross.

I retrieved Josh’s sunglasses, in any case, and the waiter gave me two bags of ice free of charge.

La dolce vittoria.

A new proposal from the Michigan Parks and Recreation Division would prevent swimming at state beaches on “Red Flag” days, or essentially, the only days with rideable surf out on the Lakes.

Surfing in Michigan is hard.

A lot harder than renting a wetsuit and foamie on the boardwalk in Southern California.

A requisite perfect combination of an endless array of variables to do anything resembling sliding.

And more often than not you’re on the wrong side of the lake.

But the Great Lakes can produce magical, albeit fleeting, moments. Chest-high wedges with twenty-knot winds. Offshore runners. Facial hair freezing to your face.

Those moments may become even more fleeting.

A new proposal from the Michigan Parks and Recreation Division would prevent swimming at state beaches on “Red Flag” days, or essentially, the only days with rideable surf out on the Lakes.

The proposal would prevent “individuals from exiting a state managed beach area when entry is prohibited.”

The punishment would likely carry a fine of $500.

Per the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, there were 108 drownings on the Great Lakes last year.

According to Ron Olson, Chief of Parks and Recreation for the Department of Natural Resources, “We think it’s a good tool to have for us to draw a hard line to reduce the potential hazard. When it gets to red we know that the waves are going to be three-to-four-plus in height and the winds are blowing at a certain amount which means it becomes more treacherous.”

Surfers are particularly concerned about the proposal.

Ryan Gerard, a local surf shop owner in Michigan, said “This ban would effectively erase the opportunity [to surf] for all . . . people, including me.”

Coastal access is tricky in Michigan. Most of the coastline is privately owned, only thirty percent is public according to a report published by Coastal Management.

Other groups have similarly expressed concern about the proposal.

The Michigan United Conservation Clubs fear the proposal could “lead to a slippery slope.” They also point out that many of the drownings would not have been prevented by the policy; most were boating accidents and instances when individuals were swept off piers and beaches.

It’s also important to note that most of the year the Lakes are too cold to swim in, let alone wade, without a (thick) wetsuit.

While well intended, the proposal is the product of overzealous bureaucrats who fundamentally do not understand how to address the issue.

Like using an axe to open an envelope.