Fanning and Warbrick tower, Rainbow Bay.

World’s most-loved surfer Mick Fanning pools fortune with Rip Curl founder Doug Warbrick to bankroll $130 million, 93-apartment “wellness” tower at Snapper Rocks!

Half of the apartments sold in the first weekend, a wild seventy-one mill in sales.

The three-time world surfing champion Mick Fanning and Rip Curl founder Doug Warbrick have pooled their considerable fortunes to bankroll along with a few others, a wild looking tower with yoga and steam rooms, gymnasiums, a rooftop slide and hanging gardens in Rainbow Bay, where you’ll find Snapper, Greenmount etc. 

Mick and Doug, who both own hunks of dirt in Rainbow, although not on the beachfront side, combined their landholdings into one monster block. 

Doug, y’might recall, came into his cash after selling his slice of Rip Curl to Kathmandu after fifty years of continuous ownership in a total sale worth $350 mill; Mick, who won world titles in 2007, 2009 and 2013 before retiring in 2018 after seventeen years on tour, has long been into real estate as well as various business plays, including Balter Beer which sold one year ago for a rumoured two-hundred mill.

The approval for the tower, which is called Esprit, wasn’t a fait accompli despite Fanning’s god-like status around Coolangatta, with the Gold Coast Council stinging ‘em for a $2.084 million infrastructure charge. 

Council also wanted to green up the joint, getting the “celebrity moguls” to increase the size of planter boxes on the apartments. 

Whatever you think of towers, of development, of the rich getting richer and so on, y’gotta admit, oowee, ain’t she a peach.

Lap pool, ice bath, yoga and steam rooms, infrared sauna, rooftop slide, outdoor cinema and so on. 

Popular? Yeah, you could say that. 

Half of the 93-apartments were bought in the first weekend, a wild seventy-one mill in sales.

A little under two-mill gets a three-bedder, around a mill, and all Australian shekels, gets two beds.

The developer of Esprit is Paul Gedoun who is building the exclusive Flow residences overlooking the Supa Bank at Rainbow Bay.

As I wrote at the time, “Flow’s got all the usual markers of wealth, heated pool, daybeds, steam room, gymnasium, personal surfboard locker rooms, fire pit, even a ‘surfboard preparation room’ where, perhaps, locals might be employed to fix their masters’ surfboards and where lucky children with whisky breath will be free to roam and little dogs sourced from Mexico will be trained to walk on their hind legs.”

V exciting.

Buy Esprit here.


Surfer gets surrounded by pack of ravenous sharks in Florida while fiancée stands helplessly on beach bravely capturing moment: “Only thing I could do was take pictures and ask God not to let him get bit.”

A keeper.

There are, of course, many different levels of fear. There is, for instance, being startled when a book falls from a shelf and makes a loud bang on the ground. There is a halloween corn maze. There is being in the middle of a bait ball while a pack of vicious, ravenous sharks chomp, chomp, chomp. There is losing a daughter and her friend in a halloween corn maze, quickly realizing that they may never be found.

While the last of the examples is scariest, the second to last just happened to a brave surfer at Sebastian Inlet, Florida though, miraculously, he escaped unscathed.

According to Miami’s Channel 7 News, Eli McDonald had decided to go to Sebastian to “do some surfing.” There he was, doing some, minding his own business with his fiancée Laura Evans on the beach when horror struck.

“Next thing I knew, I got stuck in the middle of a mullet bait ball and they (sharks) were just jumping everywhere. One hit me in the head and I seen a big tarpon go underneath my board,” he said.

His fiancée stood helplessly on the beach, watching the madness unfold and telling the television station, “Only thing I could do was take pictures and ask God not to let him get bit. I was terrified. I wanted to go scream and run up and down the beach but, you know, I knew that he would know what to do in that situation, and I also knew that he would want me to capture whatever I could.”

A total keeper.

McDonald escaped unscathed, his future wife captured the moment and now he knows he can trust her in a halloween corn maze.

Decisive.

See photos here.


Photo: City and County of Honolulu.
Photo: City and County of Honolulu.

Humble surf podcast sparks beautiful movement culminating in October 6th officially and forever being declared “Carissa Moore Day!”

An overwhelming sense of love.

David Lee Scales and I were chatting, as surfing’s grand Olympic debut culminated some few months ago, when I brought up the need for “Carissa Moore Day.” Or maybe David Lee Scales brought it up. In either case, the Hawaiian surfer has done it all, multiple Association of Surfing Professionals and World Surf League titles, first-ever Olympic gold, forcing a premium surf magazine to make an embarrassing apology, and deserves a day.

Well, the humble surf podcast episode somehow made it all the way across the ocean and somehow into the ears of Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi who somehow recognized the error of his ways and, forthwith, declared October 6 as “Carissa Moore Day.”

Moore, gracious as ever, declared, “I’m so honored to be here. I’ve felt this outpouring and overwhelming sense of love from my community, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without all those people, without all that love,” before adding, “It’s my hope that anyone that is young and chasing their dreams that they know that anything is possible if they work hard and they put their heart and mind to it.”

She did not mention The Grit! nor did she need to for we toil for the sake of toiling.

During yesterday’s toil with David Lee, anyhow, I also disparaged Gerry Lopez’s great legacy.

Win some, lose some.

Listen here.


Watch here: Kolohe Andino’s magnum opus “Reckless Isolation”, filmed during wild three-week Coke binge through Indonesia’s Mentawai Islands!

Very Sea of Darkness.

Released, just now, is the Kolohe Andino-funded film, Reckless Isolation, which was filmed during a three-week Coke binge through the Mentawai Islands.

Accompanying the release of the movie is a hard-cover book, which includes a story, written by me,  on one of the movie’s participants, the wanna-be Ultimate Surfer Luke Davis.

Below is one of the story’s duller passages but it does reveal a little about the trip.

Luke describes it as the best trip he’s ever been on, and says the waves were as good as you can get out on this ribbon of seventy islands stretching over a hundred miles just off the Sumatran coast. 

A planned twelve day-charter on the seventy-foot supercat Sibon Jaya turned into twenty three as one swell followed another. Luke surfed for the first sixteen of the twenty-three days, but was benched for the final week after a series of wipeouts. 

“Fuck, we got every wave you wanna get out there. Started out at Lances, firing, three days in a  row, then we had Maccas, we had Thunderbox, that right slab, then we got Rags, we got Greenbush psycho for one day and we ended at Bank Vaults. It was overhead to, like, fifteen-foot faces on the biggest day. Big, big Mentawais. As big as you can get, some of the spots.” 

Luke says Greenbush was a terrifying ride. 

“I hit the reef there so it was fucked. Fuck, it was worse than I’ve had in years. Both hands on the reef, the first time, then had to get a couple of stitches in my hand then I went back out and got a couple of waves then on my third wave I hit my side on the reef and my knees and the top of my feet. I hit my whole body and I was done. That was my last session on that trip. I was kinda fucked.”

As the wave didn’t improve after day sixteen, Luke healed in the air-conditioned saloon, “a solid week of chilling.”

Do you drink, Luke? 

“No, I don’t.” 

It would’ve been much more fun if you drank. 

“No one was drinking. Maybe Crane had a beer at some point. We were downing Coca-Colas and eating candy bars hard core. My teeth started hurting so much.” 


Josh Moniz after Volcom Pipe Pro win.
Josh Moniz after Volcom Pipe Pro win.

Breaking: Portuguese news reporting that Hawaiian Josh Moniz of the famous Moniz family seriously injured surfing Supertubos in Portugal, temporarily paralyzed, airlifted to hospital.

"The surf was particularly heavy."

Portuguese surf news is reporting that Josh Moniz, brother of Seth and Kelia, wiped out while surfing Supertubos, near Peniche, Portugal, “hitting the sand with violence” and had to be transported to the hospital via ambulance.

Per the translation from Portuguese:

It was at the end of this Thursday morning, October 7th, that Joshua Moniz, after hitting a tubular wave on the beach of Supertubos in Peniche, fell helplessly having hit the sand with violence. His friends promptly brought him to the sand and called 112.

The Hawaiian is a Pipeline standout from the much-loved family was in town ahead of the Challenger series. A local informed me that Moniz had to be dragged out of the water by friends and was rushed to Lisbon by helicopter after his first stop at the local hospital.

Surf cams caught him being loaded into the ambulance.

Information just in, from a source close to the family, confirmed the accident.

“Yes, he got slammed on his back at Supertubos. He was temporarily paralyzed and airlifted to the hospital. (Seth’s coach) Rainos Hayes went to see him and said early indications were that it was, indeed, temporary and early tests are coming back good.”

Many prayers for Josh..