Cold water Teahupo'o.
Cold water Teahupo'o.

Surprising new study suggests that surfing in Ireland leads to profound improvements in mental health: “Immersion in cold water releases feel-good endorphins, exposure to burly man-eating slabs puts a pep in the step!”

Hearty folk.

One of my very favorite people in the metaverse* is Jimmy the Cynic née Saint who can often be found right here on BeachGrit sharing various wisdoms and hot takes. Now, I have always assumed the aforementioned to be Irish living in Ireland and I feel that I am correct so you can imagine my pleasure, today (on my 11th wedding anniversary), when I stumbled across a report on Raidió Teilifís Éireann that definitively suggested surfing in Ireland improves one’s mental health.

Per a just-released report:

Early findings have shown surf therapy to boost factors that help protect against the development of mental illness, such as resilience, confidence, social skills and emotional regulation. Furthermore, young people reported feeling happier and physically fitter. At the same time, parents noted improved communication and progress at school following a six-week surf therapy course.

However, the question remains, how are these therapeutic benefits achieved through something as simple as surfing? One of the many unique aspects of surf therapy is its use of Ireland’s beautiful, rugged coastline as a therapeutic space. Offering programmes in less traditional, non-clinical, informal environments can reduce the stigma and shame often associated with help-seeking for emotional problems. Moreover, the natural environment may be part and parcel of the power of surf therapy.

Wonderful to know and also makes me very much more in awe of Jimmy and his brethren, sisters as the only surf spot I know in Ireland is Mullaghamore, the “cold water Teahupo’o.”

That making anyone happier is… something.

Viva Ireland.

*Is the internet called the metaverse now or did I miss a turn somewhere?

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See, babes, I blew off the Ranch for Jalama, daddy wanted to tube, wrapped it with a shred at Rincon. Now let's get a burrito.

Surfline Man blows off The Ranch for Jalama, “No dumb boat ride. No angry locals. No getting shut-out at some random spot that probably isn’t that great anyway!”

Surfline Man is going to Jalama and he’s going to get so pitted.

When we last saw him, Surfline Man was driving west on Highway 1, looking for the Gaviota Pier.

He had big plans! Surfline Man was going to the Ranch and he was going to score the best waves ever.

It turns out that Surfline Man is very bad at reading a map.

Surfline Man is so confident he is going to make it to the Gaviota Pier on time. But somehow, when he looks around, Surfline Man discovers he’s nowhere near Gaviota.

Instead, he’s in Lompoc. This is very confusing.

How the fuck he ended up in Lompoc, Surfline Man is not at all certain. But he is certain that he’s totally not in Gaviota. He should have been there an hour ago. Surfline Man has missed the boat.

Surfline Man is not going to the Ranch today, that’s for sure. Surfline Man feels very disappointed. He was so looking forward to scoring such perfect waves with his bros. But now there’s no bros and no perfect waves. What the hell is going to do?

Surely, he can find a beach and go surfing. It’s California. There are beaches everywhere.

Surfline Man feels certain he can find one. There must be waves around here somewhere. Determined, Surfline Man pulls out his Google Maps. Better later than never.

Jalama. Surfline Man swallows hard. Of course, he has heard of it. Cold water. Big fish. Big waves. He’s never actually been there. Summoning up his courage, Surfline Man decides that now’s his chance!

Surfline Man is going to Jalama. Forget the Ranch. Surfline Man’s day is going to be so much better!

No dumb boat ride. No angry locals. No getting shut-out at some random spot that probably isn’t that great anyway. Surfline Man is going to Jalama and he’s going to get so pitted.

All he has to do is follow Jalama Road until it ends. Though he has to confess that he has not been crushing it on the whole directions thing lately, Surfline Man is pretty sure even he can figure this one out.

Follow the road. Get pitted. So simple.

Meanwhile in Gaviota, things weren’t exactly going to plan.

The hoist proved more tricky to maneuver than expected, and the boys nearly dropped the Zodiac. Once loaded up with bros and boards and the super essential cooler of beers, the rubber dingy sat low in the water. Like, super low.

And then the onshores started. Surfline Man loves his charts and graphs and forecasts, but no one ever got around to checking the weather report. Sagging deeply into the windswept seas, the rubber boat made very slow progress.

Suddenly, the beach appeared, and it was like really, really close. Blown by the wind, the bros and the boards and the beers ran aground. Shipwrecked!

The bros had not prepared for this eventuality. Bumping and grinding on the razor rocks, the boat quickly became well and truly stuck. Even worse, it seemed to be deflating! The air began to leak out of their boat. The bros, so stranded!

They had made it to the Ranch, sure. But now they had no boat, no surf, and no way home.

Resigned, the bros heave their sad, flaccid Zodiac up to the beach. They’re definitely not getting any farther by boat.

Abandon ship! They leave the boat right there on the beach. Nothing else to do.

Tucking their boards under their arms, the bros trudge toward Gaviota. They don’t know how far they have to travel, or how long it will take. At least the tide is low. For now.

Blissfully ignorant of his friends’ desperate fate, Surfline Man sprinters toward Jalama. Singing along to California Girls, Surfline Man can not even wait to see the waves! He’s heard so much about awesome barrels and stuff. Surfline Man is north of Point Conception, and he’s feeling so core now.

Reaching the end of Jalama Road, Surfline Man turns into the parking lot at Jalama.

To his surprise, it’s mostly empty. Surfline Man looks around amazed. No crowd! He’s totally going to score so many waves. Solo time with the ocean, this is exactly what he needs.

Surfline Man bounds out of the Sprinter and hurries to check the surf. He can’t even wait to see all the barrels out there, just waiting for him. His friends are going to be so jealous! They’re so going wish they’d come here instead of he stupid Ranch.

Standing on the beach, Surfline Man notices the wind for the first time. Sand whorls down the beach. Staring at the sea, Surfline Man sees an angry soup of swirling white water. Surfline Man is definitely not getting barreled today.

Surfing is just so frustrating sometimes. You try so hard, and it doesn’t even work out. Surfline Man drove all the way here. He slept in his Sprinter between the freeway and the freight trains. And he’s not even getting waves. Surfline Man is so sad now.

As he drives back along Jalama Road, even the Beach Boys can’t console him. This is not at all how it’s supposed to work. Surfline Man reads the charts and the graphs. He always knows before he goes. He always knows where to find waves. Skunked! Now he doesn’t even know what to do.

What he needs is a burrito. Surfline Man must find a taqueria as soon as possible. Burritos understand. Burritos understand when you miss the boat. Burritos understand when you drive two days to surf and get nothing. Burritos make everything better.

When he reaches Santa Barbara, Surfline Man pulls off the 101. There’s a taqueria with the best burritos ever. Surfline Man just has to remember where it is. Waiting at a stoplight, he pulls up Google Maps and has a look around. Engrossed in his phone, Surfline Man doesn’t notice the light turning green. Cars honk behind him.

Haley Street. That sounds right. Surfline Man pilots the Sprinter toward the half-remembered taqueria. The one-way streets confound him. Nothing is going right today.

Just as he places his order, Surfline Man sees the “cash only” sign. Shit. Surfline Man darts out to the Sprinter and digs around in the glove compartment. He must have this burrito. He finds a pair of twenties tucked away for emergencies. This is totally an emergency.

Reverently, Surfline Man unwraps his burrito. The first bite feels like heaven. It warms his soul or whatever it is that burritos warm. This is the best burrito ever.

The burrito revives Surfline Man’s spirits. This whole trip was such a learning experience! Surfline Man is totally going to be a better surfer because of it. Even the best surfers get skunked sometimes! He just needs to get smarter. Next time is going to be so different.

Surfline Man is going to read the weather reports so carefully now. It’s true that they don’t have as many pretty colors as the surf forecasts. Also, they have so many big words and the maps have all these weird squiggly lines. It’s hard to make sense of it all. Sometimes a man has to work for what he wants.

Packed with cars, the freeway rolls slowly. Surfline Man cues up some Grateful Dead and settles in. He’s so over the Beach Boys. They’re such a cliché. Surfline Man is going to listen to some real music now.

The Grateful Dead! They’re like so creative.

The time passes quickly as the Sprinter inches down the road. Surfline Man is not exactly making progress, but he doesn’t even care. Whatever. Just give him some good tunes and an awesome burrito, and he’ll get there.

Around sunset, Surfline Man reaches Rincon. From the freeway, he looks over his shoulder just in time to see a set roll through the cove. Gold-tinted spray shoots into the air as head-high waves tumble on the cobbles. A light breeze tickles the wave’s faces. It’s a dream of California.

Surfline Man considers turning around. He could paddle out and get waves. But as soon as he thinks of it, the perfect golden light fades to grey. Surfline Man is too late.

Shoulda been here an hour ago.

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@italoferreira
@italoferreira

But it is incumbent upon professional surf fans everywhere to pause and ponder the transformation of Olympic gold medalist Italo Ferreira from simple caterpillar to sublime butterfly!

Inspirational.

Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Pleased with reflection or resigned to the arc having given up on ever changing what is, what has been?

For shame, if acquiescent, and we only have to turn our eyes to two-time world champion, Olympic gold medalist Italo Ferreira to see there is more. To know that each and every one of us can crawl into a cocoon and re-emerge so beautiful as to burn envious eyes.

But do you remember when the plucky Brazilian burst onto our horizon not even very long ago, when Kelly Slater was still an old man?

Oh he surfed phenomenally but looked… unassuming, workmanlike, plumber-esque like he didn’t care about facade only about packing ridiculous tubes, sticking ridiculous airs. A pleasure to behold, no doubt, but Ferreira has decided to double down upon that pleasure by making teeth gleam, making hair shimmer, making pecs and abs and buttocks explode.

Have you not visited his Instagram account?

For shame, for it smolders and should serve as hot coals upon your own head.

If Ferreira can transform from caterpillar to butterfly can’t you?

Shouldn’t you?

Ridiculous tubes, airs, are out of the question, in all honesty. Being really, really, really ridiculously good looking still in the cards.

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"I'm on top of the world!"
"I'm on top of the world!"

World’s greatest race car driver Lewis Hamilton takes page from “foil king” Mark Zuckerberg’s book, blissfully glides off coast of Brazil to chill Fleetwood Mac tune!

Influencer.

When a young Mark Zuckerberg sat lonely in his Harvard dormitory room, perving-adjacent on the girls in his school and creating the social media behemoth Meta neé Facebook, do you think he dreamed he’d one day be an influencer?

Oh, of course people weren’t called “influencers” back then, they were called “influential” but do you think Zuckerberg dreamed people would one day copy his schtick?

Like, very wealthy and talented people like the world’s greatest race car driver Lewis Hamilton?

Hamilton, who was recently in Brazil for an F1 race, pulled a page straight out of Zuckerberg’s Facebook, acquired the apocalypse’s “must-have” accessory, and went e-foiling off the coast, filming self set to the very chill Fleetwood Mac tune “Dreams.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lewis Hamilton (@lewishamilton)

Very 4th of July John Denver.

But is a lightly older Mark Zuckerberg now sitting surrounded by servants wearing grass skirts and leis in his Kauai compound giggling like an evil nerd?

He should be.

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"Lemme heal you."
"Lemme heal you."

Multiple tagged Great White sharks force closure of iconic Western Australian beaches only one week after swimmer killed by Great White thirty metres from shore! “They are blitzing the metro beaches!”

"It’s great every one of this endangered population happen to be off Perth at the moment.”

A little under two weeks ago a male swimmer was killed by what witnesses described as a “massive Great White” at Port Beach, a mostly still-water sorta beach, pretty as hell, near the shipping hub of Fremantle.

The attack came on the twentieth anniversary of Ken Crews’ horror death in a Great White shallow water attack at nearby Cottesloe Beach, a hit that ushered in the brave new age of regular human-Great White interactions in WA.

Now, two of Perth’s most popular beaches, City Beach and Floreat, have been temporarily closed after multiple tagged Great Whites raised alarms at Scarborough, City Beach, Floreat, Cottesloe and Leighton.

“They are blitzing the metro beaches,” ocean swimmer RichardW wrote on Twitter. “On the other hand it’s great every one of this endangered population happen to be off Perth at the moment.”

Rottnest Island, site of a WCT event earlier this year, and which was temporarily put on hold because of a lurking Great White, is also crawling with Whites courtesy of a sixty-foot whale carcass floating just off Thompson Bay. 

The event has been drawing excited spectators, although swimming is not advised. 

And, at Rabbit Hill in Yallingup, Taj Burrow’s favourite wave and everyday haunt, a Great White has been reported. 

Whites also at Mandurah and Rockingham.

Attacks by Great Whites, once a wild rarity in West Oz, have become wildly common. 

Last October, surfer Andrew Sharpe was disappeared by a Great White at Kelpies, near Esperance, south of Perth; that January, an Esperance diver was hit by a Great White and three years before that, still Esperance, teenager Laeticia Brouwer was killed by a Great White in front of her family at Kelpies. 

More to come, I suppose.

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