Barbarically sexy surfing world champ famous for his torrid glares reveals new career as marriage celebrant, “The bride and groom were radiantly in love, glowing in front of the crashing surf!”

"Holding hands and kisses are absolutely necessary every single day."

The great Shaun Tomson, a man who redefined backside tuberiding at Pipeline in 1975 and who won a world title at twenty-two, has revealed his new turn as a marriage celebrant.

Tomson, who is sixty-six, and who once told Tracks magazine he could remember tubes where “I was so in control of my mind and body, that it actually felt as if I were controlling the wave itself”, explained the career switcharoo on linkedin.

A few days ago, I officiated at my first wedding and married Erin and Patch O’ Brien, right on the sandstone reef at the beautiful Windansea Beach.

The bride and groom were radiantly in love, glowing in front of the crashing surf.

This is what I read…

Many years ago, I wrote out a simple Surfer’s Code – a list of values – to inspire young people. The Code was 12 lines long – each line beginning with the words “I will.”

Surfer’s Code was a distillation of everything I had learned from surfing and ultimately was a primary reason that my life moved down my current path of empowering people.

Simple lines of metaphor like I will always paddle back out and I will take the drop with commitment.

Now, hundreds of thousands of people around the world write their own Codes to inspire themselves, their colleagues, and classmates. 

However, the Code is about self – words beginning with I will.

Marriage is about a collective, about we rather than I.

So, with the experience of my 35 years of marriage to my beautiful girl Carla, through happiness and sadness, hope and despair, and most of all deep and profound love, I thought I would create a Marriage Code for Patch and Erin.

M – MUTUAL MISSION We will be on a mutual mission to make each other happy – because happiness is one of the fundamental goals of our life

A – AFFECTION We will be affectionate – holding hands and kisses are absolutely necessary every single day – Physical connectivity keeps us together and sustains and maintains our love

R – RELAX, RENEW AND REFRESH – We will relax, renew, and refresh together and separately – sometimes separate time is needed to make together time even more special

R – ROCKSTAR We will both understand that we are a married to a rockstar and sometimes rockstars have to get their own way so we will let the small stuff slide so we can rock on another day. Some arguments are not worth having, and some battles are not worth waging. Rather just turn up the tunes and rock on with the rockstar.

I – INTELLIGENCE We will understand that no matter how intelligent we think we are, we will only be right 50/% of the time No one likes disagreements – when you dig your feet in, sometimes that ground turns to quicksand that will swallow you whole, giving you a mouthful of mud

A – ACCEPTANCE We will accept each other the way we are because that is who we both fell in love with. Like Billy Joel sings in Just the way you are: Don’t go changing, to try and please me, I could not love you any better, I love you just the way you are

G – GOOD & GOD We will be good to each other and to others too and remember God in our lives and relationship. Goodness and God means faith and hope to sustain today, tomorrow, and always.

E – EMPATHY We will have empathy and be understanding of each other during tough and challenging times – there will be tough times but when one of us, or both of us fall, together we will lift the other up, and rise together.

All very nice, although I do think of the famous quote from Ms Jerry Hall, OG supermodel, married to Mick Jagger and Rupert Murdoch, and one that does pay note to a man’s evil lizard brain.

“My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. I said I’d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit,” quipped Hall.