"The first heat Kelly and I ever surfed against each other was 38 years ago, when were 12 years old!"

To the surprise of no-one, Kelly Slater has dominated the opening stanza of the invitation-only Four Seasons Maldives Surfing Champions Trophy 2022, stomping former tour buddies Taylor Knox, Rob Machado, Ross Willims and local wildcard Hussain “Iboo” Areef in the single fin division.

The contest runs over three days. Single fins. Twins. Thrusters. Twenty-five gees to the winner.

Fifty-year-old Slater, who finished third at the Outerknown Tahiti Pro in ten-foot waves last week and who is the current world number fifteen, made short work of the Momentum Gen, including one-time arch-rival Rob Machado.

“I feel like I learned a lot about how to place my turns better and more subtly, and not try to force things,” Slater said. “Whereas on a high-performance board you’re always trying to force the most radical change of direction you can. I think a single-fin is great for your style and your flow.”

Shane Dorian, also fifty, said, “This year is extra special because we all have been best friends for three decades, almost four decades. The first heat Kelly and I ever surfed against each other was 38 years ago, when were 12 years old! It’s cool to have grown up together and surfed a bunch of heats together and travelled the world with each other. It’s just so cool to be here with our little group of friends, and to be here with Iboo as well, surfing with and against each other.”

"I kinda wish…the Phil Perrys of the world, the Perry Danes, the Johnny Boys would come back and sort that lineup out, man." 

One of the better stories of modern surfing is the relationship of Kelly Slater, a preternaturally talented kid from the little waves of Florida, with Oahu’s North Shore, the fabled seven-mile miracle.

Faced with the choice of becoming a world champion who shied away from big waves, Slater bit down on every fear he ever had to become the greatest surfer ever, a three-time Triple Crown winner, Eddie winner, a seven-time Pipe Master, if you include last December’s Pipeline Pro.

In the final episode of Slater’s 11-part Lost Tapes series, filmed over the course of the 2019 tour, we’re in Hawaii, where Slater has been spending every December since he was fourteen, and where he now keeps two houses, one of which you can rent for $US46,000 per month.

He doesn’t win Pipe in this instance, that goes to the world champ Italo Ferreira, but he does scoop up the Triple Crown.

The episode warms up when Slater talks about the crumbling of Pipeline’s infamous hierarchy.

“My biggest goal was to have a prominent spot in the lineup at Pipeline,” he says. “I never felt like I deserved a wave. There was a hierarchy out there you didn’t just break into. Nowadays you go out there and it’s four foot and there’s sixty guys. When I was a kid out there, you really had to put your time in there. Guys were getting kicked out of the water, fins broken, guys were getting slapped in the head. I kinda wish that hierarchy, the Phil Perrys of the world, the Perry Danes, the Johnny Boys would come back and sort that lineup out, man.”

Bought for 760k, selling for well north of three-million dollars!

The Australian professional surfer Adrian “Ace” Buchan, famous for a blue-eyed-blond-college girl look and whom you’d like to swing off his feet in a passionate hug, pinching and squeezing from head to knee, has listed his “forever house” a few hundred yards off world-famous Avoca Beach.

Buchan, who is thirty-nine and who competed on the WSL world tour from 2010 until 2021, famously beating Kelly Slater at big Teahupoo to win the Billbong Pro Tahiti in 2013, bought the house in 2007 for $760,000, but now seeks north of three-mill.

The four-bed, three-bathroom house with enough parking for a quartet of cars was built in 1980 and occupies a hunk of dirty of eight-thousand square feet.

“We love watching the ocean and surf conditions while we’re eating our breakfast. Full moons rising over the ocean are beautiful and sunsets over the lake are too,” Buchan told the real estate rags.

The selling agent ain’t wrong when he describes the joint as, “The perfect example of a gorgeous family home situated on one of the finest streets and sought-after neighbourhoods in Avoca Beach.”

Since moving in a decade-and-a-half ago, the Buchans have landscaped the gardens, put in a new kitchen and done up the bathrooms, as well as renovating the entire downstairs space, “ideal for teenagers and visitors” etc.

The garage, meanwhile, is a masterwork for anyone with too many surfboards.

“It’s a surfer’s dream,” says Buchan.