Image: Para Surf Scotland

Quadruple amputee set to become youngest ever to compete in top surf competition: “It’s an opportunity nobody has seen before!”

2 years ago

Anti-depressive!

As you know, well, your BeachGrit bills itself as “anti-depressive” and generally upholds that mantle though… sometimes, every now again, it slips into the ruthlessly unnecessary and/or straight evil banality. Posts with little to zero moral value. Pieces that are as shoddily constructed as they are considered.

Unfortunate.

This morning (or evening/mid-day depending on your reading location), however, we have a story that is certain to inspire even the most frivolously rude. The tale of ten-year-old Jade Edward, from Scotland, who is set to become one of the youngest ever to compete in a top-level professional surfing competition and as a quadruple amputee.

Edward lost both her arms and legs when she was two years of age after contracting Meningococcal Septicaemia and having to undergo the emergency procedure. “The only thing the doctors could do to save Jade was to amputate her arms and legs, her father, Fraser Edward, told Aberdeen Live. “It’s the only reason she’s still alive. In Jade’s eyes, she’s not disabled.”

The young girl was introduced to surfing on a family beach vacation last summer and fell in love with our favorite pastime, impressing those around with her natural ability, and was invited to the English Para Surf Competition in Bristol. After impressing, again, she made the Scottish Para Surf Team and will now head to California for the upcoming International Surfing Association World Para Surfing Championships.

“Being in the water gives her so much freedom,” her father continued. “She’s encountered horrendous weather conditions but never loses confidence. It’s a match made in heaven. She’s lived with her disability all her life, but surfing has really welcomed her.”

Edward added, “There’s not many 10-year-olds who get the chance to do this. My mum said it will be really good to be with other people with different abilities rather than always being the one who is different. I can’t wait.”

The World Para Surfing Championships will take place in Pismo Beach this Dec. 4 – 11 as ISA president Fernando Aguerre seeks to have surfing included in the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles.

“The ISA is super committed to the long-term growth and promotion of Para surfing worldwide,” Aguerre declared. “The World Para Surfing Championship is a key element of that mission. The global community of Para surfers know how powerful surfing can be in healing the mind, body and spirit. Through continuing to elevate this event, our hope is to further spread the joy and love that Para surfing brings to our community and the world. That joy is visible on the face of every athlete that competes at our event.”

Anti-depressive.

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Basque surfer-architect astonishes by building beachfront modernist house in Nicaragua for $8000, “I read books in the hammock on the terrace, do sunrise yoga and score epic waves!”

By Derek Rielly

2 years ago

And built in front of a wild A-frame called The Bomb!

You dream of splitting the big ol city with its two-million dollar shoebox apartments and acres of concrete and finding a piece of bucolic heaven, land cheap enough to get a spread where you can open a window and smell the ocean?

Three years ago, Daniel Serrano, a surfer and architect from San Sebastian in Spain, threw down $1500 on a Pastime Camper and hit the Pan-American Highway from Oregon, its beak pointed towards South America.

He found his little slice of surf-heaven in Aposentillo, Nicaragua, where a hard-breaking A-frame called The Boom breaks nine months of the year.

Serrano bought himself half-an-acre of dirt, parked his camper and built a traditional palm palapa shelter over it to stay dry during the raining season.

He figured he’d keep it as a “refuge” when he wasn’t back home in Spain, but with design work coming in, weeks turned into months and now he lives in Nicaragua for half the year.

And, so, that old Pastime Camper got turned into a 240-square foot modernist home.

“This cabin was built by two people using the most basic tools,” explains Serrano. “Through a system of sliding doors and windows that open with pulleys, the main space is able to open up to the landscape during the day and enclose to give privacy during the night. Interior and exterior distinctions are blurred allowing an engagement with the environment and at night it radiates like a lantern. The intention of the camper house is to explore the essentials for a magical holiday shelter within a small budget.”

Small budget?

Serrano says if you include the cost of the camper, buying and transporting materials, all his tools as well as cookware for the kitchen, so drive in jive away as they say, eight gees.

“I read books in the hammock on the terrace, do sunrise yoga, and eat well,” he tells Dwell, an architecture mag. “And score epic waves.”

Wild, yes?

Serrano's Pastime Camper before it got switched into a modernist house. — Serrano’s Pastime Camper before it got switched into a modernist house.

The camper with its roof, the precursor to his new house.

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As new best-in-class wave tank breaks ground near Orlando, Disney publicly shamed for failing Florida’s surfers: “For decades surfers have been relegated to renting out a mushy wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon for some mediocre thrills during the park’s off hours.”

By Chas Smith

2 years ago

Pack your bags. Leave mouse ears at home.

You’ve certainly, by now, seen that new, glorious wave pool in São Paulo, Brazil. The one described as “the most high-performance wave on earth” which, somehow, includes Lower Trestles. Derek Rielly wrote, at its unveiling, “It’s real big, six acres or twice the size of the fabled Waco tank, there’s a double air section (“The Double Shot”) and every sorta configuration you can imagine, and plenty you’d never thought of beyond wildest dreams etc. American Wave Machines call it their most ambitious build, yet.”

Absolutely dreamy and worth traveling great distances for. Staying in four-star hotels, eating lightly stale pingado with French bread, accidentally using Spanish instead of Portuguese etc.

Well guess what?

Central Florida is set to receive its own same version and soon.

Per Jacksonville’s local news affiliate:

The dream of a perfect wave pool in Florida has been elusive. For decades surfers have been relegated to renting out a mushy wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon for some mediocre thrills during the park’s off hours.

But not even Disney could create a manmade wave with glassy barrels and hollow waves that peel right or left in crystal clear water.

One company that built several wave parks around the world to simulate these perfect swells, called American Wave Machines, is bringing its next project to Edgewater, FL.

The company announced Thursday it will be building the 15-acre “PerfectSwell® Edgewater” wave pool right off I-95 near New Smyrna Beach.

The Disney slam is both pointed and painful. How did the multi-billion dollar entertainment behemoth not see the development of inland pools as pure gold?

Will the World Surf League pounce upon the slandered Typhoon Lagoon and toss Surf Ranch technology in its middle or, at least, host a Championship Tour contest there?

Most importantly, will you go surf it?

Edgewater is home to the first Hooters.

Oh wait.

That’s Clearwater.

Butts n boobs.

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Surf fans collectively hallucinate wedding bells as Gisele Bündchen retreats to bucolic Costa Rican peninsula where Kelly Slater just so happens to sit on board of Ayahuasca life advancement center!

By Chas Smith

2 years ago

Bewitching.

There is coincidence and then there is fate and surf fans, heretofore cynical empiricists, have magically, majestically fallen under sway of the latter. But who could have seen the series of events, unfolding during this past months, that would have had them buy candles, en masse, lighting them on windowsills? Who could have had them looking to the stars and seeing patterns forming up that beckoned a return to Shangri-la?

Namely 2005 – 2006 when surf brands made millions, surf contests drew thousands, lineups were Wavestorm-free, VALs merely were people from the valley and Kelly Slater was dating Gisele Bündchen.

Surfing’s greatest of all-time and the Brazilian supermodel were living, breathing representatives of the dream and all was perfect… or at least until the two parted ways and Bündchen became married to quarterback Tom Brady.

But who can stop fate?

Bündchen and Brady shockingly announced their break, surf fans began lighting those candles and now we have Bündchen vacationing in the surf paradise of Costa Rica just miles away from the Ayahuasca retreat Rythmia Life Advancement Center where Slater just so happens to sit on the board.

Per Page Six:

Gisele Bündchen is wasting no time living her best life following her divorce from Tom Brady.

The supermodel, 42, was all smiles on Monday when photographers caught her strutting her stuff in tropical Costa Rica.

For the seemingly carefree outing, Bündchen wore a matching taupe set featuring a low-cut crop top and stretchy pants. She completed her casual vacation ensemble with a makeup-free face and wavy hair.

Bündchen’s home is on the Nicoya Peninsula.

So is Rythmia Life Advancement Center.

You certainly recall when the 11x world champion visited there not so long ago, declaring, “I just had the most profound experience of my life. I literally decided to come here twelve hours before I came. It was something that was nagging at me for a few weeks beforehand, that this was something that could potentially change my life. I’ve had a lot of experience in my life. I’ve been all around the world… I’ve lived all around the world…and I’ve got to experience most worldly things. But…”

The experience was so profound, in fact, that Slater was invited to sit upon the board where he sits to this day.

So now?

Only the hardest of surfer hearts refuse to feel the alchemy bubbling underneath the tropical sun. Only the thickest of surfer brains are not hallucinating wedding bells, seeing sarong-clad figures on the beach in minds’ eyes.

Bewitching.

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In shattering blow to butts n boobs contest, Surfer (The Girl), featuring girls that don’t surf, appears to lose Rip Curl support and its $500 gift card purse!

By Chas Smith

2 years ago

Has Tyler Wright spoken?

Men who consider 1996 to be peak surf were dealt an extremely heavy blow, overnight, as it appears Surfer (The Girl) has lost core sponsor Rip Curl. The contest, hosted by Surfer (The Bar), which is the last remaining li’l bit of Surfer (The Magazine), pits woman against woman but not in thirty-minute heats with priority, waves, speed, power, flow, etc.

No.

The winner is selected by popular vote based on slammin’ bods, bangin’ rigs, rockin’ packages, etc.

Olde school (written in Olde English font).

And, as of two days ago, the winner was set to receive $1500 cash and a $500 Rip Curl gift card.

The Torquay-based surf brand, recently sold to outdoor specialists Kathmandu, a major sponsor of the event.

Well, as of this morning, the victor will, apparently, be robbed of her gift card.

Rip Curl’s instantly recognizable logo has also been scrubbed from related pages.

What could have happened?

The world’s biggest surf website celebrated the tournament, also coincidentally two days ago, and wondered, at the end, what team rider Tyler Wright might think of it all.

Is this the answer?

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Eat beach grit spam!