"OMG he's yucky yucks!"

Days ago, surf fans everywhere snuffed out lit candles and wept bitter tears into lightly cupped hands. The dream was dead and all hope with it. Gisele Bündchen, you see, had been linked with billionaire Jeffrey Soffer and where could Kelly Slater fit in there? Which nook, cranny could he find his way back to glory?

The Brazilian supermodel, as you well know, became divorced from longtime husband, and football great, Tom Brady earlier in the year. Surf fans, while sad on the surface, secretly cheered a potential reunion with the world’s greatest surfer even though he is currently linked to a girlfriend he describes as “Chinese” for many years.

Many twists and turns followed, which you must read here, but all seemed to lead to the grave with the announcement that Bündchen had fallen for a billionaire who boasted daddy’s money plus a string of supermodel exes.

Done-skies.

But then, as if a miracle, the Victoria’s Secret angel denied any coupling and declared even the thought of it gross.

Per People Magazine:

Following reports that the model, 42, is dating billionaire Jeffrey Soffer — who also happens to be friends with Bündchen’s ex-husband Tom Brady — she denied it all in her new cover story with Vanity Fair.

“I have zero relationship with him in any way,” Bündchen told the magazine. “He’s Tom’s friend, not my friend.”

Bündchen called the rumors “absurd” and added that she hasn’t even seen Soffer in months and wouldn’t date someone who was friends with her ex. She further clarified that it was insulting for people to imply she was dating the 55-year-old billionaire for his wealth.

“I wouldn’t be with [Brady’s] friend,” Bündchen said of Soffer. “I wouldn’t be with this guy. I mean, puh-leeze. They were saying I’m with this guy, he’s old, because he’s got money—it’s ridiculous.”

One sentiment.

Gentleman, light your candles.

Kleenex time.

The news just keeps getting better for surf fans. Days after the World Surf League announced that Owen Wright, ruthlessly axed from the Championship Tour just last year, would make a grand and glorious return as a wildcard at Bells Beach in order to announce his retirement.

“After my traumatic brain injury in 2015, my desire to prove to myself and the world that I could still be great and overcome this life-threatening incident inspired my recovery,” the blonde thirty-three-year-old said in a WSL statement. “Given my recent history with head injuries and concussions, competing at some of the heaviest waves on the planet is no longer in the best interest of my long-term health.I excelled in these conditions over my career, but the risks associated with this type of surfing are too significant for someone in my position, given my medical history.”

Not a dry eye in the house and certain to be much weeping and sobbing up and down those iconic Bells’ stairs.

As if not wonderful enough, though, it has just been announced that Wright is set to release a memoir titled Against the Water described as “the gut-wrenching, heroic story of how one of Australia’s finest surfers overcame brain injury and despair to win an Olympic medal.”

Per the press release:

Against the Water carries the reader back to Wright’s boyhood in the tiny New South Wales South Coast town of Culburra, where his father, Rob, determined to raise champions, turned family life into a kind of boot camp. While eccentric, the father’s methods bore fruit: the Wrights of Culburra would become Australian surfing royalty. Wright’s story lays bare the complex relationship with his father – the adoration, the fight for independence, the fallings out, the reconciliations, the poignant denouement. It also captures Wright’s life-altering love for Kita Alexander, the beautiful songstress who abandoned a blooming career to help nurse a broken man she’d known for a few short months back to health.

Told in a spare, intimate style, Against the Water is the moving account of an athlete who refused to accept that his best days were behind him. Owen stopped at nothing not only to rebuild his identity but to construct a better one – he’s now a husband, father, dutiful son and an Olympic medallist in a sport whose spirit courses through his veins. Against the Water also raises fundamental questions around family and competition. What, ultimately, is our duty to our children? At what point does bravery become folly? How much should we sacrifice for the sake of another? Once read, Wright’s story will not be forgotten.

What do you think re. the question about duty to children? Also, the one about bravery and folly?

It does not appear that Wright used a ghostwriter making the spare, intimate style all the more impressive.

Sleepless nights until the drop.

Buy here.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

BeachGrit is, as you know, an anti-depressive place where you can come and be amongst friends, learning about the love lives of surf-adjacent celebrities, how they intersect with Kelly Slater and, occasionally, receive hot real-estate advice. The stuff of flowery dreams. Wars and rumors of wars, economic or environmental collapse can momentarily be forgotten except, I suppose, today in the wake of a Washington Post hit piece declaring that iconic Northern California big wave Mavericks is on its way out the door due climate change.

Following the lantern-jawed Grant Washburn, who has been surfing Mavericks since it was “just a rumor,” the report discusses how the cliff ringing the beach is eroding at an alarming rate, crumbling and tumbling into the ocean below.

“You can argue the cause, but you can’t argue the beaches have receded,” Washburn told the outlet. “… People would say, ‘Oh, that’s a 100-year swell; you’re not going to see that again in your lifetime.’ And then like, a month later there would be another one. And it was like, huh? So either guys have the wrong name for this stuff or the scale is broken.”

I completely agree with the overuse of “100-year swell,” and cast an angrily squinted eye Surfline‘s way.

Cheryl Hapke, a coastal geologist who wrote a 2007 survey which declared Mavericks has the fastest eroding cliffs in the state, said, “These atmospheric rivers are problematic because it’s going to cause erosion to increase.”

But what of the wave itself? That cold monster that bubbles from the deep and horrifies?

Well, it breaks on a 5 million-year-old paleo seabed too far out to sea to be affected by cliff erosion though rising sea levels etc. may flatten the wave as it won’t be able to “feel” the reef anymore.

It has been one of the worst winters in memory, according to Washburn, with only a few surf-able days. “It’s kind of a weird setup where you want a storm but not right on you,” he said, adding, “Mavericks has seen some of the biggest waves that I think we ever recorded. But we couldn’t surf them.”

All very sad but silver lining? A grand opportunity for the World Surf League to send Connor O’Leary and Jadson Andre to Half Moon Bay in order to plant some small bushes?

Synergy.