Sandoval (left) and his inspiration (insert). Photo: Instagram
Sandoval (left) and his inspiration (insert). Photo: Instagram

Disgraced reality television star Tom Sandoval continues appropriating surf legend Gerry Lopez as he attempts to rehabilitate severely damaged image!

Sinners gonna sin.

Surf legend Gerry Lopez being caught up in the most discussed Hollywood cheating scandal of the decade continues to be the surprise of the year. But who, here, had ever heard of the show Vanderpump Rules or its stars Tom Sandoval, Ariana Madix or Raquel Leviss? Certainly not me but then, without warning, there they all were in our lives, hammering us daily with their tale of Tom dating Ariana for many years and maybe also wanting to marry her while having a sexual relationship with Raquel on the side even though the friend group agreed that no one could see anyone else or some such.

The three, independently, have been on talkshows, podcasts, radio programs to discuss and/or be discussed with no end in sight.

Enter Mr. Pipeline.

Apparently, Tom and Raquel used Lopez’s iconic lightning bolt surfboard symbol as their secret sign to each other. Lopez, who has lived in Bend, Oregon for decades now, certainly did not grant the illicit pair usage rights but sinners gonna sin.

Anyhow, Tom has said that he isn’t seeing Raquel anymore and went to a wellness facility in Arizona but then the staffers there said he was there on social media and it made him angry. Raquel is alleged to have gone to a wellness facility in California while he then went to Coachella but are furtive messages still being broadcast?

At a recent concert in Long Island, Tom, who fronts the cover band Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras, was seen wearing a tailored jacket with two iconic lightning bolt surfboard symbols absolutely dominating the front panels.

Unmissable.

Will Raquel fall, once again, for her bad boy?

Mrs. Pipeline?

Please stay tuned.


Holmes (right) with San Diego standout, and world champion, Joel Tudor.
Holmes (right) with San Diego standout, and world champion, Joel Tudor.

San Diego area surfers rejoice as convicted biotech genius Elizabeth Holmes chooses to spend last moments as free woman sampling region’s waves!

World-class or, at least, American-class.

Oh and please excuse my absence. I was on a sailing endeavor, exploring an outer Channel Island and what was supposed to be a fine, but standard, adventure turned into the most harrowing, most apocalyptic tale modern children’s literature has seen in the last twenty, if not fifty, years. The crew, my four great friends and our ten combined children, set off as the sun dipped Tuesday eve, a light gust blowing from the north but otherwise clear and inviting. Time slots for the helm were allotted to the fathers, as we would be sailing through the night, and the savages were tucked into bed, the youngest apparently suffering from a bout of seasickness and vomiting uncontrollably.

The next morning after a fine breakfast, we caught an even finer wind and sailed around the island at a ridiculous heel before anchoring in a cove and finding a hike billed as four miles, round trip. In reality it was five-plus miles each way, up and down steep canyons, but the savages are tough and handled their business, except for the eldest who began vomiting uncontrollably, assumedly due over-exertion.

It began to rain as we all rounded that final bend back to the beach and our dingy, the eldest riding my back for the last four miles. A bitter cold rain, almost sleet. We hurried to the boat to make a warm dinner and tuck them all into bed again but, directly after a quick pasta first course, three more savages gripped at their bellies.

Uncontrollable vomiting ensued.

Two hours later, nine of ten savages had gone down and gone down hard. These were no simple heaves but a dredging of the bottom of the guts. A terrible expulsion. An explosion oft times all over each other. It was impossible to put them outside, as that bitter cold rain had picked up its intensity, so in the salon they writhed, drenched in bile, crying for it all to end.

The witching hours saw two of the fathers go down and it had become a Triangle of Sadness.

Three of us stood at the end, my two very best friends and I, and felt the big sick clawing but also knew we had to sail the twelve-plus hours home, care for the dying, clean up vicious messes, etc.

We did, arrived in port deprived of any sleep for 48 hours and on top of the world.

Victorious.

Very unlike the thirty-nine year-old Elizabeth Holmes feels right now, I’d imagine, though San Diego area surfers are certainly taking her choice to spend her final hours as a free woman sampling the region’s many waves as proof of greatness.

Holmes, as you certainly know, is the former genius who invented a life-altering blood testing technology that held so much promise, so much glory, that investors lined up around the block to throw hundreds of millions at the the future and all was wonderful.

Except.

Holmes, who modeled herself after Steve Jobs and had the nickname “Eagle One,” got busted for lying about both the technology, what it could do, what it was doing etc. and was eventually convicted, after a 2022 trial, and ordered to serve eleven-plus years in prison for fraud.

Well, as her legal team continues to file appeals, she has been allowed to stay free, and, per reports, just moved to a beachfront home in Del Mar, a few clicks south of my Cardiff-by-the-Sea. A privilege that would certainly not be afforded to you or I but we were not, at one-time, the world’s youngest self made billionaire. She could choose to spend these last few moments surfing any wave the world has to offer, or maybe just any American wave the world has to offer due her legal situation, but still. That includes any corner of the Hawaiian islands, Santa Cruz, Huntington Beach, San Clemente, Sebastian Inlet and many more.

The fact that she is in Del Mar, easy striking distance to Swamis, Blacks, Windansea, means those are, likely, the United States’ finest.

Huzzah.


Inspirational T-Girl Sasha Jane Lowerson, at work and play! | Photo: @sashajanelowerson/TikTok

Attackers of T-Girls in women’s sport conspicuously silent after Sasha Jane Lowerson’s shock early loss at World Surf League’s Manly Classic!

"I find it strange seeing in other sports men who did not find the success they wanted switch to the women’s and then succeed.”

It’s supposed to be a slam dunk, a fait accompli, whenever aT-Girl, tranny, Woman+, whatever you want to call ‘em, steps up to the plate.

Swimming, weightlifting, bicycling, surfing, you got T, you gonna win. 

And, in the case of Sasha Jane Lowerson, a forty-five-year-old Fly-In-Flight-Out worker in Australia’s lucrative mining biz, who was one of Australia’s leading male longboarders, even winning the men’s longboard div as Ryan Egan before transitioning three years ago and joining the women’s side of the draw, it’s been mostly true. 

Over the course of a few years, she’s been the gal to beat in Western Australia’s longboard contests. 

This morning, howevs, in pretty three-foot waves at Manly for the WSL’s one-day longboard event there, Lowerson was bundled out in her first heat, albeit a quarter final due to the lack of participants. 

With a pair of fours, Lowerson was stomped by the rest of the field, all bio-gals, including eventual runner-up Kirra Molnar. 

And, despite warnings from shark attack survivor Bethany Hamilton that opportunistic men from Third World countries would soon be flooding women’s sport, gobbling hormone suppressants to “get rich smashing girls” there was barely anyone who wasn’t blonde and caucasian.

Lucy Small, who rocketed to fame a couple of years back when she gave organisers of a longboard contest hell from the stage for paying the women half as much as the men and who who correctly blames the ills of the world on White Men, narrowly missed a place in the final when she finished third in her semi final. 

“I find it strange seeing in other sports men who did not find the success they wanted switch to the women’s and then succeed,” Bethany Hamilton said, although in Lowerson’s case, she owned the men’s div and, lately, has performed poorly in the gals.


“The lip of the wave hit me in the back and I fell forward. I must have been going really fast and on the wrong angle as my neck went back, then to the side. I instantly couldn’t feel my right arm."

Australian surfer snaps neck in horror wipeout at wildly dangerous Central American wave

“I have been so anxious. I have bouts of depression and days I can’t get out of bed."

A Sydney surfer had a horror experience recently in Bocas del Toro, a little archipelago off the Carribean coast of Panama there.

You know the spot?

I’ve had a couple of trips there myself. Bocas  is one of those wonderful fusions of Latina and Carribean culture. Plantains and gallo pinto. Fried chicken and fried fish. Steel drums, rum, weed on every corner. Explosions of primary colours in the architecture. Boats your primary mode of transport. A modern day swashbuckler’s paradise.

In Panama, if you invite a friend over for a beer, they’ll bring along a jar of jalapenos as a snack. No potato chips. No nuts. Just delicious jalapenos to munch on in the deep humidity. I’ve seen it happen.

There’s plenty of fun to be had in Bocas. Waves, too. Fabulous short interval swells that pop up off the back of Atlantic depressions, with year-round light winds. Sometimes a lil crumbly. Sometimes whistle clean.

You’d recognise Bocas for its most famous wave, Silverbacks. A lurching right hand slab that’s as quick as it is nasty. But it’s not the only spot.

There’s plenty of nooks and crannies. All marked by their shallowness. Joint seems like it’s on permanent low tide. The main break, Caranero, is a poor man’s Macaronis, bending down the inside of an island pass over an urchin-infested shelf that grows ever closer to your fins.

Other spots like the Paunch, the Curve. The Curve’s one of those surf spots that almost isn’t. A wedge that sits about six feet off the edge of a rock platform. One turn on a primo section before an immediate starfish dismount.

Easy place to break your neck.

The best session I ever had there was at a break called Red Frog. Most pristine beachy you could imagine. Landscape like something out of Avatar. Water that was blue on blue. You got there taking a jungle trek across the island if you couldn’t afford a boat, which on this trip we could not. We found a right bank doing a good impersonation of four-foot Soup Bowls. Not another soul in sight, save for my travelling party of three. Memory-making sessions.

There’s an underbelly in Bocas, too.

That same trek a few weeks after we were there  an American tourist was raped and killed. Body left out for whoever to find it. Assailants never caught.

Many Americans go there to escape the law. On my second trip I spent a bit of time surfing with one guy who owned a joint there, a Texan (Texans, in my humble opinion, matched only by Italians for their unexpected competency in the water). He was friendly, if not quiet. An excellent surfer with a Chris Ward-esque glint in his eye.

He’d take my mate and I out in his boat looking for waves every day. Would ask for nothing more than to split the petrol money. He had this fabulous trick of rubbing his hands together and patting the water’s surface to summon sets. It didn’t work but was entertaining none the less.

On the surface a super nice guy. We later googled his name and found he was a convicted felon back home in the States, still wanted for a string of charges longer than Manut Bol.

He was one of the nice ones. As you can imagine, it’s not the sort of place you want to find yourself in need of First World medical care.

Which takes us back to our original story.

An Aussie tradie was surfing on an island in Panama when he got smashed by a wave so hard, he broke his neck.

Steve Bewley, from the Northern beaches in Sydney, was visiting his brother in Bocas del Toro, off the Caribbean coast in July last year when things took an unexpected turn.

The 40-year-old carpenter, who has been surfing his entire life, decided to cap off his trip by enjoying one last surf on a reef break up the road from where he was staying.

But to his horror, he ended up in hospital where scans would later reveal Steve broke his neck so bad he ruptured the disc between C6 and C7 resulting in a 12-hour operation to insert rods.

“The lip of the wave hit me in the back and I fell forward. I must have been going really fast and on the wrong angle as my neck went back, then to the side,” Steve, who has since returned home told news.com.au.

“I instantly couldn’t feel my right arm.

“I was like ‘sh*t, I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder, this is super uncomfortable’.”

The story doesn’t end there, however.

You can read more here, including the obligatory GoFundMe. 

The things we do.

What’s the shittiest surf situation you’ve found yourself in, far from home?

I’ve generally been pretty lucky in my travels, however last Ments trip one of our guys fell on a coral head at two-foot Thunders. Came in complaining of something funny feeling up his arse.

One spread of his cheek and a river of blood ran down his leg. A near perforated bowel.

Luckily, a boatload of Brazillians next to us included a trauma surgeon from Sao Paulo. She stitched him up. We chugged overnight to Siberut  to get him on the high speed ferry. An uncomfortable eighteen-hour trip home sitting on a cushion followed by emergency ass surgery once he was back in Oz.

The things we do.


Hero surfers drag bleeding man to beach following suspected Great White attack at Jeffreys Bay, “(We) commend the swift action of the public and the good Samaritan fellow surfers!”

Bystanders applied trauma pads to staunch the bleeding before the man was rushed to hospital…

It’s the age old question, ain’t it. Another surfer gets hit by a shark, usually a White a species of fish that’ll swing back for a  second or third strike, what do you do? 

Flee to the beach? Help your wounded comrade? 

I suspect I’m in the former camp, born a coward die a coward, although anecodotetally, it appears most surfers have the right stuff, as they say. 

And, so, when a fifty-year-old man was attacked by a suspected Great White shark on dusk at Supertubes last night, surfers who were already on the beach paddled back out to grab the man and drag him to shore. 

“An eye-witness reported that fellow surfers, who had initially retreated out of the water after being alerted that there had been an incident involving a shark, had returned into the surf to fetch the casualty out of the water,” the National Sea Rescue Institute’s J-Bay commander Paul van Jaarsveld said. “A bystander was provided the access code to the NSRI shark bite kit stationed at that beach.NSRI commend the swift action of the public and the good Samaritan fellow surfers.”

 

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Bystanders applied trauma pads to staunch the bleeding before the man could be rushed to hospital, where he is reportedly stable and in good enough spirits.

The three-time world champ Mick Fanning, who was famously wrestled by a Great White during a contest at Supertubes in 2015, says he is still tormented by his pals pulling his leash and yelling “Shark!”

“It still took me about a year or so to get through my PTSD,” says Mick. “Even still, I’m very wary of what’s in the ocean. People splash behind me, I freak out. My mates do it to me all the time.”