Kai Lenny, man. Is there anything the Maui built super stud can do wrong? The handsome 31-year-old is handsome, fearless, respected, talented and handsome. “Brave and daring and honey coloured,” according to master of modern erotic surf poetry Derek Rielly. He is, or was, best friends with Mark Zuckerberg but even that closeness with a technology master could not save him from getting caught by Surfline’s “definitely under-forecast” swell.
Those who do not live on the Hawaiian islands were, maybe, unaware as, days ago, monster waves made a sneak attack on north facing shores. While surfers hurried to wax the probably the wrong boards, caught unawares, homeowners and commuters took to the streets in order to hold protests. Fiery chants of “Blame Surfline” filling the balmy air.
Kai Lenny Over the Falls
Kai Lenny, though, confident and audacious, was out amongst it, a the ominously named Jaws, and shared a terrifying video of him paddling up the face of a watery giant before getting sucked over in slow motion, likely driven deep. Davey Jones tickling his ankles with cold, clammy fingers.
“Learning new tricks in big waves don’t come with out consequences. Every fall or caught inside there’s a chance the board will go straight on the rocks. In an attempt to save my board I was dragged over the falls,” he penned to Instagram.
The question must be asked, though. Might the potentially deadly trip been averted had Surfline done its job?
Allowing Kai Lenny to, as advertised, “Know before he went?”
More to the point, should a congressional inquiry be taken up in order to get to the bottom of the misfire?
I think it would be a very good use of resources. Something that would bring the country together.
In any case, I was out surfing yesterday morning too. I caught a rib-high right and was ready to really get into it when a vulnerable adult learner, male, aged 55+, dropped out of the sky, nearly landing right on me. While not as dynamic as the Kai Lenny footage, it was scary.
#IStandWithKai
#BraveBoy
Loading comments...
Sean Penn's famous Vans scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and, inset, John John Florence wins last-ever significant Pipeline Masters in 2021. | Photo: Fast Times at Ridgemont High/WSL
How Vans and WSL destroyed surfing’s most prestigious cultural relic The Pipeline Masters
The Pipeline Masters was a contest whose crown was almost as gilded as a world title. Slater would win it seven times, as a twenty year old in 1992, and aged almost forty-two in 2013. Andy Irons won four times, 2002 through 2008, and it hosted multiple world title showdowns, the most precious Andy v Kelly in 2003 and Italo v Gabriel in 2019.
In a wild and fitting last breath, it gifted victory to John John Florence in 2021. The Hawaiian took his iron hard-on and blew the achey pressure in his balls into his first, and only, Pipe Masters crown. Fitting that his little brother Ivan, who also grew up at Pipe and who looks like a roughed up Mason Ho, scored a ten in the event and finished third.
Then, and as you may recall, a hammer was taken to this precious cultural relic when the WSL, and Vans who own the intellectual property rights to the Pipeline Masters, couldn’t swing a mutually satisfying agreement with Billabong for ‘em to continue as naming sponsor of the event.
See, because the WSL’s wanted to start the 2022 season in Hawaii and end it at Trestles in September, they had to run the 2021 Pipe Masters in January. Therefore there couldn’t be two events in the same year so the usual December slot wasn’t used.
This meant that for 2022, the WSL had to juggle the events and come up with new dates and names.
The Volcom Pipe Pro got dropped in favour of Billabong taking over that slot, renaming it, awkwardly, Billabong Pro Pipeline.
The Pipeline Masters still runs on its usual dates, December 8-20, 2022, but it’s an invite-only event with a focus on Vans-sponsored surfers. Cash is good, broadcast is fun, the gals get their share of the waves and loot, but it ain’t no Pipeline Masters.
This year, Vans ain’t even pretending to invite the best in the biz.
Problem here is the confusion the switcharoo brings to surfing history. A week before his fiftieth birthday in 2022, Kelly Slater, looking like an old-school bull dagger with his thick neck and shaved head, won the Billabong Pro Pipeline.
It should’ve been his eighth Pipeline Masters title, and plenty of newsrooms were labelling it as such.
Between sobs Slater said, “I committed my life to this.”
Terrified land barons, aggravated drivers and a whole lotta finger pointing.
Big wave season snuck into Oahu’s North Shore over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, terrifying land barons, aggravating drivers and thrilling the few surfers who saw it coming. The swell, which was not predicted by forecasting giant Surfline, left everyone confused, baffled, altogether kerflummoxed.
“We didn’t know when to go,” one frustrated surf hopeful left flatfooted in California was overheard mumbling to a neighbor.
“Start with a bang, you know, swell definitely under forecast,” Ocean Safety Lt. Kyle Foyle told Hawaii News Now. “Surf was a very large and surges this morning especially with that high tide earlier this morning.”
While thrilling surfers who track their own swells, the sneaky pulse alarmed home owners who woke up at midnight to the sound of pounding waves. Randy Meyers, who lives on Ke Nui Road, declared, “In the middle of the night I heard the surf, I came down and it was way bigger than anyone anticipated but still the direction of the swell was favorable to this beach – even though it’s taken out a lot of sand it’s not causing any damage.”
He was pleased to see a lack of plastic debris and tarps etc. on the beach. Fights have broken out between neighbors, there, over illegal structures that are erected in order to halt erosion but often magnify the troubles. You will certainly recall surf great Kelly Slater getting snared in “burrito-gate.”
While Mr. Meyers was momentarily pleased, this time around, tourists and commuters were very much dismayed. The extra high tide pushed sand up onto the Kam Highway, snarling traffic and sending drivers into fits of rage against the aforementioned Surfline.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have gone!” cried one depressed snorkel enthusiast hoping to peek underneath placid seas.
So far no word from the World Surf League.
Loading comments...
Two Port Macquarie surfers, Toby Begg, left, and the late Zac Young, dead at nineteen.
Surfer Toby Begg who lost leg in wild multi-pronged Great White attack returns to ocean
Begg to join memorial paddle out for fellow Port Mac surfer Zac Young, killed by shark aged nineteen.
Back in August, surfer Toby Begg was belted by a twelve-foot Great White in Port Macquarie, a holiday hamlet midway between Sydney and Byron Bay, losing half of his right leg and much of the utility in his left.
He was dragged so far underwater it went dark and he thought he was going to drown. He was only able to swim for the surface after his foot ripped off at the ankle.
Back on the surface, the Great White hit him again, Toby Begg scrunching into a ball, which would save his life, but causing his leg to take most of the impact.
“Then he was on the surface punching it in the head for ages,” a BeachGrit source close to Beggs said. “Both his hands were balloons from hitting it. After 30 seconds it let go and he started paddling in. It’d severed the femoral artery in his leg and the only thing that saved him was there was a doctor and emergency room nurse walking on the beach (separately who didn’t know each other). His foot is gone and they’re saying his other leg might come off at the hip but they’re trying to save it. He’s a mad keen surfer and wants to get back in the water.”
After Mick Fanning called him in hospital and gave him a pep talk about how he’d bounce back Toby Begg reportedly said, ‘That was nice of him, but the shark snapped his fucking leg rope… I’ve lost my foot and maybe my leg, so I dunno what he was going on about.’”
Epic sense of humour, yes?
The off-duty doctor who was on the beach, Kurt Durbridge, recalled, “As I reach the knee-high water, I can see a man who is as white as a ghost with horrific injuries and a massive bloody laceration to his left thigh and a traumatic amputation of his right foot.”
Anyway, Toby Begg is getting back in the water today as part of what is hoped to be a world record paddle-out for a local kid who was killed by a shark ten years ago.
Zac’s daddy Kev is making a documentary of his kid’s life called, Forever Young, and want 682 surfers to join the paddle out and join hands for sixty seconds.
Loading comments...
Lynchie, stitched back together after errant fin scoops out her guts.
Venice woman says, “I almost died” after being impaled on her fins at Waco Surf, Texas!
"I have a lot of thoughts about what it means to almost die on a two-foot head dip in a pool in Central Texas."
A Californian surfer has barely avoided an audience with her maker after she was impaled on her fin and belted her head on the concrete bottom at the world’s premier wave pool, Waco Surf.
Nicole Lynch, who hails from Venice Beach, was into her fourth session at Waco Surf when she got bounced in the barrel.
“As I tumbled I hit the bottom, my fin stabbed me in the gut as hard as anything I’ve ever felt,” she writes.
“My head slammed on the concrete bottom of the (Waco Surf) pool. The pain was excruciating, I had a massive egg on my head and a protrusion like an alien fist sticking out of my abdomen.”
“I have a lot of thoughts about what it means to almost die on a two-foot head dip in a pool in Central Texas.”
Things went south real fast.
“CT Scans at the local ER revealed terrifying news: I was bleeding internally from my aorta, the main blood vessel that comes out of the heart and feeds the body. I needed to be transported to a Grade 1 Trauma hospital immediately. They made arrangements to helicopter me to Baylor Hospital, every minute counted. There I was whisked straight into the operating room for emergency surgery.
“When I woke up I heard the news. I had suffered a Grade 3 traumatic aortic rupture. The bulge from my stomach was a traumatic abdominal wall hernia. Because the blow was so strong, they needed to remove all of my internal organs and visually inspect them to ensure there was no other damage. I am left with a massive 11 inch incision spanning the length of my abdomen. The doctors say the best I can hope for is an 80% recovery of my abdominal strength. I spent 5 days in the hospital.
“I’m lucky to be alive, that Doc Faye was with me likely saved my life. She is a fucking legend! And Veronica who ran point on everything and slept with Faye in the ICU so they could keep an eye on me every second. My sisters Amy and Nicole red-eyed out to Texas to be by my side. I received excellent care every step of the way.”
Later she wrote to BeachGrit a little sardonically, “I have a lot of thoughts about what it means to almost die on a two-foot head dip in a pool in Central Texas.”
Lynch ain’t the first surfer to nearly die at a wave pool.
BJ was sitting next to the owner of the pool, got a little close to the wall and, next thing, he’s fighting for his life.
Last year when I got sucked into a wave pool engine room and thought I was going to die… I kept thinking “don’t die for your kids” I was surfing for a about an hour and the line started getting longer to catch the wave. I was sitting next to the owner of the wave pool by the “wall” where the waves come from. The first wave it shoots out is a dud to get everyone ready for the next wave. The dud wave came back and because I was so close to the wall the wave swallowed me and pushed me and my surfboard underneath a huge cement wall.
I remember feeling like I was getting sucked in a pipe and at that moment I got scared. It ended up pushing me into a big dark cement room that fills up with water to push the next wave for the wave pool. It felt like I was in the movie SAW or Final destination. The room would fill up with water to the top and I would hold my breath and then it would push the water out to make the wave and it was really rough inside there.
Everything I bumped up against in the room that hurt me got infected. I got a bad sinus infection and a couple facial fractures from getting knocked around the cement walls and from the fractures the dirty water got in my face and infected my whole sinus. I was on antibiotics for three weeks for my face.
While I was in the wave pool engine room I knew that one of my friends outside from big island is a legendary surfer and I knew he would come in there to rescue me so I stayed calm. A lot of other people might have panicked and maybe gave up but I just stayed strong for my kids.
Anyway to make a long story short I survived that mother fucker 😛😛😛 !! The name of the people and water park have been left out. I not the kine guy shows up to your house to play and gets hurt and tries to sue you so all love ❤️ to everyone who helped me get there and helped me survive 🤙 Maybe I was the first guy in history to get sucked into a wave pool engine room while it is in operation but no matter what happens in life and no matter how scary it is if I can offer you any advice I would just say to “stay calm”. If I didn’t fight tough cunts my whole life I might have panicked, but it was just another day in the office
Shane Dorian, who was the legendary Big Island surfer who saved BJ, replied, “Happy you kept it together down there. That was really terrifying. Live to shred another day!”
A statement from URBNSURF said they’d reviewed the footage which showed “the surfer collapsed while paddling out and did not the hit the wall”.
A surfer who was in the lineup when the incident happened says the man “didn’t make the drop on a wave and just kind of tumbled and then all I saw was him floating but that was a little bit after…it took some time for people to get to him. It was weird. They did CPR on him for twenty minutes and then put a sheet over him and we all assumed the worst.”
