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.
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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.”
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Sweeny (center). Paradise lost (pictured). Photo: Instagram
Gold Coast surfer fumbles chance to win heart of Hollywood “it-girl” Sydney Sweeney!
It’s not every day that an Australian surfer has the opportunity to win the heart, maybe even the hand, of a Hollywood “it-girl.” Not even every year. Maybe every every other year if the Australian surfer carries the last name “Hemsworth” but for the average Jones, Campbell, Smith it is a rare, rare chance.
And so you can imagine the utter despair Miles Shepherd is feeling right now after fumbling his once-in-a-lifetime chance at Hollywood it-girl Sydney Sweeney.
Ooooeeeee!
The classic bogan, feat. bad sunglasses and curly brown mullet, narrates the scene from a perch on the sandy beach, beginning with, “So I’m just trying to process what just happened. I’m ups on the Gold Coast absolutely beautiful and I’m sitting on the towel, the sun’s out, I’m watching the surf and I tell myself, ‘Geez. Life can’t get much better…'”
But it did.
“My eyes were blessed with something I don’t think they’ll ever forget,” he continued. “You gotta think to yourself, ‘What does a magazine cover look like when the supermodel is on the front and she’s walking out dripping in water? What does that cover look like? What does the James Bond scene look like when the girl’s coming off the beach? What does Baywatch look like?’ Well that’s what I just experienced (pregnant pause) with Sydney Sweeney.”
He goes on describing his far away encounter with the “genuine A-lister,” amazed. Gobsmacked. Thoroughly wowed and posted his description to TikTok.
Sweeney truly is a zeitgeist actress. Star turns in Euphoria, The Voyeurs, Night Teeth, The White Lotus have launched the 26-year-old to the absolute moon. She is everything, everywhere all at once.
Well, Sweeney took to social media and direct messaged Shepherd “u should’ve said hi” including a dagger laughing-crying emoji as the ender. The twin fin enthusiast responded, “Ahaha yeah well how about I take you out and i can say hi for real x,” but she never responded.
Shepherd (right) with twin fin. Photo: Instagram
Ball very clearly fumbled.
Surf drop of the century?
Do you have a similar story? A moment in your life that you let slip that will forever and ever haunt?
Share, please.
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"I don't understand this 'assigned' thing," writes Kelly Slater in response to Malik Yoba beatdown. | Photo: @sensitiveseashellcollector
Kelly Slater shocks progressives with claim on Malik Yoba post that sex is “assigned at birth”
"I don't understand this 'assigned' thing. You're born a girl or a boy, end of story," says the world champ.
Empire star Malik Yoba, ooowee-oo he kinky as hell, and brave, after he told the world he was into pre-op trans-gals a few years back.
In a now deleted post on Instagram, Yoba, who also played a pivotal role in the cult film Cool Runnings, told fans,
It’s is NOT about GENITALIA OR SEX but about attraction to the soul and humanity of an individual and often hte beauty that is in the courage and conviction to live one’s truth! As a self-identified cis heterosexual man I too am learning what it means to be trans attracted.
Many of us famous and otherwise that have struggled with accepting our attraction so we do NOTHING. This MUST change.
Yoba, who is fifty-six, was subsequently accused by a trans-hooker of paying her for sex when she was a kid.
“What Malik paid me to do, as a 13 and 16 year old, wasn’t love,” Mariah Lopez Ebony wrote on Facebook.
“His ignoring that I was clearly a child prostitute, wasn’t love. Paying for cheap thrills and secret orgasms; begging for unsafe, unprotected sex from a runaway Trans teen, while enjoying stardom as a successful artist and businessman ….isn’t love.
“Where was his LOOOOOOOOVVVVEEE for Trans women over the last 20 years? Where are his Trans girlfriends? Something tells me I’m not the only one who got some dirt on this individual and, something also tells me that he didn’t just up-and-decide to ‘come out’, he was pushed.”
Anyway, he’s an ally, as they like to say, anything for that juicy She Dick I guess, but walked into a firestorm when he misspoke on a podcast about “naturally born cis gender women…”
“Assigned!” shrieks a panel member.
“Not naturally born! Nothing about it is natural! Nothing about that is natural!”
“Do the work!”
Etc.
Malik Yoba bravely soaks it up but keeps walking into slaps.
“Wait, what? I don’t understand this ‘assigned’ thing. You’re born a girl or a boy, end of story. How is this found to be offensive by anyone! And how do they end up in a conversation getting to belittle and bully anyone who doesn’t keep up with this quickly changing narrative?
“You’re free to tell me how you identify and I’ll respect the individual for it you’re not brainwashing objective truth out of my head. Imagine Aretha Franklin rolling over in her grave right now thinking Natural Woman would be cancelled.”
Wise or foolish words?
Do the cultural math etc and leave thoughts, ideas below the line.
Four weeks ago, the surf world fell into deep mourning as it was revealed that Matthew Perry had drowned. The beloved Friend had, just months previously, run afoul of the aforementioned watery group after he wished Keanu Reeves dead in his acclaimed memoir. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die,” he penned “but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”
Surf fans, of course, venerate Reeves as a saint after his portrayal of Johnny Utah in Point Break, which remains one of the best surf movie ever made and were ready to march upon Perry’s Pacific Palisades home with pitchforks. The 54-year-old quickly realized his error and apologized to Reeves, declaring he would remove the line from forthcoming editions of his book.
The surf world breathing a sigh of relief.
Now, the other best surf movie ever made is certainly Fast Times at Ridgemont High which brought to us Jeff Spicoli marvelously portrayed by Sean Penn. The star turn, really, created the surfer stereotype which has survived until this day.
Penn recently sat down with Piers Morgan and reflected on Matthew Perry, saying, “What a talented guy. I can’t claim to have known him well, but I liked him very much.” He then went on to praise him for his book, the people it would help etc. before adding, “It’s tragic, I can’t say that I was terribly surprised. I don’t know what the whole coroner’s report things and everything, but I know he had done a lot of damage to his organs over the years.”
Surf wisdom, I suppose, and it certainly is interesting that Matthew Perry had direct ties to the two greatest surf actors in the last days of his life.
