Boat almost kills surfers in New Zealand.
"They just drove like straight through everybody. It's an absolute miracle no-one got hurt."

Out-of-control boat speeds through popular New Zealand lineup nearly mincing surfers!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

"It could have easily chopped them [surfers] up and landed on them..."

New Zealand is a gorgeous earthly paradise not usually confronted with bad behavior or dumb selfish ambition. Its small population generally greets each other over bowls of Weet-Bix, each morning, before continuing the day being polite and jovial. In the evening, parents tuck children into beds, regaling them with stories of when the Hobbits cared for the land. Bagginses, Boffins, Gogganses etc.

Well, the idyll was shattered today after video was revealed of an out-of-control boat purposefully speeding through Raglan’s Manu Bay, nearly hacking surfers to pieces.

Ben Barr, owner of a popular surf cam website, was stunned by the footage (watch here), telling Stuff, “It’s really unusual behaviour. They just drove like straight through everybody. It’s an absolute miracle no-one got hurt. It could have easily chopped them [surfers] up and landed on them because they [boatie] had no control over what they were doing.”

He continued to share that some surfers approached the boat ramp in an angry mood, ready to confront the potential executioners but they seemed addled.

“They came from way out at sea and in the area. They were really confused or something was weird because they went into a lagoon further out. You don’t go in there, particularly not in a boat,” he explained.

At the end, a few locals filed a police report.

No word, at time of writing, if Luke Cederman was one of them.

The following video is an artist’s re-creation of the offending boat’s crew and passengers.

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Great White kills surfer at Granites in South Australia.
Great White kills surfer at Granites in South Australia.

Iconic Aussie surf town in mourning after young local surfer killed by Great White

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

Four surfers hit and killed by Great White sharks in South Australia in a year and a half.

The hard-core South Australian surf town of Streaky Bay, staring straight into the Great Australian Bite and wearing every Southern Ocean swell, is is mourning tonight after one if its sons was killed by a Great White while surfing at Granites thirty clicks west of town. 

The surfer, twenty-eight, born and bred Streaky Bay boy now living in Port Lincoln, had caught and ridden a wave to the inside where he was attacked by the Great White. 

His surfboard was found seven hundred metres out to sea with the familiar half a legrope and large circumference bite mark. 

Ten hours earlier, local fisherman and surfer Jeff Schmucker had posted a warning for surfers to stay away from Granites after one mate’s cray pots had been grabbed by a frenzying Great White and another mate, fishing for whiting, had been stunned by a sixteen-foot Great White attacking the little fish in a couple of feet of water.

“Heads up to all the surfers at Granites today. There is a large aggressive Great White very close to Granites/Indicators.” 

Jeff Schmucker's warning to surfers not to surf Granites.
Jeff Schmucker’s warning to surfers not to surf Granites.

Last October, 55-year-old Tod Gendle was hit, killed and disappeared by a fifteen-foot Great White while surfing among a crowd of a dozen surfers at Granites. 

The Great White left only Genle’s board and the stub of his legrope. 

Two months later, teenager Khai Cowley was killed by a Great White while surfing at Ethels on the state’s Yorke Peninsula, thirty two nautical miles across the Spencer Gulf. 

Earlier in the year, and just a hundred clicks south, local school teacher Simon Baccanello was killed by a Great White while surfing at Walkers Rocks in Elliston. A brave soul, Baccanello warned others to split as the shark started swimming towards him telling terrified kids in the lineup, “Don’t worry, get yourself to shore”.

A local expert, who keeps his name outta these things ’cause he doesn’t need the headache of city lefties hectoring him about these majestic fish, told me last year that this was only the beginning.

He pointed to the end of the large mesh gill net fishery, closed for fifteen years, and the protection of the Great White as the culprits. 

“It got worse because we stopped killing ’em,” he told me tonight. “I was catching two a trip in the gill nets and then, fifteen years ago, stopped using the gill nets and the numbers got out of control. I had a bad feeling about this. I rang another mate and he had just caught and killed one on his longline, an incidental catch. They’re aggressive and it’s a recipe for disaster.”

He said if people want to retrieve the body of the local kid, “there’s fuck all you can do. If you want him, you gotta catch the shark. It would give people around here some closure.”

A pause and an ironic laugh.

“Good old West Coast, eh.”

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Raimana Van Bastolaer with Prince Harry at Kelly Slater Surf Ranch
Raimana Van Bastolaer with pal and tube-hunter Prince Harry at Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch

Prince Harry introduces five-year-old son Archie to the Sport of Kings at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch

Derek Rielly

By Derek Rielly

"In Tahiti, we still call you Prince Harry. But at Surf Ranch, it's my brother. It was an honour to have you surf with me and Kelly Slater." 

In the early Californian autumn of 2024, the former Tahitian bodyboarder turned surf coach to the world’s rich and beautiful Raimana Van Bastolaerposted a short clip of exiled royal Prince Harry deftly hunting tubes at the Kelly Slater wave pool in Lemoore.

The coach, Raimana Van Bastolaer, whose rags to riches story has been detailed several thousand times on these pages, shared the moment with the forty-year-old red-headed prodigal son who is sometimes called the Prince of Wails and who first started surfing five years ago after a gift of surfing lessons from his wife, the actress Meghan Markle.

Harry showed remarkable poise, deftly lowering his lower ballast to the deck to maintain a terrific stability in the man-made tubes, something that eludes many for an entire lifetime. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Raimana Van Bastolaer (@raimanaworld)

Now, it can be revealed, or only partly revealed since the photo has been deleted, that Harry took his five-year-old kid Archie, currently eighth in line to the British throne and one slot ahead of disgraced Prince Andrew, to the Slater Ranch to experience the special joys of being coaxed, and coached, into barrels by Raimana. 

In the deleted photo, we see Harry and Archie or, to use the lil man’s correct title, Prince Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, sitting on Raimana’s jetski, waiting for the train to roll down its track and create the famous perfect wave.

Raimana wrote, “In Tahiti, we still call you Prince Harry. But at Surf Ranch, it’s my brother. It was an honour to have you surf with me and Kelly Slater.”

Harry has long displayed an affinity with the ocean and its creatures. In his best-selling memoir Spare he describes communing with seals in Scotland.

“Just as Pa instructed, I ran to the water’s edge, sang to them. Serenaded them. Arooo. No answer. Meg joined me, and sang to them, and now of course they sang back. She really is magic, I thought. Even the seals know it.”

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Christmas Mavericks’ wave potentially smashes record for largest ever surfed!

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

"Is that a 200ft wave?"

New year, new you. Or is it? Did 2025 dawn with a renewed sense of ambition, focus, energy or do you feel much like you did at the end of 2024 only grimmer? Well, in either case, the world record for largest wave ever surfed might have just been shattered on Christmas Eve Eve and not at the newer normals Nazare or Jaws but trusty ol’ Mavericks.

Newsweek is reporting that a wave ridden by Alessandro “Alo” Slebir on Dec. 23 towered over 108 ft. The current record belongs, of course, to Sebastian Steudtner and his 86-footer tacked out at the aforementioned Portuguese Python.

A who’s who of big wave greats immediately weighed in on the legendary feat.

Kai Lenny declared, “100 foot wave.”

Thomas Victor Carroll added, “Biggest one!! Easy 100ft+”

Koa Rothman wondered, “Is that a 200ft wave?”

Bianca Valenti remarked, “That’s gotta be a world record.”

Slebir humbly opined, “Regardless of the number, it really doesn’t matter how big the wave was to me. It was really the biggest wave of my life and that’s all I really care about at the moment.”

Of the wave itself, he shared, “It felt different. When I turned at the bottom, it felt like I was being sucked back up the face. I knew it was a big wave, but the speed made it hard to grasp just how big. When I reached the channel and heard the cheers, I realized it was something extraordinary.”

Extraordinary indeed.

Wow.

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Question: Do advancements in big wave surf protection make our heroes look like Beanie Babies?

Chas Smith

By Chas Smith

Come at me.

We live in the future, almost ten years past the future in fact, for who can forget when one Marty McFly traveled to 2015, in 1985, and witnessed a world full of wonders? Skateboards that hovered on air, shoes that tied themselves, little baby Pizza Hut pizzas that expanded to full-size Pizza Hut pizzas when placed in special microwaves and, best, jackets that could dry themselves and maybe inflate.

Alas, our future is a little bleaker than Hill Valley’s though we do have jackets that puff right up and they are worn by our hard-charging big wave surfers. But can I be honest with you for one moment? I find big wave surf protection hideously ugly. The business was brought to a head, for me, during the just-passed Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational. The action thrilled, no doubt, our heroes and heroines putting on a historic show and yet I couldn’t get past their bulging back bladders, giant chest bladders and hip pads that extend far beyond anything worn by National Football League players.

Now, I completely understand the adornment at waves like Jaws or Nazare. Mutants that not even McFly would dare paddle even if called a chicken. But Waimea? The Edward, himself, paddled those beasts basically nude. An extremely rude take, no doubt, and coming from a surf journalist who feels a shiver up the spine when playful North County San Diego reaches heights of 4 – 6ft.

But facts are facts.

Ross Clarke-Jones, it must be noted, went without the pillows, almost lost his hand, hacked a dark and drank a beer while the aforementioned appendage was being re-attached.

Ross Clarke Jones almost loses hand in horror wipeout.
Ross Clarke-Jones gets on a heater while contest nurse saves his paw.

Do you have thoughts?

David Lee Scales and I discussed, anyhow, during one of our weekly chats and also continued an important delve into clock milking.

Essential.

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Photo: Justin Jay/@justinjayphoto
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