Big-wave world champ Billy Kemper finds absolution after the multiple tragedies, Erik Logan’s tears and a busted pelvis in final episode of ‘Billy’!

The tear-jerking conclusion of a wonderful six-part series… 

In the struggle and turmoil that agitate the USA today, Billy Kemper seems to belong to a remote and silent past.

Kemper, almost thirty-one, a four-time Jaws winner and the 2015 Big-Wave world champion, is a nobleman of the old school where struggle is hidden in some remote world of quiet contemplation.

You know the story, of course, or you should by now.

Billy is belted to within an inch of his life at a Moroccan ledge right at the start of the COVID pandemic, the hospital there don’t know what they’re doing, wrong drugs are administered, humiliating episodes of diarrhoea and so on, and so WSL Erik Logan moves heaven and hell to get him back to the US.

“Gonna bring you home, Billy,” Logan, an executive producer on the series whispers to Billy in episode three. 

There follows much rehabilitation, which includes cameos by Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece, and, today, his return to Jaws.

It ain’t the best episode, if we’re to be frank, but it still meets with high approval.


Former world number four surfer famous for his “go-for-broke” style details battle with loneliness and a bitterness that threatened to eat him alive: “They have an eagerness that I can’t relate to… full of energy and zest for life!”

"And they have friends. Friends they give surf reports to. Friends they surf with, and they laugh with each other and they surround me with their youthful exuberance."

In this, the tenth episode of Dane Reynolds’ newly launched vlog Chapter11 we find Reynolds, a former world number four surfer famous for his “go-for-broke” style lancing a bitterness that threatened to eat him alive.

Hard to imagine, yes?

The still-best-surfer-in-the-world’s homeostasis upset by the arrival of a younger, prettier, more popular and more energetic man?

Reynolds writes,

I used to hate Jake.

It was no fault of his own I was just being an asshole.

So here’s what happens – Every bright eye’d young kid with an NSSA win under their belt and a sticker on their nose eventually gets a drivers license and graduates high school and if they’re lucky enough to be earning a buck off said sticker they likely have no college or job or other responsibilities and are at the beach every goddamn day.

And they have friends. Friends they give surf reports to. Friends they surf with, and they laugh with each other and they surround me with their youthful exuberance.

When Jake was 18 I would have been a 29… just had my first kid, Quiksilver had just gone bankrupt, I was trying to figure out what’s next. Still filming and making a surf movie which would become Chapter 11. My time to surf became scheduled and limited. Clips became harder to capture. Crowds increased.

And there’s Jake. And his friends. At the beach every goddamn day. Full of energy and zest for life.

There’s a pattern with each new crop of kids. They first start showing up when the waves are good and then figuring out swells and wind and when to be at what spot and they have an eagerness that I can’t relate to and I feel like I can’t shake em and we surf the same peak every day and step on each other’s toes trying to do tricks for the camera and i get annoyed…

Then when I finally get to know them I feel like an asshole.

Jake turned out to be a fucken cool kid. As most of em do…

Here’s my highly evolved and mature fresh perspective –

I owe a lot to the older generation of surfers that accepted my group of friends. Virs and Purps would drive us around. Dunk us, burn us, introduce us to filmers and photographers take us to contests. Point out locals, rocks and other hazards. Miss those days. A part of why I wanted to start Chapter 11 tv is to rebuild that sense of fraternity and give the guys that i surf with an outlet as the surf industry evolves and becomes more fickle.

Jake lost his main sponsor last year and is handling it like a champ. He surfs cause he loves it and when there’s no waves he takes jobs as a PA on production sets. No bitterness. That’s something I admire.

And he’s surfing better than ever.

CH | 11 | TV | 010 from CHAPTER 11 TV on Vimeo.


Be wooed, again, by two-time world surfing champion John John Florence in striking ultra-slow motion edit, “I’m serious about the matter of good taste!”

Being a two-time world champion in your field grants one a certain license to naval gaze.

Posting six-and-a0-half minutes of oneself doing anything at 300 frames-per-second might come across as a bit self-indulgent, but then again what’s social media for if not a bit of narcissistic self-aggrandisement?

And being a two-time world champion in your field must grant one a certain license to naval gaze.

My personal favourite frame is the frame grab that fronts this story, taken at the roughly twenty-five second mark: John (John) turning off the top, working that action-figure swivel waist to sculpt a perfect bowl into the face – nature, body and board combining in perfect unison; poetry in 300fps motion; the gratifying blend of synergy and symmetry.

The flight of a hummingbird.

The leap of a cat.

The ripples on a lake from the first drop of morning rain etc. etc. and so on and so forth.

How does he do it? We know it’s not Spam.

Maybe it’s the adrenalin of a good night’s work updating his LinkedIn profile that gives him the drive to perform.

What can you do that’d be worth filming in 300fps for six and a half minutes?

I’m getting pretty good at flicking dried beans into my neighbour’s pot plants in the building next door. Bean on the nail of the middle finger.

Build tension against the thumb. Lionel Messi himself would weep.


Go-for-broke surfer Dane Reynolds combines with seminal 1970s Zambian band Amanaz in stunning paean to the misery of everyday surf!

Come see the multi-millionaire father of three at his tongue-in-cheek best… 

Here, in volume two of the Dane Reynolds’ series Shit Surf, we find the multi-millionaire father of three at his tongue-in-cheek best, quietly whispering with the purity of his simple, well-fed soul.

Although Reynolds’ version of shit waves differs from mine, he, and pals, display a gay, careless air that is impossible to ignore or not be moved by.

The featured song, Green Apple, from seminal Zambian rock gods Amanaz (“Ask Me About Nice Artistes In Zambia”), reminds us what a creative force and what fine taste in music Reynolds holds, Zam Rock rarely in the playlists of Californian surfers.


Watch tear-jerking penultimate episode of big-wave world champ Billy Kemper docu-series: “I’m in so much pain, I’m just trying to get through each second…”

Episode five of ‘Billy’… 

I’m not, by nature, a man given to tears or foolhardy flights of sentimentality.

I’m tolerably happy because I’m grateful for the absence of pain, and for life’s little pleasures, for my children, sunsets and for my daily mating ritual.

The six-part series, ‘Billy‘, which documents travails of big-wave world champion Billy Kemper who was seized by a Moroccan wave and dashed against rocks, breaking pelvis and knee, well, don’t it just poke a thumb into the eye.

Tears galore.

The episode grows chilly with the death of a dearly loved matriarch, the dreadful pain of rehabilitation and the separation of a man from his family.