After crossing thousands of nautical miles together, the crew of Falcor, which includes the two-time champ John John Florence far left and his brother Jan, middle, were bonded by the sea and its secrets forever.

Bluewater sailing: John Florence in “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it!”

Derek Rielly

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Soar across the Pacific with John John Florence and pals…

You ever wanted to throw the ropes and point a boat somewhere thousands of miles beyond?

Four years ago, the two-time world champ John John Florence declared, “My ultimate goal with sailing is to be able to travel fast, cover long distances, and go surfing. I want to combine the two.”

So he buys snowboarder Travis Rice’s forty-eight foot cat, Falcor, with its three “queen berths” (everyone’s a queen at sea), one thousand feet of sail area and a main saloon where all sorts of naughty and dangerous activities often take place at sea, and follows a dream.

This ain’t no cheap boat with narrow cots and a large mirror shard on top of a steamer trunk and some taped-up magazine pictures on the wall.

A fine vessel built for adventurous trans-Pacific voyages.

Of all the edits and series doin’ the rounds this draws gypsy rings around ’em all.

I swear if you look closely you'll see Strider's tongue unfurl like an iguana's.

Problematic: Dancing woman squats over face of WSL commentator Strider Wasilewski; and the gang-bang of a beautiful teenage surf star by “heavily therapeuticised muscle men in matching singlets!”

Derek Rielly

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Oh those naughty nineties…

So what can I tell you about the unfortunate nineties?

The giant suits, the skinny surfboards, the dying days of a western patriarchy where rich young men laughed at “begging peasants” in Jakarta and naive boys on their first trip overseas were trussed up like pigs by heavily therapeuticised muscle men in matching singlets; and a dancing woman at a hillbilly hoe-down squats over the face of a man who will one day become the WSL’s number one commentator, exposing her smooth and, likely, damp underparts.

Heady days although this sorta behaviour now poses a “problem” and “raises issues”.

When I watch the movie below I think, ooowee, these boys knew how to live.

Chip Wilson, pretty in pink.

Essential: Watch Chippa Wilson and Balaram Stack in “Pink Flamingos!”

Derek Rielly

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"I'm all dressed up and ready to fall in love."

In this film by Canadian filmmaker Ben Gulliver, we see the Australian Chippa Wilson, and New Yorker Balaram Stack, release a murderous hammering at off-season Waco wave tank, flavoured pink.

Surf films are, generally, too important to be left to surfers and therefore it has taken Gulliver, from Vancouver, to complete a film that thrills in much the same way as John Water’s classic Pink Flamingos.

The pitch in Pink Lemonade is simple: colour the water at Waco pink.

Surf and film.

The completed work is much bigger.

A gift from Gulliver whose work is so elevated it raises a finger to his peers as if to say, “Eat the bird, bitch!”

PINK LEMONADE from Ben Gulliver on Vimeo.

Oz likes The Birthday Party, seminal Australian band from 1981, Nick Cave on vocal noises.

Watch: Eighties fabulist and yellow-haired honeypot Oscar Langburne in “Well, he’s a fat little insect, hideous to the eye!”

Derek Rielly

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But such a pretty slumberous style!

Oscar Langburne is an Australian goofyfooter, in his seventeenth year, for whom eighties guitar bands hold the key to existence and who looks like a happy angel with black nail polish.

If you were to road-trip with the kid, your ears would tune in to a worldly mix of The Birthday Party, The Jam, The Cure, Television etc.

Oscar might be accused, correctly or incorrectly depending on your point of view, of mimicking the slack-kneed style of slumberous South African Craig Anderson, but this, I think, might be more of Oscar’s good taste dripping through rather than he playing a con.

This edit by Billy Lee-Pope, shows Oscar surfing Raglan, in New Zealand.

It was meant to be part of a two-pronged approach where the kid showed his chops in long lefts and long rights, the righthander was gonna be Winkipop, but COVID shuttered the Victorian experience.

On these little boards you can climb into even Backdoor's Byzantine domes.

Watch: Mason Ho give hell to Backdoor on a 4’9″ micro-whip, “A work of mastercraft, with perfectly beveled rim…”

Derek Rielly

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A day to blow or get blown…

One of the heroes of the North Shore is a young-ish man, thirty one years old, with light tea-coloured skin and hair so curly many believe he wears a woollen wig.

In this short film, Mason Ho, son of Mike, big bro of Coco, rides a four-foot-nine, seventeen-and-a-half-inch-wide Lost Mini Rad Ripper, a micro sled he expertly uses to caress various grooves.

At Backdoor of a reasonable size, Mason expert strays from the usual lines and employs footwork in a manner as hot as a teenage boy.

Watch and admire the textures.

Photo: Jack English
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