Griff learned to surf on very small canvases. At J-Bay he cross-stitches it like an artist.

Griffin and “Bill” Crosby Colapinto star in “Hey Griff! Want me to run your board up?”

Derek Rielly

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Seven-and-a-half minutes in is the single greatest act of kindness ever seen in pro surfing!

In this fifteen-minute cut from the Colapinto brothers, we see rookie Griff as he unnerves his much older competitors at Jeffreys Bay with earth-rattling power and a style that emphasises his expressive potential.

Watch Griffin in his red wetsuit as contest footage is married to a swinging jazz track. He actually seems to be having…fun.

I think my favourite moment in the film happens when Griffin comes running out of the water mid-heat to go back up the point and the hardboiled photographer Jimmy Wilson begs to carry his board for him.

Griffin looks momentarily confused, these pro crafts weight only a few pounds afterall and he’ll have to stop and hand the board over losing a couple of seconds anyway, but being terribly polite he consents.

“Uh…sure.”

It’s a mesmerising moment.

Of course, not all pro surfers are so kind.

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The power of networking!

Wait: Is…this…the most perfect sandbottom right in the world?

Derek Rielly

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Better than Mick's Snake? A Snapper minus the thugs? A Rincon minus the logs?

All these mysterious sandbottom rights! In the latest look-at-this-empty-right film, we find the Portuguese filmmaker filmmaker Diogo d’Orey and his surfer Antonio Silva carving a path to what, I suppose, is another African right point.

Empty and gorgeous as hell, even if the rip “is like a river.”

“The feeling we got was like ecstasy,” says Diogo d’Orey. “We human beings like the comfort zone. There are few people who are willing to explore, to spend money. I love doing that. I love going up the point and seeing if there’s a wave behind there. I love getting out of the madness, the popular places, the touristic places in the search for solitude.”

Not that Diogo’s claiming discovery.

“We were lucky. We had friends, we had connections who…pointed… us that way.”

A forty-second tube midway through the film speaks volumes for the power of networking.

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Dan, left, early version of Cymatic, centre, and Kelly talk volume, planing area, rail line and the miracle ingredient that gets average surfers moving.

Watch: Kelly Slater and shaper Dan Thomson talk surfboard voodoo. “Look at usual things with unusual eyes!”

Derek Rielly

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Lennox Head shredder and shaper Daniel Thomson introduces Kelly Slater to the Cymatic… 

Three months ago, BeachGrit introduced you to the Slater Designs Cymatic via the words of Stephen “Longtom” Shearer.

As he wrote at the time, “The learning curve for the Cymatic is steep, very fucking steep. But somehow it started to make sense. The hull is so sensitive, even finned as a quad that the body riding it must develop a corresponding level of relaxation and sensitivity. Any tension or inappropriate body positioning is brutally punished. You don’t push to get where you need to be, you think it and the board will go there.”

(Read that here.)

In this fifteen-minute video from 2017, we find the Lennox Head shaper Daniel Thomson introducing Kelly Slater to a surfboard prototype that would become the Cymatic. Fifteen minutes is a hell of an investment, but the natural flow of conversation that covers volume, the relative unimportance of length (in a surfboard), the placement of channels and the depth of concaves will place the surfboard-design nerd in a state of ecstasy.

Take the blinkers off and watch.

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Koa Rothman has the power to wow!

Koa Rothman in “The best way to replace those calories is with sugar and carbs!”

Derek Rielly

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Dietary advice (and fluid surfing) from exciting Hawaiian Koa Rothman…

Koa Rothman is the likeable and cheerful younger brother of Makua and the son of that eternal breaker of men, Fast Eddie Rothman.

He is a twenty four year old whose short life has already been plump with drastic moments.

This, for example.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWLKoq1A7lh/?utm_source=ig_embed

And this, of course.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoArxjEgZaX/?hl=af&taken-by=koarothman

Over the course of the last four months, Koa’s has made twenty-one episodes of his blog series This is Livin. In this episode, which is three days old, Koa travels to southern California where he surfs Newport Beach (56th street), visits the online legal marijuana community Weed Maps, is awakened by a four-shot coffee, goes into a heavy trance after eating two large doughnuts, comes out of that delirium in time to surf okay-ish Wedge and so on, so forth etc.

Vigorous with undiminished flair.

 

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Long-disappeared Andy Irons Footage: “Full of raw torment!”

Derek Rielly

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Andy Irons' surfing throbbed with exertion, passion etc.

Andy Irons brought the thunder when the world was wilting under the heat of Kelly Slater. For three consecutive years, he owned the world title.

But, sometimes when you bring the thunder, you get lost in the storm: courting trouble, fits of temper, madness, the burden of it all.

Why bother with the modern world if it spawns so many poisons?

Therefore, ain’t it a nice thing to peel ourselves away from the anguish of Andy’s death almost a decade ago and melt into a bonus extra from Taylor Steele’s 2001 film, Momentum Under the Influence, a film populated by surfers under twenty three.

It’s a joy, an honour to watch.

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Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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