"We're going to see if we can stand up on a wave…"

Like a red-hot balloon ready to pop, Nathan Florence ain’t gonna die wondering if a wave is surfable.

And, here in a video from his recent holiday in Western Australia, we find the almost thirty year old finger-stroking a wave he says had only ever been surfed by bodyboarders.

“Love surfing waves I’ve never surfed before,” says Florence. “This one may have only been surfed by bodyboarders previously, but we did our best to get to our feet… Big ones hard to find an entry but they were beautiful to watch gurgle through.”

Nathan Florence was previously on your screens one month ago when he quit his 100-ish percent sponsorship with Vans to ride for big bro John John.

Significant cameos in the include the teenager Ned Hart, a Nazare-Shipstern-The Right-charging super kid whose ability to ride waves that give other men bulging, terror-bright eyes has made him a media sensation.

And pointing the camera at the event is Chris Whitey, a literal Ninja warrior and bodyboard legend who came into the wider world’s focus almost a decade ago when Kelly Slater saved his wife and kid from drowning in Hawaii.

The pair had were swept across the North Shore’s Kam Highway by one of those great North Shore pulses. The kid, who was strapped into his pram, was separated from mammy and deposited upside down, drinking water etc.

Now, if your kid and gal were washed across the Kam Highway by a rogue wave, who’d you want to be there to scoop ‘em up?

How about Kelly Slater, who just happened to be around ‘cause he couldn’t get out at giant Waimea?

A ludicrous dream, no?

But there he was, talking to a pal at the lifeguard tower at Rockpiles when he saw the catastrophe about to unfold: women in headphones, with pram, on bike path, about to be belted.

So he runs over, gets to the pram, flips it upright, gets the kid’s head out of the water, scoops sand out of his mouth so he can breathe, helps out mammy, gives ‘em a lift home.

Ever since, Chris and Kelly have been buddies, “He’s a surf Jesus,” says Chris

And, so, it must be said, is Nathan Florence.

Essential.

For a man whose immutable sadness is masked by vivacity, Dane Reynolds is still worth all the pro surfers in the world combined.

The Bakersfield surfer Dane Reynolds, known for his intuitive and explosive style of surfing and who was rated fourth in the world thirteen years ago, has showcased his dramatic weight loss in a new film released earlier today.

The almost-forty-year-old, a father of three and a millionaire a few times over, is famous for his daddy body, massive like the country that gave him birth.

Yet when he surfs, and as I’ve previously noted, he becomes like a cowboy of the Westerns: ready to fire his guns at the drop of a hat, getting into a rage at the least provocation.

In his latest video, filmed six months after he was nearly killed after a blow to thread left him hospitalised, we see a leaner, sleeker Dane Reynolds, down to 200 pounds or thereabouts, surfing freshly and originally.

For a man who turned the simple act of pro surfing into a metaphysical tragedy, and whose immutable sadness is masked by vivacity, Dane Reynolds is still worth all the pro surfers in the world combined.

Essential.

"Death is always just a stone's throw away!"

Last Hawaiian winter, the carrot-topped king of Pipeline Jamie O’Brien, a forty-year-old man who looks like a hamburger on a griddle, was almost killed in a freak accident at the Waimea rivermouth.

Do you remember?

The famous Waimea River had become swollen like never before following wild rains and locals had opened it up to create the biggest rivermouth waves ever seen.

Jamie O’Brien tried to ride it only to be sucked out to sea and when he eventually returned he said he’d almost died.

“Gnarliest experience ever,” said Jamie O’Brien. “I got sucked into the vortex of all vortexes! I knew that it was going to be the biggest river wave ever ridden. It was sending me everywhere. I was like, ‘Don’t fall on this, Jamie. Don’t fall.’ I couldn’t control my board, and I honestly just fell right back. It’s like a 10 or 12 foot wave, and it sucked me back. Then there was another wave, and it was just as big, and I’m like, ‘oh my god. I’m gonna die. My leash is gonna break. I’m in a very bad spot.”

Despite the brush with mortality, not his first let’s add for who can forget the terrible day when Mr O’Brien was almost slaughtered on rocks at Waikiki, today we find our second-favourite vlogger using his GoPro to give his fans a taste of what it’s like to surf in the Pipe Masters.

And, more than surfing the heat, but what it’s like to be Jamie O’Brien, with all the fans, the endless requests for selfies and autographs and a man who looks like he never forgets to butter his muffins telling Jamie he’ll give him anything he wants and that he’s going to DM him about something or other.

In the heat, alongside Koa Rothman, Eli Olson and Makai McNamara, the viewer sees everything Jamie O’Brien sees. We take off into what might be a heat winner but the force of the blowback sends the 2004 Pipe Master tumbling.

We get caught inside, our breathing becomes laboured, we feel the turbulence of the most dangerous wave in the world.

Eventually, we survive only to be accosted by more surf fans and are soon forced to flee the beach to our modest home one hundred feet from the sand.

Essential.