Mick Fanning's soft blue eyes gaze adoringly at The Snake's loveliness. Do you know where this wave is? Do you want one thousand dollars?

Reward: $1000 for revealing location of Mick Fanning’s secret wave!

Derek Rielly

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We offer money for your soul!

Late last night, the Torquay-based wetsuit company Rip Curl released a short video where Mick Fanning introduces the apparently gravely ill Tyler Wright to his secret wave called The Snake.

You remember the wave’s initial debut, yes?

It set the world alight but was quickly forgotten as well all moved into the chlorine sphere. What would’ve, five years previously, been in the headlines for a month evaporated with a week.

As Rip Curl posted at the time:

What if I told you there was an unknown sand-bottom right that is five kilometres long, breaks 20 metres off the beach, holds six foot of swell and has only been surfed by four people on the entire planet? Would you believe me? What if good-ol’-having-a-year-off-Mick Fanning was one of those surfers, and he told you that this wave had him haulin’ arse like an F1 driver down a strip of sand that never seemed to end. Would you believe him? – This ain’t no fucking wave pool! This is the real world. This is The Snake.

Refresh your memory here.

In this latest reveal, the film begins with an awkward phone call between Tyler and Mick where Mick promises the defending world champ the perfect training camp for Surf Ranch (Tyler has since withdrawn due to an “ongoing illness”) and soon turns into a session in little chest-high peelers.

It ain’t like the first film, or anything close to ol Naxto’s clip that also dropped today, but it’s enough to elevates my blood pressure.

Now. Question.

Do you know where this wave is and what conditions it needs to press its buttons? (I’m guessing north-west swell, Atlantic Ocean.)

Yes? 

How much, therefore, for your soul?

For the first person to give BeachGrit, which includes the emaciated semi-invalid Chas and, me, the promiscuous humper, the keys to this kingdom I offer one thousand dollars.

We won’t tell (another) soul but we do wish to satisfy our curiosity and to provide an occasional getaway.

You can email, anonymously, derek@beachgrit or [email protected].

We’ll investigate your directions and, if correct, will credit the reader with one thousand dollars.

Watch: “Surfing The World’s Dirtiest Deep Throat!”

Derek Rielly

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It promises physical pain and filth!

This compelling short is part two of Natxo Gonzalez‘ attempts to surf a piping sandbar righthander somewhere…mmmm… in North Africa, one would think.

In part one, released last October, Natxo finds his sandbar right after much desert combing but despite a little of that Basque soul-based brute machismo chickens out after two waves.

“When I was here for the first time with (filmmaker) Jon, I was really scared at times. The wave breaks in really shallow water, we were all alone. After catching a couple of waves, I stopped surfing. Not because I was tired or the waves stopped, it was simply too dangerous. There was no one around, it is a long drive to the nearest town and an even longer one to the nearest hospital.”

In part two, Naxto brings pals and they lynch the joint.

“Not only was the angle of the swell a little easier, to have your best friends around makes you feel more safe and charge harder. And as they say: sharing is caring. It’s just the best thing in the world if you can share perfect waves with your best friends.”

Cheesy, yeah, but maybe a little poignant too. For what are we without the love of another man in the desert?

Full-length documentary: The Mad Hueys in “I’d swim through an ocean of shit gasses for a good time!”

Derek Rielly

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The heartwarming story of a group of have-nots who suddenly became fabulously successful…

There’s little subtlety in the group of Queensland surfers who call themselves The Mad Hueys. Stripped to the waist, punctured beer can in hand, rod (fishing) in the other. Riding on boats. Jetskis. Waves. Hollering and clapping their hands, talking that nasty sweet shit as they hump the inanimate, fish, surfboards etc.

The epithet Mad Huey hit Australian surfers’ lexicon sometime in the early 2000s, from the lips of Gold Coast surfers Damon Nichols and co, first, and popularised in the larger community by the celebrity Taj Burrow and his photographer John Respondek. If you did something impressively crazy, took off on a ten-foot closeout, threw a dozen shots down your throat or similar, you would be a Mad Hui.

For legal reasons, I believe, the spelling was altered to Huey.

This very long documentary of forty minutes will maim your entire morning but does explain the genesis of what has become a successful brand.

Oh it’s a loaded syringe.

A problem not easily solved!

Wipeout reel: “Bitch-swiped!”

Derek Rielly

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Aggressive misandry!

This three-minute wipeout reel was filmed on the east coast of Australia at a handful of photographic (and film) staples.

In it, paddle-in surfers (mostly), behave as if they were religious zealots dotted around the edge of a volcano, suddenly diving headlong into the abyss as if to invoke a sense of the divine.

What strikes me about the film, or more correct this montage, is the chaos of the game. Men paddle down the face of a ten-footer, do everything right, set a rail here, dodge a flared lip there, only to be knocked for a loop.

Engrossing. 

Surfing in post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima: “The Radiation is down and the surf is up!”

Derek Rielly

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"Great nature and great waves!"

Remember that damn earthquake and the tsunamis that tore hell out of Japan in 2011? It was the biggest quake to hit Japan in recorded history, and the fourth biggest in the world since record-keeping began. A nine on the richter scale. 

Sixteen thousand dead, six thousand injured, a few thousand disappeared.

In Fukushima, which is home to some fine waves and whose name translates as Happy Island, the nuclear power plant overheated, blew to pieces and showered the town with radiation. One hundred thousand people fled their homes. The second-biggest nuclear disaster after Chernobyl.

Not the sorta joint you’d imagine as a surf vacay.

But, as this video produced by the Olympic channel points out, the waves still pump, the locals call the atmosphere “cosy and we welcome other surfers” and you can stroll through stores and car yards and schools that look the same as the day they were abandoned.

(Examine photos here.)

A lucid and interesting documentary.