Surf vlogger Ben Gravy films near-death 20-second wipeout at Waimea Bay!

"It was like in a movie. I was completely out of air and I was still swimming to the top. I can't believe I made it."

Ben Gravy is a high-end intermediate surfer from New Jersey whose pivot from drinking to vlogging saved him, he says, from a life as a drunk.

“I drank like a fish,” says a man who now pays his bills promptly and who owns a title-free automobile.

As long-time fans of the novelty wave maestro but wary of falling for his skilful headlines, we were initially sceptical of his latest edit, “Nightmare Wipe Out Scenario 20 Second Hold Down.” 

But, reader, this is better than being manipulated pleasurably by the hand of a woman with tawny-browny hair and plump-thighed legs.

The edit doesn’t mess around.

In the opening scene, Ben Gravy staggers through the beach car park as a camera operator yells,

“Did you almost die out there? I filmed the whole thing! Dude, you had less than a second to catch your breath before that second wave came on top of you!”

Gravy chokes back the tears.

“I’m not kidding. It was black dark and I’m trying to look around. It was like in a movie. All that stuff you hear people talking about. It was dark and I was completely out of  air and I was still swimming to the top. I can’t believe I made it to the top.”

Harrowing, essential, life-changing.

As Gravy writes in the liner notes,

“I broke my rule in Hawaii & I went surfing on the last day of the trip,” writes Gravy. “It was especially gnarly, because it was the first day of the Eddie swell & the surf was rising fast. Waimea Bay was definitely the biggest I’ve ever surfed it & I experienced what is by far the scariest wipe out of my life, accompanied by a 20 second hold down. I’m very happy to be here still living on Earth.”

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Nathan Florence proves why he’s surfing’s king of POV in newest glimpse behind the wet curtain!

Nathan Florence's latest edit quickly irons out the wrinkles in his and Koa Rothman's bellies.

For a man who, likely, spent his earliest youth playing dress-up in his mother’s frocks, Nathan Florence has become the surfer upon all others judge themselves, a man who is greeted effusively by the best and bravest surfers in Scotland, Ireland, Hawaii and Australia.

Regarded as handsome and even cute by the co-eds in school, the face of Nathan Florence, thirty, has since formed into an adult mould; a face rather horsey with strawberry blond hair and lean controlled features.

His latest edit is from a North Shore sandbar and it quickly irons out the wrinkles in his and Koa Rothman’s bellies. The pair, along with a wild cameo from Olympian brother John John which hits at the eight-minute mark, hurl everything at the waves until you hear their filmer making little mewing whimpering noises from behind the camera.

As always with a Nasty Nate Florence short, essential.

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Guinness World Record winning surfer Dylan Graves gets barrelled in Poland!

Dylan Graves explores the essential nature of fun while immersing himself in the surf culture of whatever outpost he has delivered himself to.

BeachGrit readers have long thrilled to the weird wave follies of Puerto Rico’s Dylan Graves, the holder of the Guinness World Record for most turns on a wave, a leg-trembling forty spasms.

Dylan Graves is almost forty now, the velvet smoothness of his pretty face has gone and here and there you can see small wrinkles, but once upon a time he used to be on the Quiksilver roster. Dylan was the clean-looking Young Gun playing cute foil to the hoary champ Kelly Slater. Between Young Gun and now, Dylan took on the WQS (ain’t much success) before settling into that ever-warm freesurfing zone in Puerto Rico.

What started as a series on Weird Waves for Vans has now been lightly tweaked and is found on Dylan Graves’ own YouTube channel. It can safely be said that Dylan Graves explores the essential nature of fun and does so while immersing himself in the surf culture of whatever outpost he has delivered himself to.

In this episode, which is one of his best, Dylan visits the surf scene in Poland, a country bravely standing as the last outpost of Western civilisation.

To the cheers of locals, Dylan shelves several tubes on the Hel Peninsula, a long, narrow sand bar that separates the Bay of Puck from the open Baltic Sea.

Essential.

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John John Florence releases deeply personal account of Hawaiian winter

Straight from the heart!

If popularity can be measured by collective madness, board short sales and sales of hijabs for men, weeping women and the adoration of middle-aged surf fans, then there is without a shadow of a donut that John John Florence, three times a king, is the most popular surfer in the world.

Not even for Kelly Slater have there been such monstrous scenes of amorous cannibalism.

The big American with the even bigger ass, and rounder, too, than the miracle of Ethan Ewing’s obscenely ripe melons, is in another league, as they say, and John John Florence is the sun around which the tour now pivots.

He is the only non-Brazilian to win a world title since Fanning in 2013.

Which means all eyes are on the thirty-two-year-old father of baby Darwin and brother to Nathan and Ivan, as the tour begins anew at Pipeline in four weeks.

Will he abandon fam to chase tour beyond Hawaii? To Abu Dhabi? Portugal? Brazil? Crush Brazilian dreams for another year, just for laughs.

In the meantime, a new release from Studio Florence, called Here, which documents his travails from not this, but the last, Hawaiian season, 23-24.

Essential.

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Nathan Florence releases hotly anticipated POV footage from Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational

Hear the steady thud of exploding waves! See Nathan's face tense with fear!

It ain’t over to the fat lady has emptied her lungs or, in the case of the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, the contest ain’t done until Nathan Florence has dumped his point of view footage.

Nathan Florence, the middle of the three Florence boys although his red and girlish face makes him appear to be the baby of the brothers, finished seventh. It was a disappointing result for a man who must’ve felt destined to back up his Vans Pipe Masters with an Eddie.

In waves that had most men disappearing behind their armchairs, Nathan poked his nose into the intoxicating world of big wave surfing at the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational: hear the steady thud of exploding waves, see Nathan’s face tense with fear.

Soon, we see Nathan beginning his arrogant dance, taunting the thirty-foot waves in his bold, warlike way. Look closely, click on the option to watch the film at 2160p (this resolution offers four times the number of pixels as a Full HD 1080p screen) to see the scornful trembling of his nostrils.

Eventually Nathan, the Hebrew word for God’s Gift, the name of King David’s third son, even rides the famous Waimea Shorebreak, and which is captured entirely on his GoPro camera.

Although this is disappointing, angle wrong etc.

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