Watch: Ben Gravy and Mason Ho in “Then a
queer thing happened!”
By Derek Rielly
Of all the thousands of surf films I've seen in my
life, none has transported me to greater extremes of ecstasy than
this five-minute ditty…
This five-minute short, which stars film-grad-turned
surf vlogger Ben Gravy and Hawaiian Mason Ho, consists of a series
of fin tricks all performed on a brilliant winter’s day at Shark
Cove, just north of Waimea Bay and a short walk from the
local supermarket called Foodland.
Gravy is thirty-one years old and crowned with a hairline that
looks grafted from brave Russell Bierke. He gets on famously with
Mason, also thirty-one, and one can imagine that if somewhere
between midnight and one am there came a time when the the light
was switched off both would be able to do what comes naturally
without too many regrets.
At every turn in the film, both are ready with some new and
intricate manoeuvre. True genius is a gift of birth, of course. It
has very little to do with age.
“That was the best surf session of my life,” says Gravy, a
supreme connoisseur of surf sessions having recorded several
thousand of his own.
Watch!
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Mason mounts Pipeline, humps it savagely. Rory
Pringle
See-it-to-believe-it: Mason Ho jabs his
midget weenie at Pipe’s crotch!
By Derek Rielly
Pick a teepee and just…poke it, says Mason of the
Pipeline takeoff that stopped the world.
Every evening, one imagines Mason Ho rubbing lineament
on his aching knees before he puts on his favourite lounge ensemble
of lavender pyjamas, robe and bedroom slippers.
He puts a chair near the front window so he can look out for
pretty girls with the dusky sloe-eyed loveliness so common in
Hawaii.
Mason is thirty-one years old, is the son of Mike, sixty-two,
nephew of Derek, fifty-five, and brother to Coco, twenty-eight.
Like Daddy, like Unc, Mason sits enshrined at the top of the
Pipeline pecking order.
Mason says his Pipe and Backdoor strategy is simple.
Pick a teepee and just…poke it.
“When it gets really steep, I just poke it down, poke the nose
down, just like you’re going to poke…something else. You just aim
it, and get as deep as you can.”
Here, from three day ago, an animated portrait of laid-back
élan.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson busts comic Chuck Nice's
head open with tide talk.
Essential: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse
Tyson contradicts everything you ever thought you knew about
tides!
By Derek Rielly
There ain't no movement of water, in and out, for
one…
I know three things about tides. Most joints
they swing in twice a day, every six and a bit hours, bigger on a
full moon and, uh, you get rip bowls on an outgoing tide.
What have you got?
Anything?
In this instructional video, pop astrophysicist Neil deGrasse
Tyson turns the whole tide game on its head.
For one, tides don’t move in and out. You know
that?
And that tides raised on earth by the moon alone are the same
size no matter if it’s a full moon or no?
Heady stuff.
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Mason on his eighty-one inch Lost Whiplash. "A
work of mastercraft, with perfectly beveled rim…"
Watch: Mason Ho in “Eighty inches long and
three inches thick; A royal column, ineffably solemn and
wise!”
By Derek Rielly
Size queen!
You like ’em big? I doubt if there’s a more
satisfying experience than riding, in waves of juice at least, a
performance gun.
You get the roll in; you stomp on the tail and that curve fits
right in.
Meanwhile in Bristol (Part II): “I’ve
surfed Waco and Lemoore and Bristol honestly feels the most like
the ocean!”
By Jamie Tierney
But, "the surf doesn’t offer the perfection of
Lemoore or the pop of Waco. And they’re only running at
twenty-percent capacity for the general public, nowhere near the
two-meter plus surf that was advertised in advance…"
You start the walk to The Wave from a kilometer
away. There’s a shuttle bus that will take you, but it’s
cold, you can see your breath, and you’d rather walk because it
will warm you up.
The main building of The Wave is in front of you, but you see no
signs of what you came here for until you check in. You
show a pair of young people at the door the barcode of your ticket
and they direct you a row of hard and soft surfboards inside, and a
rack filled with thick wetsuits and booties on the deck.
That’s when you finally see it.
You can barely hear the hum of the engine that pumps out the
surf via a network of small paddles. The machine lies at the end of
a pier-like walkway. It creates a left on the left of it and a
right on the right.
You choose which one you want to ride when you book online.
I’ve surfed at Waco and Lemoore and Bristol honestly feels the
most like the ocean. You paddle next to the wall like you do at any
pier or jetty wave and angle away from it down the line. It breaks
in the same spot every single time.
The take off is easy. It’s not as buttery as the one at the Surf
Ranch, but it gives you plenty of time to stumble to your feet. The
first section is soft and slow, but it steepens, quickens and grows
as it goes. It reminded of a gentle two-foot day at Snapper or New
Pier in Durban.
After you kick out or fall, you paddle back to the end of the
line.
Right now, they’re putting fifteen people per hour each
“advanced” wave and they run twenty waves in the set. If you miss a
wave, they’ll give you another one. They do a ninety-second break
in between sets.
If you sprint paddle back to the line after a wave, you can
sometimes get two in a set. I think I caught ten waves in my
hour-long session which cost me $52.50 USD and included the use of
a wetsuit and a new six-two thruster.
If I paddled faster between waves I probably could have caught
five more. I started to see waves going unridden towards the end of
the session.
It’s early days for The Wave, but a few issues have popped
up.
The surf clearly doesn’t offer the perfection of Lemoore or the
pop of Waco. The “Coach” for my session admitted that they’re only
running at twenty-percent capacity at the moment for the general
public, nowhere near the two-meter plus surf that was advertised in
advance.
The Wave’s power got turned up a notch for a Red Bull crew a
couple weeks ago but even those peelers looked head-high at best.
The problem, according to The Wave’s Founder Nick Hounsfield, isn’t
the technology, it’s the surfing level of some its customers.
“What were finding is quite of few people are struggling to be
honest what their ability might be,” he said.
My session was marred by a handful of beginners who struggled to
make the drop every time and didn’t get out of way of the surfer
behind them quickly enough. It seems like a pretty easy solution to
this would be to require surfers to prove they can handle a mellow
setting before graduating to one that’s more advanced.
Hounsfield said they’re considering this approach, but are
looking at a few other options as well.
He’s an interesting guy. He’s a youngish osteopath who had a dream five
years ago to build a wave pool in his hometown. His initial
investment was only £500. He somehow raised enough money to make it
happen and has a vision of making the place a center for health,
fitness and wellness.
With beginners on the inside included, he can get scores of
people in the water every hour and the place was booked solid the
day I was there despite and water and air temps that were only 11
degrees °C (52 °F).
If he can get the power of The Wave cranked up to around
fifty-percent a few sessions a day for skilled surfers, and let
everyone else have at it for the rest of the time, I think he’s got
a business that could be profitable.
Even in its current state The Wave is still more fun and less
crowded that eighty-percent of my surfs within an hour of my house
in LA.
I’d probably go a couple times a month at if I lived near enough
to one.
Speaking of which, when do those Palm Springs pools open
again?
