Mid-winter in Western Australia? Point it north…

If you were ever curious how Jack Robinson, and Jay Davies for that matter, reconciled their surfing with the inferno of a Hawaiian winter, you would do well to examine this four-and-a-half minute short by Tom Jennings.

Part ten of Jennings’ (and Surfer magazine’s Peter Taras’) feature-length film Winter Out West (and which you can buy here for eleven dollars), this short documents all those hard-living, straight-shooting men who find no greater pleasure in life than pointing it through the cheeks of an eight-foot reef bomb. Waves so big they’d make most us bolt across the room.

A little slow in parts, but the in-water photography of Tom Jennings does demonstrate how graceful and how sure-footed Jack, Jay and various other souls are are.

The popular Hawaiian and the Australian prodigy swarm to attack now-famous swell at once-famous left…

In holiday seasons of yore, surfers would quack and swarm all over Padang Padang, a hollow lefthander on Bali’s Bukit Peninsula, which you can find just north of Uluwatu.

And, then, like all things fashion, it disappeared into the history books, left to whomever wasn’t nose-picking or practising shuv-its at the more-popular Keramas or Canggu. A lovely beach, by the way, and very quiet at night except for the sound of locals urinating onto the trees.

Recently, a large south swell lit up the reefs along the Bukit with waves that hadn’t been seen for a couple of decades. And, Padang, with its photogenic backlit tubes and Rip Curl Padang Cup was there to upstage Keramas and so forth.

This edit by the fantastically named Sidney Polansk is two-and-a-bit minutes of Mason Ho, Jack Robinson and Chris Ward, and others, although it’s these three surfers who make everyone else seem unimportant.

A sort of related quote from Mason re: surfing heats.

“You could liken it to a cooking show. The chefs have the hour to cook their meal with the certain materials. We go out in the water and our boards are our knives. And it is like painting. You paint whatever you want and then you show it to the judges. When I try to explain to my dad about the art on my boards, he always tells me not to forget the black pin-ines. It’s an analogy for surfing heats. Get arty but don’t forget the basic and fundamental things.”

Watch flame-haired king of Pipeline Jamie O'Brien enslave famous left in kayak while endangering non-surfing pal…

Do you have a dangerous friend? Would you like one?

No, no, not a frenemy, life is too short for fake butter or fake people, as they say, but a pal who’ll toss you to the lions for kicks and, who likes, very much, to see you get pounded.

Jamie O’Brien, whose two-month old YouTube vlog has already posted a dozen episodes, is a Dangerous Friend.

You’ll remember Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Jamie’s crazy sidekick in the Who is JOB series, who celebrated the surprise arrival of a big swell by paddling out, with Jamie, on an eight-foot Catch Surf board, both in speedos.

“It was eight-to-10-feet, coming from Second Reef and just… flexing… right on the reef. I got so pounded it was gnarly. I got pinned against the reef. It wouldn’t let me up. I got pounded every time I tried to get to the surface. I’m so afraid of big waves,” said Poopies. “He puts a flotation vest on me and says, ‘Poops, dude, this thing will let you pop to the top no matter what’.”

In this episode, Jamie throws his snow/skate pal Skummy Diener into the heated pan, kayaking (admittedly summer swell) Pipe and winching hell out of Skummy on the sand.

It’s beautiful, if cruel.

Pals 4 life etc.