Watch NZ shredder Kehu Butler in, “Hello, Gorgeous!”

Derek Rielly

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Meet a surfer from New Zealand whose tang may be sweeter even than the fabled Ricardo Christie!

This four-minute short of the up-and-coming surfer Te Kehukehu Butler is made by the Gold Coast-based filmer Billy Lee-Pope, whose name you might’ve seen on our Anonymous clips.

Billy, who grew up at Raglan, and Te, who is eighteen and from Mount Maunganui and who finished fifth at the World Juniors, spent one year working on this edit.

“I met Kehu about a year ago through a mutual friend who was staying with me on the Gold Coast. Kehu is a good kid, he’s a classic, hard case, typical, Maori,” says Billy, 20, who got into the camera jockey biz  when he was twelve when he got a hand-me-down Sony point and shoot that had a video option. “When I was 18 I purchased a DSLR set up just for fun, but eventually the excitement of doing surf trips and creating little surf edits got the better of me and I dropped out of my first year of marketing to pursue when I was 20!”

It’s a sprightly catalogue.

Shane Dorian makes swinging Jaws cameo in Natxo G's compelling mini-doc.

Watch big-waver Natxo Gonzalez in: “I will have my glory day in the hot sun!”

Derek Rielly

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Swollen muscle pressing against lungs! Perfect ten at Nazare! Follow the Basque gunslinger on the big-wave world tour.

In this compelling twelve-minute short, we follow the Basque surfer Naxto Gonzalez as he competes in the first two events of the big-wave tour, at Nazaré, Portugal, and Jaws, which is on the island of Maui, in the United States of America.

At Nazaré, Natxo, who is twenty-three, knifes a ten in his semi, and eventually finishes third; at Jaws, we go behind-the-scenes of that rather odd day where the event was cancelled because the waves were too big, the contest being finished in what Albee Layer described as “windy, small, average.“

Natxo has a bit of an Owen Wright moment. He wipes out, goes home, spends the next day crawling around in agony. He is eventually hospitalised with some sort of swollen muscle pressing against his lungs.

Watch!

"I'm doing this because I love you," says Rob.

Watch: Chas Smith and Rob Machado go to the Supermarket!

Derek Rielly

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And where pushy Rob introduces Chas to his new four-fin only surfboard, the Seaside…

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the former tennis player turned world title contender and one-time foil to Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, visited the Seaside Supermarket in Cardiff, California.

Mr Machado was in urgent need of corn chips, salsa and beer. By coincidence, Chas sought a replenishment of his bar cart.

In the carpark conversation that ensues between the two old pals, Rob introduces Chas to his new surfboard model for Firewire (within his subset of Machado Surfboards), called The Seaside.

The surfboard, which is an update of last year’s Go Fish twin-fin model, was built around it being a quad. Rob had never ridden four-finners and was thrilled by the idea of designing a sled, and all its curves, around a board that could only be set-up as a quad.

(Rob also designed a set of small-wave quad fins to complement the board. They are Futures, of course, the official fin of BeachGrit and the fin system used by John John Florence, Jordy Smith etc.)

Rob tested the boards tuberiding capabilities at smallish (four-to-six-foot) Teahupoo, and in the weak but reasonably good quality waves at his homebreak, Seaside.

“Sexy outline, sleek curves. It’s fast, catches more waves…turns on a dime!” Rob tells Chas.

Does Chas buy Rob’s spiel?

Watch!

Getting blown so hard it'd unblock a blind man's retinas!

Watch: Jack Robinson in “The Boy Who Carries His Own Lightning!”

Derek Rielly

By

It's a special gift, intangible, which bridges the gap between adequacy and greatness…

There are some performers, rare as blue butterflies, who carry around their own lightning. It has nothing to do with the sponsor stickers on their boards or how many contests they’ve won or how many times they’ve surfed Pipeline, although all that helps.

When the camera hits them, sock.

Kelly had it and Andy Irons. Medina and Toledo. And this medium-sized boy with “big bones and long muscles”, who turns twenty-one in three days and who has a head of hair that looks like a bale of hay that’s just exploded, named Jack Robinson.

He grew up in Margaret River, still lives there, and is the sort of surfer who will tear any visitor to shreds in a one-on-one heat.

This short film, if it was played to a cinema audience, would be greeted with rapturous applause. It’s the manifesto of a young man, told with authority.

Watch!

 

 

Watch: Mavericks light up on day deemed too big for WSL’s “Pretty Big-wave tour!”

Derek Rielly

By

Come and see the now-famous "Chickens of the Sea" swell…

Four or five days ago, depending on your time zone, Mavericks shed its autumn coat for a brutal winter swell. Too big, of course, for the Pretty Big-Wave Tour’s contest which was ruled out for “safety reasons.”

In this video, made by Surfer magazine, we see tow and paddle on a day that would’ve made for wonderful viewing, especially as most of the combatants went surfing anyway, including WSL commentator Peter Mel.

From the presser:

Despite the WSL calling off the Mavericks challenge for the week, the most talented big-wave surfers from the Bay Area and around the world still took to the lineup to both paddle and tow into the famed big-wave spot. Kai Lenny continued to push boundaries in big-wave tow-in surfing with his aerial attempts, much like he did after the Jaws Challenge was called-off after being deemed “too dangerous.” Hell, if the WSL calling off a big-wave contest means an inevitable Kai Lenny tow-in exhibition, then who cares if another Big Wave Tour heat ever runs again? As you’ll see in Kyle Buthman’s edit above, yesterday wasn’t just a Lenny show but a day of charging by surfers hellbent on taming the raw Aleutian energy Mavericks threw at them. Featuring: Wilem Banks, Kai Lenny, Anthony Tashnick, Eli Olson, Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Luca Padua, Jamie Mitchell, Tom Lowe, Nathan Florence, Torrey Meister, Nic Von Rupp, Pete Mel, and more.

Photo: Steve Sherman/@tsherms
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