"Exhilarating, scary, and crazy good!"

Along with aerial pioneers Sierra Kerr and Erin Brooks, Maui shredder Chrislyn Simpson-Kane is making the existing hierarchy of female pro surfers look a little, how would you say, off the money.

In this short clip, we find Simpson-Kane, nicknamed Sissie, getting whipped into Jaws by Brazilian big-waver and “extreme mom” Andrea Moller, who appears in the Guinness World Records for riding the world’s largest paddle-in wave.

“I towed Pe’ahi today and it was exhilarating, scary, and crazy good! I felt like puking after my first wave but it got better afterwards,” the kid admitted.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKGH-z6DS1f/

She ain’t the youngest out there, howevs.

Steve “Baby” Roberson, twelve, has been a vet of the joint since he was ten and first surfed Waimea Bay when he was nine.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKR7ibgnsGO/

Wild, yes?

"Annihilating wipeouts!"

Rare is filmic evidence of Waimea Bay’s outrageous entry.

Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing describes it thus. “This near-vertical plunge from crest to trough is in fact one of the sport’s greatest challenges, testing the surfer’s equipment, wave judgment, fitness, and nerve. The drop will often ‘jack’ (steepen and expand) without warning as the wave curls over, a phenomenon that can actually reverse the surfer’s forward motion and send him back up toward the crest—and then to an annihilating wipeout.”

In this video by Rory Pringle, and featuring Mason Ho, Ivan Florence, Coz Colapinto and co, you get a read on what it’s like to pilot a ten-foot womb-duster over the ledge on a twenty-to-twenty-five-foot day, waves in any other year that would’ve been gobbled up by competitors in the Eddie.

A total crotch fire.

Seventy feet? Eighty-five feet?

In this episode of Jamie O’Brien’s vlog, we find the thirty seven year old who nearly died on a one-foot day at Waikiki, shepherding his friend Ben Gravy into waves very much beyond his level, and with support from North Shore charger Kalani Chapman.

Jamie, who is 190 pounds of rock hard muscle with 40 pounds of sturdy protective fat and who grew up at Pipe, snatches POV footage that is breathtaking.

Even Ben Gravy, as he struggles with the machinations of his borrowed tow-board, unsure whether to jump up and down to regather speed or fade back to the juice, is a revelation. A still from the session, I imagine, will hang over his little bed and perhaps even in a New Jersey cafe.

Are the waves twenty-to-thirty feet, as suggested by Jamie, or seventy-to-eighty-five feet as proposed by movie star handsome Ben?

Whatever, the three survive the “swell of the century” and each man rides the wave of his life.

"Hunting novelty waves in the midst of a global pandemic…"

“Life”, Phil Roth, a literary titan and a Jew, once wrote, “is just a short period of time in which you are alive.”

Words to live by, I should think.

Eithan Osborne is a surfer, and also a Jew of some note, and he is from Ventura, California. Two months ago, Dane Reynolds, his goyim friend, made the movie, The Happiest Jew in Ventura. 

In today’s release, “Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother’s side,” Eithan traverses France, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, “hunting novelty waves in the midst of a global pandemic,” according to his master Wasted Talent magazine.

Here’s the back-story:

Planning transcontinental surf trips against the backdrop of a global pandemic isn’t the easiest of affairs. Travel bans, quarantines, testing…etc. Equally, getting friends from afar to home shores is just as tedious.

Enter Eithan Osborne. One of California’s most promising exports, and no brighter moment in such weird times than being a person holding three passports. American, Israeli and most crucially–French.

“Wait, Eithan has a French passport? Let’s get him over!”

This was the gist of the conversation one cloudy September afternoon. However, what we weren’t prepared for was Eithan’s eagerness. Four days later, there he was in the arrivals of Biarritz airport. Negative covid test in hand. Ready for all of the beers, some of the wines and maybe, just maybe, some surfing. And with the biggest storm of the year approaching, our timing wasn’t exactly ideal with every spot in the North Atlantic looking maxed out—so naturally, our eyes turned to novelty. And nothing is more novel than the Mediterranean.

Oh The French Riviera!

Could anything be more novelty. Could anything be more luxurious. Is this the birth of luxurious novelty? Luxnov? With the car loaded, we dream of wedges breaking off the bow of an oligarch’s super-yacht. A few turns to the beach and then being invited up for caviar and Champagne. With one of the better swells over the past few years on the charts, it very much looked like we were about to find out.

72 hours later, we head back to the Atlantic side with tired eyes and wry smiles. With fun waves and weather on the charts, we link with local surfer and ‘Bong stable mate’ of Eithan’s, Justin Becret, adding a hint of local favour to the crew for the last few days of Eithan’s stay. With a stellar career on the pro-juniors under his belt, if it’s taught Justin one thing in the process, it’s consistency. He can punt with the best of them, with an outstanding track record of landing. He’s also a dab hand in the tube, and watching him and Eithan going head to head on the ramps of Capbreton and the tubes of La Gravière was more than impressive. We can’t help but feel the future of the bong stable is in a good place.

As that draws to a close to this year’s French Atlantic shenanigans for us. With a change of pace, a different coast, an absence of premiere tour but a large slice of novelty.

All in all, not bad for the surf trip that wasn’t meant to be.

Three out of five stars.