"The pressure of all that water at depth hits and it feels like your eyes are getting sucked into the back of your head.”

In another frank confession just released, reigning waterman of the year Nathan Florence has said he feels ashamed and embarrassment after attempting, and failing, to paddle into a set wave at The Right, a hard-breaking slab wave in Western Australia.

The joint is heavier than you might believe. Mark Mathews describes getting belted thus,

“If you fall on one that is coming out of the south, it pushes off what feels like a waterfall, but you’re underwater already. You’re getting smashed around in a wave like you normally do and then all of a sudden it’s like you’ve been dropped off a cliff. The pressure of all that water at depth hits and it feels like your eyes are getting sucked into the back of your head.”

Florence, who is a thirty-year-old Gemini and married to the daughter of Hawaiian muscle god Kai Garcia aka Kaiborg, said he’d been thinking of paddling The Right for the past three years and had commanded his shaper Jon Pyzel to make two boards specific for the task.

On the morning of the attempt he told viewers,

“This year I committed myself to really wanted to do it, actively tracking swells. I missed two swells while I was chasing other swells. And, now I have the opportunity tomorrow to do something that hasn’t been done yet. Bodyboarders have paddled waves out there and I get inspiration from them. But I don’t think anyone’s done it on a standup.”

Hard cut to Nathan Florence, almost in tears.

“Okay, well, you saw guys saw the video. Pretty unsuccessful,” says Florence. “We’ve had sessions in the past, you know how we do with the channel, pretty much every session we put up, whether we barely made the paddle out or never caught a wave. Or, we caught a bunch of good ones or had the ride of our lives.”

Pause.

“But this one is a little different. I almost felt like I didn’t want to put the vid out. I put a ton of pressure on myself to catch a good one. I really wanted to do it. I wanted to paddle a legit one at The Right and I totally failed. I tried for three hours and I just couldn’t get it done. The speed of it, the shifting of it, it was a lot of going on out there.

“I watched so much footage of it and I thought I can do it for sure and I can do it. It’s just going to take ht right day, right swell. I’m a huge believer in the more times you put yourself in front of opportunity to ride one, the higher the chance of actually doing it. The way of your life, that’s over a lifetime of putting yourself in a situation to ride a wave when it comes.”

Moving. Profound. Essential.

"I went through a crazy shark attack (biggest shark I’ve ever seen) which was a very crazy scene and scared the living f*ck out of me."

Some of us are born to walk through storms and Kai Mckenzie, the surfer who lost his leg in a Great White attack six weeks back, has emerged from the haze of surgeries and shock of losing a stilt in seemingly brilliant form.

The twenty-three-year-old Rage teamrider was surfing a breakwall in Port Macquarie when the shark hit.
Kai made it shore where an off-duty cop used his dog’s leash as a tourniquet, saving the kid’s life. His leg washed up a short time later. All of it captured on film. 

“Breaking his back last year, he never once complained … [he] always just got on with doing what he loved as soon as possible,” Rage wrote on Instagram. “He is an inspiring person.”

In a missive posted from his bed in Newcastle’s John Hunter hospital, Kai wrote;

Man ohh fucking man to be here right now just to fucking be able to hold my beautiful Eve and my family is everything to me, a few days ago I went through a crazy shark attack ( biggest shark I’ve ever seen ) which was a very crazy scene and scared the living fuck out of me, but to all you fucking kind hearted people, all you legends, to anyone and everyone all your support has meant the absolute world to me… I can tell you now if you know my personality this means fuck all. I’ll be back in that water In no time ! BIG FUCK OFF TO THAT SHARK and BIG THANKS to Steve for saving my life.

Kai hasn’t been fucking around in hospital either, releasing a video “Pay to Play” in which he stars in and edited over the past few weeks.

“The clip isn’t everything I wanted after what happened but it is what it is and this is it,” says Kai.

More essential than most.

Come see Harry Bryant's full array of tricks, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety!

If you didn’t know, Harry Bryant is an almost thirty-year-old Australian with juvenile dimples and an albino choir boy’s haircut.

He is, also, an interesting combination of sartorial elegance and the smell of fish.

When he talks he is so gentle and faraway he often gives the impression of being half asleep.

Together with his filmer guy-pal Dave Fox, Harry Bryant has enjoyed a deserved reputation as a man who can take a surf movie theme, say Motel Hell, and carry it to dazzling fruition.

In the pair’s latest short, Mucho Gringo, Harry Bryant shows all his usual ocean-spray zest for living on the wind as he chokes on a series of long lefthand points in, you might imagine, that land of the long, cold lefthander, Chile.

The surfing of Harry Bryant comprises many elements of contrasting excitement, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety to unquenchable survivable power in the difficult waves.

Essential.