“His surfing is as timeless a piece of surf film art as there ever could be."

Time don’t slow for no man and, for some among us, the revelation that Thomas Roland Curren, the three-time world surfing champion, who was unbeatable for most of his carer and who popularised the modern Fish, is a stately sixty-one years old might come as, well, an existential shock. 

And yet here we are, Occ about to hit sixty, Tom Carroll, 64, Kelly Slater, 63 almost 64, Pottz, 60, Nick Carroll, 71, even little John John Florence, a tween for so long, is a thirty-three-year-old daddy and so on. 

Too old to surf?

But, lest you think the end is nigh, Tom Curren is here to remind you that although there does come a time when you must close the book or else look like a clownish old jack-in-the-box deserved of all the scorn shovelled upon him, her, by the junior surfers with their unfrozen hips and scar-tissue free shoulder girdles, it doesn’t mean you can’t postpone the inevitable. 

You might remember, last year, when eight-time champ Stephanie Gilmore commemorated Tom Curren’s sixtieth by replicating the still-lauded beauty of Curren’s second wave at J-Bay.

She commissioned the same purple and black suit from Rip Curl and a replica 6’6″x18 1/4 x 2 5/16  thruster, complete with its sexy little bonzer channels, from Australian shaper Mark Rabbidge, who made Curren his J-Bay quiver.

“I recently rewatched Searching for Tom Curren and it was more profound this time around than ever before,” writes Stephanie Gilmore. “His surfing, brought to the screen by Sonny Miller, is as timeless a piece of surf film art as there ever could be.”

In this very short clip, below, Tom Curren reminds us of of this individualism, variety and dissent.

Graves, who at forty-two, might have gained a bit of the dreaded matronly demeanor that comes with maturity, is, in my opinion, more beautiful than ever.

First, the less said about the lily-livered fiends at Guinness, whose book of records is seen as the gold standard and who recently refused a claim by an Israeli charity which helps people make kidney donations because of, you know, “the situation”, ie screw the Jews, the better, I think. 

But, and this must be said, a few days back they did finally recognise Dylan Graves’ most turns on a wave, achieved some years ago at an Indonesian tidal bore. 

The adventures of Puerto Rican Dylan Graves in his pursuit of the strangest waves on earth have been assiduously documented on BeachGrit, a website that may be counted as Graves’ biggest fan, first in his ongoing series Weird Waves and, now, as he traverses the world solo.

In this episode, Graves travels to Queensland’s Gold Coast, specifically Surfer’s Paradise, where sand-replenishment works has created an island-like bank in front of the towering, Miami-like skyscrapers that cast their ominous shadows over the beach every afternoon.

Graves, who at forty-two, might have gained a bit of the dreaded matronly demeanor that comes with maturity, is, in my opinion, more beautiful than ever. 

As the most coveted Puerto Rican export since Daddy Yankee, Dylan Graves gets better with age and shows no signs of slowing down.

Essential.