Innholdsfortegnelse for #346 Waves i Surfing Life

There’s just something about watching an empty wave break. Deep down I think we’re all creatives, caressing the aquatic canvases we ride with our own interpretative dance. I can’t recall the number of waves I’ve mind surfed over my years of fascination with the ocean, but I do know that my imagination takes me to places I haven’t been on a wave, almost every single time. In our imagination anything is possible, and no two waves are the same. Big, small, hollow, fat, peaky, offshore or onshore, it doesn’t really matter. It just means that endless outcomes are probable; that our individual interpretation of how to tango with a wave is unique. And riding waves means different things for different people. Some ride waves for a living, while others ride…

It’s amazing how much can change in twelve months. At the same venue last year, the previously impenetrable veneer of John John Florence was pierced. The questionable (non-surfing) tactics by fellow Hawaiian Zeke Lau left the likeable champ shaken and vulnerable. John had just come off the back of two consecutive world titles (2016, 2017), when the incident happened in plain sight at the Bell’s bowl. The aggressive paddling strategy employed by Lau rattled the champ to his core. This wasn’t how he saw his 2018 campaign playing out, and limped home with an equal 13th place. The target on his back was a large one, like a blazing bullseye just waiting for someone brash enough to take a shot. This one hurt mentally. It was already a tough start…

MARTI PARADISIS, THE BLUFF Great Australian tube pigs don’t come more unlikely than Marti Paradisis. The son of a Greek fisherman, who escaped poverty after stowing away on a cargo ship to Australia, Marti spent his first 12 years in landlocked Hobart dreaming of becoming a professional soccer player. When the call of the ocean proved too much for his father, the family moved to Clifton Beach, on the outskirts of Hobart, where Marti’s surfing career took shape. Tasmanian surfing might be defined by cartoonish death slabs like Shipstern Bluff, but it is amidst the icy, windblown rip bowls of Clifton Beach you’ll find the beating heart of Tasmanian surfing. Marti’s next-door neighbour at Clifton was none other than local big wave legend, James ‘Polly’ Pollanowski. As a teenager, Marti…

Ted Grambeau is one of the most experienced photographers in the world. The Australian has been taking photos for longer than any job you or I have ever held and that makes him not only an expert in the field, it also means he is highly respected inside and outside of the industry. His images have appeared in all mediums, all over the world and after talking with Ted, one realises that his passion oozes into every image he crafts. For Ted, it’s more than taking photos, it’s a carefully curated art form that evokes emotion and has a story to tell and that’s what has kept him at the forefront of his craft for so many years. With the onset of the digital and social era, along with the…

How good was that!? Not putting any props on the articles and images you’ve just thumbed through (okay, maybe just a little), but the fact you’ve sat down on your favourite lounge, park bench or the home throne, and spent some time immersed in a print title with a 35-year history. Now that’s pretty damn cool. If you’re done, just leave us here on the dunny floor and pick us up again on your next visit, give us to your neighbour to read, or chuck us on top of your Mrs’ copy of Better Homes and Gardens on the coffee table. Ah, print. Smells good, doesn’t it? Nothing digitally fleeting here, just a wonderful blend of ink and pixels that will in time, fulfil the annals of our surfing history.…

To say that Russell Bierke is an animal would not belittle the south coast big wave charger in any way. In fact, in big wave circles, it’s probably the ultimate compliment when considering the ticker the 21-year-old surfer has. He won the Red Bull Cape Fear Challenge at the death-defying Cape Solander at only eighteen years of age, survived a knockout at 40 ft Nazaré and joined the WSL Big Wave Tour as a rookie in 2018. He may be young and he may be the quietest wild man out there, but his track record speaks for itself. Russ Bierke is more than qualified to talk to us about what’s up ahead in big wave surfing. What does the future of big wave surfing look like? The future of big…

Mark the date in your calendar: 5th of April 2019, the day Reef Heazlewood came of age. The day the surfing world finally saw what many already knew; Reef Heazlewood is the real deal. The day a young Sunshine Coast surfer graduated to the big league, and took down the world #2. But to grasp how poignant the moment really was, we need to look in the rear-view mirror for a dash of context. It was Hawaii, November 2018, and the QS warrior is doing time on the rock. It was a junky early season, plagued by cross-shore winds that sent many an aspiring pro surfer underground. But not Reef, he decided to show the world what he had, what he’d been working on for years – an air game…

Oma was the word on everyone’s lips in the month of March, especially those residing near the shores of South East Queensland and northern New South Wales. In case you’ve been living under a rock and just came up for air, Oma was the name bestowed upon the first east coast cyclone to lash the Aussie shoreline in 2019. The forecasts started early. Damn those pesky long-range views that whip everyone up into a frenzy. Virtually every website and app had a different track forecast for the menacing low pressure, and it changed direction so many times that it just added to my pre-swell anxiety. No one knew for sure how big, when it was meant to arrive, or how strong the winds would get. But one thing was certain,…

SOBATU, PULAU NIAS. Lagundri Bay was discovered a long time ago. In fact, Kevin Lovett and John Giesel found it in 1975. Since then it has had some amazing times, and there have been some glorious moments. It is the type of wave and place that goes off the radar for a while, sometimes years, and then comes roaring back in with a vengeance. There have also been world-class WSL events there, like the O’Neill Deep Jungle Open and the current Nias Pro, set for September of this year. At Lagundri Bay there were always other waves to surf, and even though they did change somewhat after the Nias-Simeulue earthquake of 2005, they are still there. The gnarly left reef break known as The Machine, is on the inside of…

Surfers Not Street Children Surfers can often be described as a selfish bunch. Chasing waves around the world at the expense of… well, almost anything. But even in that self-centred state of mind, there are not many of us that wouldn’t agree that the act of submersing ourselves in the ocean and riding a few waves does something for us internally. Whether it’s just a quick rinse that refreshes, or a few hours that in some supernatural way mends our souls, riding waves is a conduit to many things in our lives. For most of us, it’s something we can take for granted, a life we’ve been blessed to fall into and live without a second thought. For others, it’s become a lifeline. Over in South Africa, and even in some…

Real change generally requires a generational shift to occur before the fruits of its prior labour are fully realised. For the forerunners, the battle towards pay equality in surfing has been a lifelong pilgrimage. But for a young Floridian pro surfer named Caroline Marks, her first equal pay cheque came at the age of seventeen, in just her second year on tour – the fruit of those who had worked tirelessly before her. The 2018 WSL Rookie of the Year tore through the field at the Boost Mobile Pro, held at Duranbah Beach in early April, and in doing so became the first female surfer to hold aloft the equal USD$100,000 pay cheque. “I can’t believe it. I’m speechless. It’s incredible to be a part of this sport.” The victory…

Has Reunion Island moved on from the modern tragedy playing out when nature goes out of balance? L’Hermitage is the widest, most extensive and best-preserved lagoon in Réunion Island. Centuries ago a powerful river ran down into the lagoon and the freshwater slowly contributed to attrition of the coral reef, eventually leading to a weak point. The massive body of water, looking for a low tide escape point, worked on that weak point, eventually breaking through the coral and allowing for the water to rush out, twice a day. In the process two waves were formed at the passage. The right and the left at L’Hermitage Pass are both exciting, barrelling waves, with the right being a bit shorter and more intense, but both good waves. I paddled out there…

Most of you will know the Mentawai region of Indonesia is one of the most wave-rich areas in the world. This is in part because of its position in the Indian Ocean, located at the end of one of the world’s longest fetches, but more on that as we dig deeper into the Mental Waves of the Ments (Mentawais). It’s easy to write about some of these locations from afar and we know this isn’t the first time the Mentawias have been covered, but we thought, heck, let’s grab a couple of surfers, jump on a flight and head to Hollow Tree’s Resort and check out this place for ourselves. The trip was a whirlwind to organise as it was so last minute, but there were plenty of crew happy…

“I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed. Our priority now is to save human lives.”– Celso Correia, Mozambique’s Minister of Land and Environment. It’s an uncomfortable truth and one many of us struggle with; while temperate weather is what other people may live for, cyclones (any storm) produce the very thing we as surfers live for — waves. We are probably the only people on earth who welcome one of our planet’s greatest forces — albeit just for the after effect. We are not psychotic, and we certainly don’t want anyone to get hurt or lose their homes. In fact, some of us pray before and after (cyclones) for those in peril. Some even go out of their way to help when…