Surfing Life 2017

SURFERS | WAVES
| TEC HNIQ UE | BOARDS | TRAVEL
Wa
a
a ve
es
Wav
ISSN 1036-3491
10
9 771036 349005
Our
obsession
O
How to find them, Surf t hem
and Survive them
AU $11.95 incl. GST NZ $12.95 incl. GST UK £4.99

500 PRE-PROGRAMMED
TIDE LOCATIONS

628 Words
Surfer founder, John Severson, 1933-2017.
SURFING LIFE 4

The best explanation of a wave
I’ve ever heard was: it can’t be
described, it can only be experienced.
I was 19 years old when I heard that,
and may or may not have been stoned off
my tits on cheap bush weed, perched high
up on a headland waiting for the tide to
turn on a fairly remote patch of east coast
real estate. I’m now far, far removed from
my teens, but this explanation has not
only stayed with me all these years, it’s
crystallised and resonated.
How does one describe a moving body
of water, which has travelled hundreds, if
not thousands of miles to its destination,
before rising up off the shallowing ocean
floor and bursting its insides up onto a
sand bank, down a long point, outside
bombie or inside reef ?
The whole time its journey has been
watched by a collective of humans with
wax under their fingernails and salt in
their hair, armed with computers and
weather maps. They’ve followed the wave’s
path from its embryonic conception
IF THIS WAS A RELIGION, WE’D BE RADICAL
inside the core of a storm, and into its
final faultless form where it is ridden
standing atop a polystyrene core wrapped
in fibreglass.
We dodge sharks; jump into rips, rather
than avoid them; allow currents to drag
us further into the abys; we dance to the
beat of live reef under thick, heavy lips.
The ways of meeting our maker out in the
ocean are only limited by our imagination!
No wonder the rest of the world thinks
we’re stark-raving, mad.
Who in their right mind would dedicate
their lives, blowing off loved ones and the
ravages of societal commitments, to chase
these sometimes murderous – most of the
time, mesmerising – things we call waves?
How many marriages and relationships
have ended, or jobs been lost, or parents
gravely disappointed while we chase
waves with all the fervour of a back-alley
crack addict scoring a little bag of white
disappointment?
Hell, look at us here at Surfing Life.
Devoting a whole bloody issue per year to
the whole damn phenomenon!
The spellbinding, untamed wildness
and beauty of a lonely, perfect wave reeling
down a sand-bottomed point, or A-framing
into a little wedge 15 metres from shore.
Whatever the perfect wave is that you
play on a loop inside your head, we’ve got
you covered in this issue. This magazine is
a keepsake. Buy two copies – one to keep
in your car, the other for your house. Never
be more than 15 metres from this baby at
all times.
When life is giving you the screaming
shits; when bosses, parents, wives and
boyfriends are yelling at you to do better.
Grab this little baby, and flick through its
smooth pages and let it take you to another
time and place. A place where it’s just you
and your perfect wave and favourite board,
and mind surf that fucker until all the
outside noise has stopped.
Because riding waves is the simple bit;
it’s everything else in life which is freaking
complicated.
– Craig Braithwaite (Guest Editor)
PHOTO: CURLEY
SURFING LIFE 5

Up Ahead
“At Kirra earlier this year, Josh Bystrom shot one of my favourite ever photos. The colour of the water is
amazing, and there’s nobody else around, which is crazy, it’s just me. I know how hard it is to link up with
someone at Kirra, with the current and the amount of water moving, so that makes it even more special. I hadn’t
planned on shooting with anyone – I don’t usually travel with a troop of filmers and photogs – but I had a scroll
through Instagram later that day, and it showed up in typical new age fashion. It’s just a really nice shot.” - Steph
PHOTO: BYSTROM
SURFING LIFE 6

“
From the age of 10 to 20 I
lived and breathed righthand
pointbreaks. I can basically
attribute my world titles to all
those years spent surfing long
walls on my forehand, and that
most of the events on our Tour are
held at rights, not lefts. I’ve grown
up surfing right-handers and am
just so comfortable with them.
If a perfect left comes through
with a shitty little right off it, I’m
probably going the right – that’s
how addicted I am!
“Surfing pointbreaks on your
forehand lets you smooth out your
turns, work out the kinks, and just
go FAST. All these years later they’re
still my favourite waves, so I’m
pretty lucky I live right in front of
one of the best in the world.
“Kirra is an incredibly special
wave to me. I remember watching
my dad out there when I was young,
and the Billabong Pro way back in
the day. I remember it just being
so fast, and the groynes freaked
me out a little, too. Just as I started
to really get into surfing it kind of
disappeared, so it’s always been
mythical. I think the sand has finally
sorted itself out now, though, so you
can surf Snapper when it’s small and
then Kirra when it picks up.
“Now whenever it breaks I go
straight there. Well, kinda, you still
paddle out at Snapper and drift
down, and the whole time you’re
wondering what it’ll be like. Then
you come around the groyne and
straight away you’re inside everyone
and hopefully you can pick a wave
off. Snapper is crowded all day long,
but Kirra has these magical little
windows where suddenly there’s
not too many people around and it
clicks and turns on these perfectly
groomed lines.
“It’s a long walk to my house if
I’ve gone all the way to the end of
Kirra, so I’ll keep my eyes out for
a friend and see if I can get a lift
back! If not, I’m dry by the time I get
home. It’s the perfect way to start
the day.
”
– Stephanie Gilmore, on Kirra
SURFING LIFE 7

DEREK DISNEY | HOTCOAT BOARDSHORT
CREATORS & INNOVATORS
vissla.com

PHOTO: TMK
W A V E S
CRYSTAL
24 42 46
WAVES
WIND
RAIN
50BALL
Riding waves. The contrary
forces of water trying to drown
us, while giving us maximum life
at the same time.
We surf because of wind; we don’t
surf because of wind. It’s a surfer’s
ultimate dichotomy.
The ancient mariners knew all
this before us, and sailing lore
speaks of how the rain tends to
calm the sea.
How to read weather maps, predict
swells and surf new swells before
the herd arrives.
62
NIGERIA
PIPE
72
SCRAPBOOK THE
78
PRIMITIVE UNION HAPPY
82
ACCIDENTS
An epic voyage deep into the
unknown and dangerous. This is
as real as it gets.
Jeff Divine talks story and shows
us through his studio where his
35-year old archives of the North
Shore come to life.
The ancient art of body surfing.
Why you should leave the board
on the beach next time it’s
pumping.
Man has actually made more waves than
it has destroyed. Find out how seawalls,
groynes and sand pumping have all created
some of the best waves in the world.
88
WAVE ODDITIES THE
A rank closeout became the most
feared wave in the world, a step to put
chills straight down your stringer and
waves that grow down the line.
96
OTHER BUCKET LIST WOODEN
Less obvious destinations you
must surf before you die!
104
WAVES
Nathan Ledyard talks art and
how he made our front cover.
SURFING LIFE 9

The Family
INSTAGRAM @surfinglife
TWITTER @surfinglife
GUEST EDITOR
CRAIG BRATHWAITE
I’ve been surf writing since around the turn of
the century – he says, adjusting his monocle. I
left Surfing Life the first time around to head
to university and get smarter and do a design
degree. I thought designers were cool; which
they are, and they earn good money – well, at
least more than a seedy writer!
That old saying, you can lead a horse to water
but you can’t make it drink, applies abundantly
to me. I sucked harder than an Oxford Street
hooker at design. So, I turned back to journalism
and photography and got my degree.
I first picked up a surf magazine in high
school, and haven’t put them down since. That
feeling of flicking through the pages, smelling
the dried ink on the freshly pressed paper.
Holding it in my hands. Like catching a wave,
that’s a feeling I never want to end.
Poring over photos from all around the
world, and imagining myself there right at that
point in time, and what I would do. What lines I
would draw; how hard I’d be shitting myself, etc.
Then, talking to people about those sessions and
conveying their experiences and thoughts into
the written word, for all of you to read. It’s the
best job in the world.
This issue really appealed to me to edit. Three
things immediately jumped out at me about
WAVES. We want to find them, we want to surf
them, and we want to survive them. This issue
encapsulates all of that.
Where do waves come from? Once we
understand that, we can start to predict their
arrival. And then we can surf them. This issue
is filled with a bunch of little tricks to get
you more waves. Where to sit on a point, or a
beachie peak, or a reef.
And, finally, how to survive them.
Sure, we show you how to survive bombies
and reefs with your life. But also, surviving a
hectic point session with your body and board
intact. Surviving the internet age of hype and
crowds. Surviving Pipe, and advice for someone
wanting to surf it for the first time. We also
survive literally getting our heads blown off in
Nigeria. Surviving Bull sharks and disease from
storm outfall when novelty waves fire up.
Read about my glorious team over the next page,
and prepare to fire up the stoke. ... I asked them
all a simple, but loaded question, which is surely
all about getting them into trouble.
ON THE COVER
Artist Nathan Ledyard and
his piece ‘Lava Tube’ grace
our front cover this Issue.
It’s a wood carving painted
with acrylics. The sky colours
on sunset reflecting over the
water while a lone wave rears
up and strikes. Allow yourself
a few moments to soak in its
brilliance. We did!
ARTWORK: NATHAN LEDYARD
The Surfing Life Limo is the ruggedly handsome
RAV4, thanks to our mates at Toyota.
EDITORIAL
GUEST EDITOR: Craig Braithwaite: braithy@aqualunamedia.com.au
MANAGING EDITOR: Michael Saunders: michael@surfinglife.com.au
DESIGNER: Dave Read: david@davidread.net
DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER: Craig Braithwaite: braithy@aqualunamedia.com.au
PROOFREADER: Rachel Morgenbesser rachel.morgenbesser@gmail.com
OPERATIONS
PUBLISHER: Craig Sims: craig@aqualunamedia.com.au
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Graeme Murdoch: gra@whitehorses.com.au
PRODUCTION MANAGER: John Harland: john@premiumprintsolutions.com.au
ADMINISTRATION: Angela thompson: admin@aqualunamedia.com.au
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND DISTRIBUTOR: Gordon & Gotch
ALL OTHER DISTRIBUTOR ENQUIRIES: Craig Sims craig@aqualunamedia.com.au
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Trent Mitchell, Billy Morris, Shane Peel, John Respondek, Daniel Russo, Corey Wilson, Trevor Moran, Art Brewer,
Chris Burkard, John Callahan, Tom Carey, Jason Childs, Mick Curley, Jeff Divine, Jeff Flindt, Pete Frieden, Hank,
Dick Hoole, Dustin Humphrey, Jimmicane, Joli, Nate Lawrence, Morgan Maassen, Brad Masters, Rod Owen,
Jason Reposar, Tom Servais, DJ Struntz, Scott Winer, Alan van Gysen, Richard Kotch, Russell Hoover, Stu Gibson,
Leroy Bellet, Steve Sherman, Andrew Semark, Zak Noyle, Alex Laurel, Greg Ewing, Antony Colas, Steve Sherman,
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CONTRIBUTORS
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SURFING LIFE 10

LIGHTER
WARMER
MORE FLEXIBLE
MORE AFFORDABLE
JOSH KERR
WWW.PEAK.COM.AU

The Family
QUESTION: WAVES OR SEX. WHAT’S BETTER?
PHOTO: ISHERWOOD
WILL
BENDIX
A super talented
writer, editor and
designer. Like that kid
in The Sixth Sense, he
sees things the rest
of us don’t. He finds
stories within the stories,
and that’s what makes
his writing such a damn
pleasure to read! There’s
a reason he’s the newly
installed Editor of White
Horses, and you only
have to look at his body
of work in this issue to
see why.
Will’s answer:
That’s not a fair question,
although both last about
the same amount of time
for me. All I’m saying is I
definitely get a lot more
of one than the other
(hint: it’s not sex). I don’t
know if that’s a good or
bad thing. I’m going with
good.
STEPHEN
SHEARER
Shearer has an
older-brother aura
about him. He knows
more, he’s better at
most things, and his
wisdom is fuelled by
the kind of trial and
error – as a younger
sibling – you only want
to replicate. A gifted
writer and visionary
who doesn’t just write,
he sculpts art forms. His
wide-ranging knowledge
of all things oceanic
makes him the perfect
contributor to Surfing
Life, and we’re glad to
have him!
Shearer’s answer:
Surfing or sex; what a
trap, what an absolute
foul trap for the young
player. I claim the right
not to incriminate myself
and defer to Buzzy Trent:
“Surfing is a lot like
sex. An intense feeling
of anticipation; a total
communion of mind and
body, and when it is over
you will always want to
do it again.”
CHRIS
BINNS
We love the enthusiasm
Chris attacks life with,
and his writing reflects
that. We also love that
what you see is what
you get with Binnsie.
We’re still yet to meet a
person with a bad word
to say about Binnsie,
which is lucky for them,
because if we did, we’d
throw them off a bridge.
There’s no bullshit about
him, and in a world full of
bullshit, that is the kind of
currency we want in our
bank.
Binnsie’s answer:
Are waves better than
sex… are we back in
primary school here?!?
I’ve definitely had more
success with the latter,
but that speaks more for
my shortcomings in the
brine than my talents
in the sack. Waves can
be dangerous when
you’re drunk, whereas
the worst that’s ever
happened in bed after
midnight was a poor
friend breaking her ankle
in the glovebox. In both
cases, the consequences
of your rubber failing
can be disastrous. Both
are fun if you know what
you’re doing, and they’re
definitely both fricken
awesome.
MICHAEL
SAUNDERS
Mikey cracks us up.
He walks through life
at his own pace, on
his own terms, and
we envy the shit outta
that! As an editor, he
can freak you out with
his grasp on just what
constitutes a deadline.
But, like the mailman, he
always delivers. A solid
writer, who is a sensei of
the interview and who
moonlights in the ABC
newsroom when he’s not
kicking it with us bunch
of miscreants.
Mikey’s answer:
Well, it depends on
how you look at it. If
I had to pick only one
for the rest of my life: I
would go with sex and
just take up something
like snowboarding to
scratch my other itch.
But, if I had to choose
between surfing perfect
Superbank all to myself,
or a night with my
teenage-dream girl
(Dukes of Hazzard-era
Jessica Simpson, for those
playing at home), I would
pick the waves. Beauty
fades – a quick google
search of Ms Simpson in
2017 will prove that –
but memories of perfect
waves last a lifetime.
LAWRIE
VONHOFF
Lawrie makes a solid
debut in the Surfing
Life pages with his
excellent body-surfing
feature. Lawrie is the kind
of guy who stays awake at
night, dwelling and fussing
on a single sentence until
it feels right. That’s the
right stuff, right there. This
is just the beginning for
him, and we can’t wait
to see where his writing
takes him.
Lawrie’s answer:
I’m not sure I can answer
this without sounding like
some sort of sex-obsessed
deviant. Like some sort
of lewd socks-and-sandalwearing,
pornography
enthusiast. Like some sort
of seedy sexual degenerate
who rides public transport
in sperm-spackled
slacks and Slazenger
runners, blasting Linkin
Park through a set of
headphones and sniffing
seats suspiciously. Like
some sort of grotesque
hands-in-pockets, ballfondling,
personal-space
invader. Like some sort of
foul, pasty, smug, Liberalvoting
virgin!
But I’ll give it a
shot. Sex is better than
waves. If you find it’s
not, you’re just doing it
wrong.
SURFING LIFE 12

Moments
DRIVEN BY FEAR
Brad Norris knows The Right like the back of his hand.
He’s been surfing it for
a good six years and in
all kinds of swell heights
and directions.
But that doesn’t stop the
West Australian plumber
from getting butterflies in
his stomach as he suits up
in the carpark. Even during
this session, which took
place at about the same
time the world’s best were
left grovelling in lackluster
conditions at Cloudbreak.
“I still get nervous every
single time I head down.
Even that day when it was a
bit smaller but so perfect,”
Brad said.
“I don’t believe anyone if
they say they’re not scared
out there. It not a wave you
stuff around on.
“It’s just got so many
different faces. You can
never guess what it’s going
to be like. You sort of adapt
to it, but you still have the
fear factor. The is what
pushes me to do it.”
But looking at this
image of Brad, taken during
a clean Southwesterly
groundswell just last
month, it’s hard to imagine
any fear in the 26-year-old’s
eyes. Local photographer
Kim Feast agrees, saying
that Brad has one of the
more relaxed approaches
out of all the regulars.
“To watch Brad out
there is really impressive,”
Feasty said.
“He has so much control.
There’s only a few people
that will stall for the pit out
there. He is on another level
of ability compared to 90 per
cent of the guys out there.”
And it’s not just at his local
slab that Brad is pushing
himself. After sliding into
some jaw dropping waves at
places like Shipsterns and
Ours, the 26-year-old has
picked up some new stickers
on his board and is eager to
face some new challenges.
To help achieve those
challenges, he has taken up
training inside the boxing
ring with none other
than Danny “The Green
Machine” Green.
“I’ve been having a lot
of fun paddling at big point
breaks. I really want to push
that aspect,” he said.
“I’m not heavy into the
training. But I definitely
like to work on what’s not
feeling correct. As well as
working my breathing.”
When asked if he would
ever considering paddling
into a monster at The Right,
Brad remains coy.
“It’s funny, every session
for the past three years I
find myself sitting in the
lineup and thinking about
paddling,” he said.
“I’ve seen Lewy Finnegan
[ local bodyboarder] paddle
some massive ones out there.
“I don’t know if I want to
do it, I always think about
it. But the risk probably
outweighs the reward.”
Paddle or no paddle, the
risk certainly paid off in
spades for Brad on this day
and we’ve got a feeling a few
more sessions floating in
the lineup might see some
more risks go down. Watch
this space!
WORDS BY MICHAEL SAUNDERS
PHOTO BY: FEAST
SURFING LIFE 14

SURFING LIFE 15

Moments
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
WORDS BY MICHAEL SAUNDERS
This was a spaghetti western for the ages!
PHOTO BY: THURTELL
Are you not entertained?!
We’re so delirious we’re quoting
Russell Crowe! This was,
however, the first thing that
jumped into our collective heads
when the final hooter echoed
out over Jeffreys Bay. We wanted
Filipe to snatch the microphone
from Strider’s hands and, with
rolled-back crazy eyes, yell that
exact phrase into the camera during
his post-victory interview.
For those that missed the J-Bay
Open (seriously, where were you?),
this year’s event had everything.
And we do mean everything. And if
you weren’t entertained, then you
never will be.
Injuries, upsets, perfect 10s,
sharks, ripping rookies, less-thanperfect
10s, heat re-starts, judging
drama, boat drivers with a death
wish, a questionable 10 (more like
an eight) and perhaps the best
waves we have seen at J-Bay since
the ’80s...
Take that, Fiji!
It wasn’t all good, folks, there
were some bad, and there were some
downright ugly. Let’s have a recap:
SURFING LIFE 16

THE GOOD.
Jefferys Bay was in career-best
form. There was plenty of sand
in the bay, and the swell tap
never turned off. Not even once.
Perfect right after perfect right
spiralled down the famous point
and provided the best surfers on
Earth the perfect playing field
to up their ante. And they so did
up it. J-Bay was the scene for the
highest level of performance
surfing the sport has ever seen.
From one-to-34; every surfer had
a highlight.
No wave pool in the world
is ever going to replicate waves
like that, period. Competitive
surfing’s future, for better or for
worse, is in the ocean!
THE BAD.
The GOAT hurt his hoof! The
pumping surf taking place outside
the contest zone was too alluring
even for Kelly Slater, and he paid
the ultimate price in his pre-heat
surf by pulverising his foot. Kelly
took to social media shortly after
the incident with a photo of his
X-ray and described the injury
as, “Kinda [sic] like smashing my
foot with a big hammer as hard
as I can.” The injury is expected
to keep him out of the water
for six months, not just dashing
any hopes of a 12th world title,
but quite realistically ending the
greatest competitive career surfing
will ever see.
No one will ever match the
King’s 11 world titles. Shit, no
one will even get close.
THE UGLY.
There is no other way to describe
it – the judging at this year’s
event was uglier than a pitbull
chewing a wasp. It was the only
fly in our South African ointment.
Don’t get us wrong, questionable
scores are part and parcel with
professional surfing; it’s been
happening in this sport since
day one. But there were simply
too many irregularities this time
around. We ask it time and time
again, but will this event finally
trigger a revamp of the judging
system?
In a year of bad judging and
questionable decisions, J-Bay was
the pinnacle. Change has to come
if competitive surfing is ever to
progress to the level which the
surfers are.
AND THE REST.
But wait, you say. What about
the surfers!? Surely they deserve
some credit? Yes they do, and a
lot of them get praised within
the following pages of this oily
magazine you hold between
your mitts. But a special mention
should go to: Filipe Toledo –
for surfing the most perfect
contest wave ever in the history
of pro surfing. And the rookie
Frederico Morais who, despite his
questionable 10 in the quarters
(not his fault), was surfing like
a seasoned veteran and came
within a Portuguese whisker of
taking out the whole damn event.
Until next time, baie dankie,
South Africa!
SURFING LIFE 17

Moments
STRIKE
MISSION
Taj Burrow tackles titanic Hollow
Trees in an all-icon showdown.
Hollow Trees, also known as HTs or
Lance’s Right, is the poster wave for
all things adventure and exploration.
The jewel in the Mentawaian crown,
HTs is a picture-perfect right found
a couple of hundred metres off a
pristine, palm tree flanked crescent
of white sand on the West Sumatran
island of Sipora. HTs boasts an alluring
wall, a couple of heaving barrel sections
and a deadly shelf lurking just below
the surface in the impact zone, ready
to claim flesh and fibreglass at the first
hint of misplaced rail or ill-timed turn.
Should you get caught inside, whether
from straightening out or paddling out,
the Surgeon’s Table will happily see you
straight away.
If Hollow Trees symbolises surf travel,
then Taj Burrow is the spirit animal of the
stoked frother who can’t miss a swell, no
matter where it kisses the planet. TB was
FOMO-personified before the acronym
existed. Surely it’s a given, then, that if
one of the world’s most iconic surfers
meets one of the planet’s most revered
waves the results will be spectacular, so
when these shots graced our inbox we
just had to talk to Taj to hear all about
what went down at HTs, and the bonus
mission he stumbled into afterwards.
“The Indian Ocean was lit up! The map
was bright red, blobs everywhere, and I
just went, “Fuck! I’ve got to get some good
waves!” Since I retired last year I’ve been
frantically trying to chase swells, and yet
haven’t ever really been in the right spot;
I haven’t had that perfect session. This
was the time to set that straight.
“I had so many options. The West
Oz coastline was primed, as was all of
Indonesia, so it came down to making a
call and hoping it was the right one. In
the end I decided on the Mentawais, just
because of how productive you can be in
that part of the world.
“I was messaging every setup and
camp and boat you could think of, seeing
if anyone had beds or berths or whatever.
The guys at Hollow Trees Resort got back
straight away and they had room for me
and my mate [filmer] Dave Fox for a few
days, so I locked it in straight away.
“I’d always heard about HTs doing
the big double-up roll-in thing when it’s
massive. I’d probably only ever seen it
four- or five-foot, so that was a pretty
exciting thought, and it totally came off –
it was macking! Huge roll-ins to double-up
stand-tall pits, it was incredible!
SURFING LIFE 18

SURFING LIFE 19

Moments
“When the swell first hit there
were a couple of good ones, but it
wasn’t proper pumping. There was
so much swell in the ocean, but I
still really wasn’t sure if I’d nailed
the call; was starting to think I’d
blown it again. Then it went from
six-foot to eight, then 10, proper
big nuggets coming in, and I just
relaxed straight away and felt
content that I was in the right spot.
“That afternoon it got too big. It
was 12-foot and washing through,
with a mysto third reef capping
way out the back. It was closing out
the whole bay and where the boats
normally sit. It was so wild, I could
never have imagined that. The
next day it calmed down, and we
got it eight- to 10-foot again on the
way back, so we got two days of it
proper firing… unbelievable!
“There was a bit of a pack,
but the majority of the guys were
watching and trying to pick off the
medium ones. Then there were a
half-dozen of us sitting up the top
looking for the big roll-ins. It was
mellow; everyone was in really
good spirits and taking turns. It was
a sight to see, it was so fun, and
it was just so awesome to finally
witness it doing its double-up thing.
“HTs packs a punch, way more
than people expect. It’s really
heavy, but that goes under the
radar a little ’cos it looks so damn
perfect. Once it hits six-foot,
though, it just flogs you. You get
hammered and have to do a full lap
around to get back out because it
rinses you so hard and washes you
over the shelf. It looks really userfriendly,
but it can really give you
a beating. It looks perfect, but it’s a
serious wave.
“I only had two bad stacks, but
I broke my step-up second wave
of the trip, so was on a 5’10” after
that, which was devastating. Once
I had the lineup sorted I was OK,
though, I could pick my waves,
and I definitely had more good
ones than bad ones by the time we
were done.
“I love strike missions. Coming
from WA and having Indonesia
three hours away means I can
bolt up for a swell, whereas most
people usually have their trips
locked in months in advance. To
be able to strike like that, and see
the islands that alive with swell,
was really cool. The Mentawai’s is
the best zone on earth for surf, and
so worthy of all the hype. There
are so many waves that work in so
many different conditions, it’s just
incredible. I’m definitely going to
keep trying to do hit and runs like
that from here on out, and having
land camp options these days
makes that viable.
“I ended up jumping on a
charter boat from HTs after the
swell. The Sibon Baru had a couple
of spots open up on a trip, so
Dave and I pounced on them and
off we sailed. Turned out it was
a boatload of 12 Brazilians, all
black belt MMA maniacs. We were
terrified at first, thinking, What
the hell have we got ourselves into
here? But they ended up being the
biggest pack of absolute legends
and were as stoked to have us
as we were to jump aboard. The
guys were mellow in the water,
too, I was probably frothing
more than them all put together.
Most of them hadn’t been to the
Ments before either, so I ended up
turning into a bit of a surf guide;
it was cool. I might have found
my next career if this pro surfing
thing doesn’t turn out!”
AS TOLD TO: CHRIS BINNS
PHOTOS BY: FUKU
SURFING LIFE 20

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A divine moment of earth and sea. After an arduous journey across
half the Pacific Ocean and through the Coral Sea this wave stands
up on its hind legs and dances for us in the cool morning light on
the east coast of Australia.
PHOTO: RESPONDEK
SURFING LIFE 24

THE
YIN AND YANG
OF
WAVES
They’re the challenging, ever-changing canvas we pin our life’s
work to. Some make us feel good, others make us feel uneasy, but
we follow their movements regardless, both in solitude and as a
tribe. Their contours hypnotise us while their form captures our
imagination. Some get paid to ride them; others pay a premium
for the privilege.
WORDS BY CRAIG BRAITHWAITE
Is there a human pursuit purer
than riding ocean waves?
No matter how many
corporate sport types try to ram
surfing down our throats and
get the mainstream masses to
buy into it, the yin and yang of
surfing will always remain the
same. The contrary forces of
water trying to drown us, while
giving us maximum life at the
same time.
The allure of perfect, empty
waves. The waves of your life
on offer if things go right. If
they don’t, no one is around
to hear you scream. This is the
fine line, as surfers, we like to
dance upon.
Perfect WAVES of all kinds
are out there and they exist,
and the following pages are
proof of that. So, get out there
and load the car; pack some
bags; jump on a plane. Follow
the salt spray to the horizon.
This issue, we did exactly that,
and this is what we found!
SURFING LIFE 25

Fear causes hesitation and hesitation causes your worst fears to
come true. Shipsterns Bluff, Tasmania and Cape Solander, Sydney
are two places where you don’t ever wanna hesitate. Here’s Marti
Paradisis, not hesitating.
PHOTO: TILDESLEY
SURFING LIFE 26

Rock
Ledges
Make the drop or
you’re fish food.
Where the madmen of
surfing like to reside.
Shipsterns Bluff, Cape
Solander, Voodoo…
they all have one thing
in common. They
are exposed parts of
coastline where superdeep
water is abruptly
met by a shallow rock
ledge close to, or right
onto jagged cliff faces.
This is high stakes
surfing where every
wipeout is a potential
critical situation.
How critical, we hear
you all ask?
Well, take Dave Wassel,
a North Shore lifeguard
who’s renowned for
his big balls of steel in
heaving, heavy waves.
At one point he held the
record for the biggest wave
ever surfed. A standout
at maxing Waimea Bay,
Mavericks, Todos Santos
and Cloudbreak, where he’s
regularly surfed 40-foot
waves.
Wassel came out for the
Red Bull Cape Fear event
in 2016, and baulked at
paddling out to 10- to 12-
foot Cape Solander. Surfing
Life asked Wassel what he
thought about surfing Cape
Solander.
“For starters, let’s get
this straight. I’ve never
surfed Cape Solander. I’ve
paddled out, looked over
the ledge on a few, and
paddled right back in,”
deadpanned Wassel.
How does this rock ledge
compare to other big
waves you’ve surfed?
“It’s in a league of its
own. It’s just as dangerous
at five-foot as it is at 15.
It’s that cliff face that’s so
messed up. No matter the
size, if you fall on the drop
you’re going into that cliff
and no one, not even God,
can help you there!”
SURFING LIFE 27

Beachies
Where the land is
always soft(ish)
A good beach break session
will leave you feeling 10-
foot tall and bulletproof.
You can throw yourself
into lips and over ledges
with reckless abandon
as there will only ever be
sand to cushion your fall.
No sharp reef to tear you
open, or hard rocks to
knock you out.
Have you ever surfed a new
beachie and found nothing
but closeouts, and got pitched
over the lip, while some saltencrusted
local – surfing right
beside you – is backdoor’ing
the take-off, making sections
and finishing every one of his
waves up onto dry sand?
Yeah? So, allow us to
introduce you to landmarks.
Landmarks are your friend.
Find your landmark on the
beach where the peaks are
consistently breaking and stay
on top of it. The landmark
could be a tree, a power pole,
some lucky prick’s home. A
crevice on a sand dune. Look
where others are sitting, and
after they catch a wave, paddle
over and sit there, align
yourself with a landmark, or –
better yet – with two that you
can sit between!
With a good landmark,
you’ll see how the currents
are moving you down the
beach or out to sea, or maybe
the tide is sucking you into
the impact zone. Gain your
bearings of the lineup with
a good landmark, and never
forget them.
Surfers go to the grave
without divulging their secret
landmarks. You should, too.
Kai Otten with his landmarks on lockdown and wrapped tighter
than an airport sandwich at his home beachie.
PHOTO: RESPONDEK
SURFING LIFE 28

SURFING LIFE 29

Surfing Life have spent hours staring at this dreamy
pointbreak situation. We’ve not only mind-surfed this
wave to death, we’ve also mind-built a log cabin on that
clearing, and mind-moved in, mind-raising our children
all the while mind-paying our mortgage off. If only, huh?
PHOTO: SCOTT
POINT
BREAKS
In all their
leg-burning beauty!
Most surfers’ ideal setup
involves a long, grinding
pointbreak. Tucked away
inside corners of headlands
well away from the wind,
points can be relied upon
in the most extreme
conditions. The permanence
of points makes them easy
to read. Waves come in;
water runs out through
established rips and
keyholes. There’s always a
prime jump-off spot, usually
at a point where one of
those permanent rips awaits,
to take you out back.
On big, big days on the
points, the water moves the
same way as the smaller days.
Only faster. Long-time chargers
of any point who have it wired
know exactly where to sit for
the deepest barrels; they know
when it’s big and they get
dusted where to paddle or swim
to safety, should shit get real.
The biggest obstacle out
there are humans. Pointbreaks
are often reduced to a state
of human soup, thanks to an
easier paddle out – compared to
a big day on the beaches – and
long, enticing walls running
for hundreds of metres, lulling
even the clumsiest of kooks into
thinking they can score the ride
of their life.
Most points have a pecking
order, where locals who’ve done
their time sit the deepest and
get first dibs on any set wave
rolling through the lineup; they
rarely bomb or fall off a wave.
Which means there’s a good
chance at any two-hour point
session, every single wave which
comes through your inside is
already taken.
A good strategy for surfing
points, if you’re not a part of
the pecking order, is to sit a
little wider. Sit further down the
point where the riders aren’t
as good and pick the wider
breaking sets where the locals
aren’t on them. Watch around
you as to who’s making waves
and who isn’t, and when those
wide sets come… pick your
waves and paddle hard for them.
Or, do what Dane Reynolds
suggests: “Sit shallower than
everyone else and pick off the
smaller scraps that get through
the crowd. I do that and get a
high wave count no matter how
many people are out there.”
Be warned, though,
when the sets come, you’ll
be duckdiving and avoiding
oncoming riders and traffic like
your life depends on it.
SURFING LIFE 30

SURFING LIFE 31

Ocean swells violently rise out of deep water onto the shallow Teahupo’o reef bed. The sheer
volume of water coming inwards, suck the reef bed almost dry, before it breaks. This outgoing
water makes Teahupo’o a nightmare of a wave to paddle into. The outgoing forces, meeting the
oncoming swells, and if you blow the takeoff, you suddenly become the meat in that shit sandwich.
PHOTO: TMK
SURFING LIFE 32

REEFS
We’re here to
snorkel!
Both a surfer’s best friend
and worst nightmare all
wrapped into one glorious
package of jagged, skintearing
perfection!
Reefs are the closest thing to a
constant in surfing, with a neverchanging
bottom thanks to the
perpetuity of the reef and rock
below. All a surfer needs are the
wind, swell and tide to come to
the party, and you are scoring.
It’s lucky there’s some kind
of conformity and mechanical
nature to these waves, because
what awaits you below is death
on a stick. Sharp, live or dead
reef, coral heads in full bloom
and jagged volcanic rock or a
combination of all of the above!
All around the world our reefs
are given affectionate names such
as, The Ring of Fire, Shish-kebabs,
Razorblades, the Surgeons
Table, the Button, Boneyards,
the Cemetery and the list goes
on. Surfers being scalped, held
together by stitches, punctured
bodies, broken kneecaps ... the
list of injuries reads more like
a middle eastern casualty ward
catalogue then it does a pursuit
of happiness.
This wave and the reef lying
beneath need no introduction.
There’s so much skin on the
Teahupo’o reef, that if we took
a DNA sample, it would register
as human and be able to receive
welfare benefits. Nick Carroll
once described Teahupo’o as,
“The waves here create a space
within itself that no human was
ever meant to occupy.” And in a
place where waves break as thick
as they are high, Nick Carroll
is not breathing an ounce of
melodrama about it.
SURFING LIFE 33

Two hours in a boat in 15-metre seas just to reach Pedra Blanca. Most
of the crew spend their voyage head over the side hurling up last night’s
roast. When you arrive, it’s 40-foot. You catch a ski out the break, and a
six-metre Great White buzzes your breadbox. It’s just you, and an alive
ocean. This kind of scene is only for a few.
PHOTO: TILDESLEY
SURFING LIFE 34

BOMB
ies
Are you ready
for this?
Sitting in the middle of
nowhere surrounded by
nothing but deep water and
raw ocean, nothing tests your
steel as a surfer more than a
bombie.
You won’t ever feel smaller in
your entire life, than bobbing in
the middle of an ocean teeming
with marine life while swells rise
sharply out of deep water and
shatter onto a rock or reef ledge.
Paddling into a bombie is the
biggest commitment in surfing,
and it will also make you feel
more alive than you ever have
been before. Which is ironic,
because it could be the closest to
death you’ll ever be. The true Yin
and Yang of surfing.
Out to sea there are no
landmarks to guide you. The
best ticket out here is patience,
and holding your nerve. And
then some more patience. Watch
plenty of waves from the channel
and mind surf the take-off and
sections before you physically do
it. Large doses of watching waves
are required to survive a pulsing
bombie session. Even then it’s no
guarantee you will.
SURFING LIFE 35

A popular Gold Coast Pointbreak in 2008, a long time before drones
were invented. The sand from the rivermouth was so good this swell,
that photographer Andrew Shield hired a light aircraft and shot the Alley
for two hours from above. The sand this day was breaking for over a
kilometre, literally into the next suburb north. It hasn’t happened since,
and no one can remember happening quite like that, before.
PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 36

RIVER
mouths
Only slightly more regular
than Halley’s Comet.
They lure us with their ruler-edged
perfection and their abstract
fickleness. Nowhere on Earth is more
sand shifted than at an estuary.
Tides ebb and flow, swells come and
go, and the sand moves with it the
whole time. Sometimes it all aligns
fleetingly, to create surfable waves.
Scoring a rivermouth on its day is
like shaking hands with the baby Jesus
himself. When the rivermouth gods
combine and the planets align, there
may be no better waves on the planet
than a rivermouth who has her shit
together. The fact you may never see the
same waves again makes the rivermouth
experience even more supernatural.
Case in point; check out this sequence
from Jason Daly. A super-rare Queensland
rivermouth had been shifting its sand
around and showing signs of life. When
a rare NE swell hit, Jason drove past the
rivermouth at first light and no one was
out. He snapped off a few rolls before
paddling out, and when he came in, he
shot a few more – by which time word
had well and truly gotten out.
SURFING LIFE 37

Matt Wilkinson on his way to winning the Fiji Pro, 2017. After his
victory, Wilko attributed figuring out the lineup and where to sit
for the good ones as his secret to taking out the event. Among the
world’s best surfers, figuring this out, is the difference between a
winner’s cheque and the title lead, and not.
PHOTO: MILLER
ATOLL s
Don’t be fooled by
their beauty!
The definition of an atoll is
‘a submerged island’. The
Pacific Ocean is full of them,
and there’s no better surfing
definition of this than Fiji’s
Cloudbreak.
A slightly submerged reef
atoll with fingers of reef on its
outer fringes extending out into
deep water.
At low tide on a calm
Cloudbreak day (with a good pair
of booties), you can walk from
one side of the reef atoll to the
other in about 40 minutes. On
the north-eastern flank of this
atoll lies one of surfing’s true
jewels.
You can see the judging tower
at the bottom here, with the
perilously shallow and sharp
stretch of reef known as Shishkababs
straight out front of the
tower. Further up the reef is the
take-off, and where you take off
depends on your skill level. The
Hobgood twins are renowned for
paddling each other right up into
the reef, where it borders into
deathset closeout territory. >
SURFING LIFE 38

SURFING LIFE 39

Cloudbreak as you’ve never seen it before. From the very top of the Atoll where the waves
break long and straight, before descending down the outside flank and refracting the swell
back out into deep water. Draw a line from the contest tower to the big WSL boat in the
channel, and that part of the reef is Shish-kebabs, where giving mercy isn’t her strong suit.
PHOTO: GIBSON
TOLL s
The hold-downs at Cloudbreak
are like nothing else in surfing.
In fact, it’s widely accepted the
easiest place in all of surfing to cop
a double-wave hold-down is right
here. Blow the take-off up the point
where you get thrown down into
the deeper water, and you won’t
return to the top in time for the
wave behind it to land on you.
A good policy for your first few
waves out here is to take the last
wave of each set for this very reason.
Out here, your best landmark
is underneath you. Kelly Slater is
famous for having this place wired,
because he knows where to sit. Watch
Kelly closely out at Cloudbreak, and
he’s always looking below. And that’s
where the secret lies.
The long fingers of reef will guide
you. Each finger of reef has its own
birthmark to look out for. Maybe
there’s a coral head on it, or it’s a
thinner (or wider) finger than the
ones around it. Learn the fingers and
which ones to sit on, and finding
your own honey pot out here – and
at many other reefs around the world
– is achievable in your first session
off the boat!
SURFING LIFE 40

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A perfect central coast peak having its shirt tucked in and boots
polished by a brisk offshore wind. PHOTO: RESPONDEK
SURFING LIFE 42

w i n d
BLOWN
Wind. Glorious wind. We love it. We hate it. It is both
Creator and Destroyer. Both friend and foe. It is
surfing’s ultimate dichotomy.
WORDS BY KERRY WRIGHT
Our relationship with wind is
anything but ambivalent. It
breathes life across the ocean to
create the swells that become the
waves we ride. We surf because of
wind. We also don’t surf because
of wind.
Unbridled optimism at the
prospect of some solid groundswell
arriving at your local spot can quickly
be tempered by the frustrating
reality that it’s often accompanied
by unfavourable winds. Devil winds.
Onshore winds. Gale force offshores.
Nothing can affect a surfer’s mood
quite like wind.
And, perhaps you didn’t know –
it’s all thanks to the sun.
’Cos the Earth is tilted on its
axis the planet cooks unevenly in
the sunlight – like a snag in the
Webber that you’re not paying proper
attention to. The tropics get toasty
hot whilst the polar caps are bathed
in ice. Wind is created by the planet
trying to even out the heat energy.
How the wind makes waves is
quite simple.
Water has surface tension.
Deform it slightly, and the pulling
force between neighbouring water
molecules will rapidly spring it back
again. As wind starts to blow over the
water, it creates teeny ripples called
capillary waves that are hardly a
millimetre high. The water’s surface
tension, kinda like its own elasticity,
tries to destroy them immediately by
tugging them back into place.
But if the wind keeps blowing, the
water surface starts to roughen up
with these little capillary waves. >
SURFING LIFE 43

Breezy Points
• Wind speed is measured by the
Beaufort scale, an empirical
measure that relates wind
speed to observed conditions
at sea or on land. The Beaufort
scale is recorded in knots –
the marine measurement for
wind. One knot equals nearly
2 (1.87km/h) kilometres per
hour. When you start seeing
a few whitecaps it’s around
27.8km/h and when you see
plenty of them it’s stronger
than 37km/h. Ocean spray?
That’d be higher than 46km/h.
A true offshore breeze sculpts far
travelling ocean swells into perfect
waves for us to paint our favourite
pictures on. High Art!
PHOTO: BOSKO
• We only really feel wind once
the speed exceeds 5.4km/h.
• The windiest place in
Australia? … Sandy Point in
Gippsland, Victoria, with an
average daily wind speed
of 32.6km/h. Interestingly,
Newcastle is fourth with
32km/h.
• The calmest city in Australia
for wind? Katherine, NT, with
9.8km/h.
• The windiest place on Earth?
Cape Denison in Antarctica,
with an average daily wind
speed of 72.3km/h.
> Now friction kicks in, allowing the
wind to get a better grip on the
surface, systematically building up
the ripples to make wind chop.
Once waves grow beyond
capillary size, surface tension can’t
stop them.
Game on! Wind chop eventually
grows into the swell that marches
onto our shores as perfectly formed
surf.
The holy trilogy of wind is its
speed, duration and fetch. The
harder and longer it blows, and the
bigger the area it blows over in the
same direction combine to create
the deep ocean groundswells that
make us dodge school, skip work
and be delinquent in general.
Wind is what defines a wave’s
personality. Onshore and it presses
down the back of the wave, making
it crumbly. Offshore and it grooms
the wave whilst blowing up the
face.
Burgers? That’s a wind swell.
They’re generated by local winds
within a few hundred k’s of the
coast, and are characterised by
short periods and steep, choppy
waves whose energy doesn’t extend
very deep.
Juice? That would be
groundswell. Generated by strong
winds much further away, creating
longer swell periods whose energy
can extend down to around
1000-feet deep. What makes them
golden to surfers is that they are
no longer affected by the wind that
generated them. Which, if local
conditions are calm, means large,
long-period waves with zero winds
to affect surface conditions.
Wind isn’t only about near and
far. Land and sea breezes throw
their own little dynamic into the
mix. Ask any east coast surfer
about how a pristine dawnie can
disintegrate into onshore slop in an
instant. Snooze you lose.
Like it or not, wind is the
primary thread woven into the
fabric of our lives as surfers. It’s the
most clicked icon on our desktop,
and app on our phone. It means
everything to us.
It can deliver, and it can
disappoint. But remember, it’s
always offshore somewhere…
Wind is our friend or our foe. A sudden rain squall moves of the ocean
and crosses land turning what had been perfect Snapper Rock Peelers
just minutes ago, into onshore soup. PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 44

When the heavens turn the tap
on, the swell god’s promptly turn
their tap off. Why? Non-linear
interactions, that’s why!
PHOTO: GOOCH
SURFING LIFE 46

W H E N I T
RAINS
IT
POURS
If you’ve surfed long enough – especially in the
southern states – you’ve learnt the hard way that rain
can reduce swell size fairly significantly.
WORDS BY KERRY WRIGHT
Thinking you’re going to be waking
up to macking surf based on
the forecast – only to find it half
the predicted size, thanks to the
pouring rain that accompanied it
in the cold front.
The ancient mariners knew all this
before us, and sailing lore speaks of
how the rain tends to calm the sea.
Here’s how it happens in sciencespeak:
Rain alters surface roughness
through the production of wavelets
by raindrops, as well as dampening
of high-frequency waves. It reduces
energy in the ocean surface through
non-linear interactions with the
underlying wave field.
Simply put – when raindrops hit the
sea they change the properties of the
surface. Rain causes a uniform increase
in pressure throughout the water
column ’cos of the turbulent dissipation
created by the raindrops penetrating
the sea surface and by changing
momentum at the surface layer.
If you’ve sat out in the surf in a rain
storm you know how quickly the waves
disappear!
SURFING LIFE 47

The falling rain has a coupla
different effects that alter the
water surface, and in doing so
dampens the swell. First up is the
droplet splash with its associated
ring waves. When a raindrop hits
the water surface, it typically
creates a crater with a crown that
evolves into a vertical stalk. This is
followed by radiating ring waves.
These ring waves create a
subsurface turbulence which
dampens the short-period waves
the most. One of the major
scattering features is the collapsing
of the stalk. Scientists have studied
raindrops falling in coloured water
and worked out each drop sends
down one or more masses of water
downwards below the surface in
the form of vortex rings.
These rings descend with a
gradually diminishing velocity and
with increasing size to a distance
of several inches, generally as
much as 18 inches, below the
surface. Each drop sends down a
bunch of rings.
It is not that the drop merely
forces itself down under the
surface, but, in descending, carries
down with it a mass of water. The
rain falling onto water results in as
much motion immediately beneath
the surface as above it. So, besides
the splash and surface-effect which
the drops produce, they cause the
water at the surface to rapidly
change places with the water some
distance below. Such a movement
of water from one place to another
tends to destroy wave-motion.
Another interesting way that
rain reduces the wave height is that
the rain changes the temperature
and salinity of the upper layer of
the sea, which in turn reduces
its viscosity. Warm rain relative
to the sea temp will reduce the
attenuation of surface ripples. If
the temp difference is 10 degrees
Celsius it can dampen waves by 25
per cent!
So, next time you get skunked
by a swell forecast, or are sitting
out the back in a rain squall, you’ll
know exactly what’s happening!
Costa Rica, a place where the waves
pump. When it’s not raining.
PHOTO: MATTHEWS
SURFING LIFE 48

Another time and another place. Photographer Peter Boskovic looked
into the weather map, saw something that no one else did and opened
his wallet for flights. Pulling into a pacific island by boat on dark, the
horizon revealed a glimpse of what was to come. Fortune favours not
only the brave, but also the smart! PHOTO: BOSKO
SURFING LIFE 50

C R Y S T A L
BALL
In the digital age, with everyone being spoon-fed
internet swell forecasts and predictions, it’s still
possible to use old school weather forecasting blended
with the modern internet tools, and avoid the rest of the
herd while they chase each other’s tail. Take a look into
our Crystal Ball and learn how:
WORDS BY STEPHEN SHEARER
Without question, the internet
has been the biggest revolution
in surfing since the shortboard.
With it there has come both an
unprecedented democratisation
of surf forecasting knowledge,
and a dumbing down of the
same, leading to every Tom, Dick
and Harriet showing up for the
same swells at the same spots
– all because they saw it on the
interwebs. But it doesn’t have
to be that way! We are here to
help, and with a little bit of DIY
knowledge and application you
can zig when others zag... and
find empty waves in the spaces in
between.
SURFING LIFE 51

SWELL BASICS
Wind blowing over water is
called a fetch, and it’s our basic
driver when it comes to swell
generation. A fetch creates wind
waves in a sea state. As these wind
waves move away from the wind
source, they start to organise and
move according to the energy
contained within them. At this
point these waves are now called
swell trains. Swell trains can
travel vast distances – especially
those with high energy content,
measured by the distance between
the swells in the swell train; i.e.
the swell period, or interval.
Long-period swells have enormous
energy moving deep within the
ocean and do all kinds of weird and
wonderful things upon reaching
coastlines and offshore reefs,
like bend around at crazy angles
(refraction) and magnify to many
times their ocean height!
But, we’re racing ahead of ourselves,
and depending on where you are
surfing, period may not even be that
important.
For those coastlines exposed to
mostly close-range sources – like
the east coast of Australia, where
Coral Sea tradewind swells and lowperiod
Tasman Sea low pressure
systems dominate swell – swell
direction is far more important in
forecasting good surf... which is
not something you’ll hear Magic
Seaweed admit to. There tends
to be a fetish among the online
forecasters for swell period on
coastlines exposed to groundswell,
but more about swell period and its
importance later.
Let’s not bog our rails on
specifics or indulge in any romantic
fantasies that things were better
when we only had the synoptic
chart in the newspaper to forecast
SURFING LIFE 52

Bradley Norris got towed into this
wave behind Dane Gudauskas.
Understanding the shorter-scale
curving called refraction and the
larger global curved movement
along the Great Circle Paths is
the biggest breakthrough in surf
forecasting. It allows us to track
a storm thousands of miles away
off the southern island of New
Zealand and anticipate its arrival
on Tahiti’s doorstep a week later.
PHOTO: NORRIS
FIRST PRINCIPLE
THE TREND IS YOUR FRIEND.
Snapshots of synoptic prognosis charts
can look insane, but these are guesses,
based on computer modelling, and just
like a butterfly flapping its wings can
cause a storm over the Amazon, the
sheer chaos and complexity of weather
systems means a lot can happen between
the prognosis chart and our reality. So,
you need to pay attention over a period
of time, preferably every day, or even
twice a day, to make sense of the trend.
Weather Forecasts (ECMF). This is harder
to access – you usually need to pay for it
– but the good news is that our very own
Bureau of Meteorology uses a model very
similar, called AccessG.
with – even if that did thin out crowds.
We’ll focus on old-school knowledge,
but access it with modern internet tools,
which it publishes – mostly, and bestly – for
free. No need to get sucker punched into
paying for expensive premium content on
a forecasting website if you can develop or
hone the skills on your own. Getting off the
internet spoon-fed forecasting cycle also
puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes
to ducking and weaving around crowds who
are all accessing the same information.
PROGNOSIS CHARTS – They come
from a variety of algorithms, but there
are two basic ones that power most
of the swell models you’ll see on the
forecasting sites. The first, and by far the
most widely used, is called the Global
Forecasting System (GFS). This US model
powers just about every swell model on
the planet... the little wave graphs you
read on Magic Seaweed, Coastalwatch,
Seabreeze, Swellnet, etc., all come
from GFS. You can check out the GFS
prognosis charts free, and it should be
a first port of call for anyone looking to
forecast surf.
It’s not the only model, though,
and sometimes – like all models – it
completely loses the plot. Which is
where cross-checking against other
models is invaluable. The other primary
weather model in use today is the
European Centre for Medium Range
Here’s an example of how all this could
work. It’s February: cyclone season.
You hop onto weatherzone and cycle
through the weather models. GFS has a
monster cyclone storming down from
Vanuatu towards the east coast, and
the swell models are all red-lining. But
AccessG isn’t coming to the party and
has the system lolly-gagging behind
Vanuatu before dribbling back out
into the South Pacific and dissipating.
Before you go charging up to Double
Island Point or booking your favourite
Noosa accommodation chasing tropical
point perfection, spend a day or two
tracking these two weather models.
Does one start to get interested, or
do they both lose interest and dissipate
out to sea? If they both start to show
the same system move into our swell
window, load up the wagon and go! If
they are still in disagreement as the
prognosis gets closer to reality, it’s a
red light and you’re gonna get skunked;
even if the internet hype machine from
the surf sites is in full swing. Stay at
home and save your sanity.
These synoptic snapshots are just
that; it’s the pattern which matters.
Patterns matter in more than just
the day-to-day movement of weather
systems. Ocean-wide and broad-scale
atmospheric patterns create the
conditions that see certain systems and
storm tracks occur again and again
along the same corridors, with seasonal
implications for swell chasing.
PHOTO: RESPONDEK
SURFING LIFE 53

SURFING LIFE 54

Filipe Toledo is like one of those
toys where you wind him up,
and then watch him spin. His
surfing and the Supertubes
section go together like fish and
tartare sauce
PHOTO: THURTELL
PHOTO: RESPONDEK
The biggest pattern – the ENSO cycle,
with its twin poles of El Nino and La
Nina – is well known. ENSO describes
the movement of warm water and
the strength of tradewinds across
the Pacific Basin. It’s a complicated
beast, and we’re still not sure which
of the atmosphere and the ocean is
the chicken and which is the egg. But
not to worry; it breaks down pretty
simply for large-scale seasonal surf
forecasting.
El Nino is where tradewinds
weaken and even reverse and run
a much stronger and lower storm
track for the North Pacific during
the Hawaiian winter. If chasing
big surf in Hawaii or P-Pass or
anywhere on the west coast of
America is your thing, you want an
El Nino weather pattern.
La Nina sees tradewinds
strengthen, and warm water pushed
across our side of the Pacific Basin.
That means more tradewind swells
for Australia, more cyclones, more
lows and troughs and other goodies
for the east coast crew. The ENSO is
a major seasonal and yearly pattern.
Patterns come in smaller intraseasonal
scales, too. The ability to
identify and track these meaningful
patterns is one of the most important
forecasting skills there is.
The main reason the old salts at
your local could stick a finger to the
wind and proclaim a big swell was
due on the next new moon was their
ability to identify these patterns. If
you can figure out the patterns for
your area, you can figure them out
for other areas up and down the
coast, and then you’ll start to pick
one of the sweetest cherries available
in forecasting... something I call, “the
spaces in between”.
One of the main consequences of
the surf forecast internet age is an
increase in the amount of hype over
certain swells. It is inescapable and
insufferable, and no matter what is
written here... it’ll remain with us
until the robot apocalypse, where
the leftover humans are scuttling the
roads like cockroaches, clutching a
blanket and an old single fin.
That is the big contrast with the
pre-internet age when the hype came
after the swell event. The surf mags
would forensically examine big swells
with words and photos. But there is
life before and after the hype, and this
is where the independent forecaster
can enjoy what we all love: less
crowded surf.
If you can predict when the next
swell is going to hit, you can be
there in the water surfing the front
edge of said swell in total solace for
hours in the middle of any built-up
area like the Gold Coast or Sydney.
Imagine that!
SURFING LIFE 55

Dave Vlug taps the ceiling in
the middle of Sydney, with
not a soul around. Waves
like these exist and sessions
like these go down with
great frequency as the front
edge of new swells enter
our shores. Learn to read
synoptic charts, follow their
trends and predict a new
swell’s arrival and you too
can be like Vluggy here.
PHOTO: ORNATI
One of the best examples of the spaces
in between comes every summer on
the east coast of Australia; especially
on the coastline north from Seal Rocks
to the Sunshine Coast. Slow-moving
highs can become semi-stationary
centred over New Zealand, and these
highs can develop broad swathes of
easterly to south-easterly tradewind
fetches over the corridor between the
North Island and the island chains of
Vanuatu and New Caledonia and into
the Coral Sea.
Sometimes low-pressure systems
can form and drift down into these
tradewind fetches; sometimes even
tropical cyclones can interact with
these wind fields (and that’s when
the internet hype game gets ramped
up massively). But these tradewind
bands themselves can supply weeks
and weeks of low hype surf to the east
coast, courtesy of a magic phenomenon
called the fully developed sea state.
This fully developed sea state is a
physical reality known by sailors, sea
dogs and old-school surf forecasters
that rarely, if ever, gets translated into
internet swell models. It boils down
to a simple maxim: a fully developed
SURFING LIFE 56

Stationary high pressure systems sitting
in the Tasman often fly under the radar of
forecast sites thanks to the fully activated
sea state, as seen here
PHOTO: SCOTT
sea state is the maximum amount
of energy that can be imparted to
the ocean for a given wind strength
blowing over the same area for a
sufficient time.
Time is the key element here.
Whenever you see a semi-stationary
fetch, even if it doesn’t look like much
in the way of wind speeds or the wave
periods seem low, you can bet the
waves will punch above their weight,
especially if that fetch covers a broad
expanse of ocean, like most tradewind
fetches do.
So basically, the most innocuous
high-pressure system sitting over the
top half of New Zealand, if allowed
to sit there for a week or more, will
develop the sea state. This developed
sea state is capable of delivering
overhead waves to the east coast.
Meanwhile, the internet weather
models, unable to pick up on the
fully developed sea state, have no
idea there is swell even in the water.
So, while the herd follows the
internet forecasts and stays in bed,
you can be wetting your rails in
overhead dawn patrol walls, before
the word is even out!
SURFING LIFE 57

SURFING LIFE 58

Mikey Wright loves the deep
lines of long period swell which
activate the West Australian
coastline. Because once its
activated, very shortly after
Mikey gets elevated.
PHOTO: RIDENOUR
Tradewind fetches powered the exploration
of the oceans by both Polynesian
explorers and, later, the European
discoverers. Polynesian navigators were
the original old-school forecasters. These
navigators – particularly the highly skilled
men of knowledge from the Marshall
Islands – were the first human beings
to learn an essential truth about waves,
which is fundamental to finding and
forecasting surf.
WAVES BEND.
They bend when their forward speed
is slowed by changes in underwater
bathymetry – such as reefs and continental
shelves and sea mountains – and they bend
around islands and other land masses like
headlands. They also bend on larger scales,
following broad curved sweeps of the ocean
called Great Circle Paths, which reflect the
greater reality that the Earth is curved and
not flat. Understanding both of these curving
phenomena, the shorter-scale curving called
refraction and the larger global curved
movement along the Great Circle Paths, is
a massive leap forward in surf forecasting.
Truly great Polynesian navigators could
identify the presence of distant atolls of
islands beyond the visible horizon simply by
watching the reverberation of waves across
the hull of their canoe, knowing full well
that every island group in the Pacific has its
own refractive pattern that can be read with
the same ease with which a forensic scientist
would read a fingerprint.
There is a modern-day analogy here for
surf chasers. We can use the same forensic
approach to identify the patterns of swell
parameters – direction, period, size – which
turn on different surf spots along different
stretches of coastline. We often refer to
these parameters as magic numbers.
SURFING LIFE 59

Finding the ‘magic numbers’
for any surf spot, for any stretch
of coast, even an island chain,
and developing an intimate
three-dimensional picture of the
interaction between wind, waves
and the surf spots they break
on can take a lifetime to master,
but only a few moments to
understand.
Different coastlines and
continents will have a different
emphasis on which of the
numbers are most important. For
example: on the north coast of
NSW where I live, swell direction
is by far the most important
parameter. A seven- to eightsecond
period tradewind swell
from the ENE will provide much
better surf than an 18-second
period swell from the south.
Head down to the south
coast of NSW, with its myriad
of nooks and crannies all facing
different directions, and all
three parameters are vital to
finding the magic numbers for
those particular spots. Victoria,
South Oz and West Oz, with
their coastlines angled into
the predominant open ocean
groundswells of the Indian and
Southern Ocean, and there
it’s swell period which is the
dominant factor. A swell period
under 11 seconds on the surf
coast of Victoria is not worth
getting out of bed for. But in
Queensland, that same 11-second
swell is lighting up Kirra and the
Superbank with stand-up barrels.
We have a mind and we
have senses with which we
can comprehend nature; we
can use them both to get more
uncrowded surf. Back yourself
to learn, but more than learn,
apply what you’ve learned. Over
time – with a bit of trial and
error – you’ll be able to lord it
over the ever-increasing hordes all
following the same internet-fed
pied piper – and who, by the way,
are paying for the privilege.
And, isn’t that grand?
Josh Tabone has mastered the art of surf forecasting and he is often zigging, when others zag.
This allows him time with just himself, the ocean, his camera and his thoughts. It’s no wonder
with all that space, he can be as creative as he is. PHOTO: TABONE
SURFING LIFE 60

Beside this left sits a rockwall, and just out the back sit military gunboats. When
the photographer set his tripod on the rockwall, our guide, John Micheletti freaked
out, waving him down off the rocks. Apparently if the gun ships had have mistaken
him for a sniper setting up, they would have blown him into a million pieces. Or as
Micheletti put it, turned him into pink mist.
SURFING LIFE 62

C o n c r e t e
OASIS
On paper, Nigeria is synonymous with conflict, kidnappings
and crime, but the coastal village of Tarkwa Bay is
overcoming these stereotypes one wave at a time.
WORDS BY WILL BENDIX | PHOTOS BY ALAN VAN GYSEN
Our plane cuts through the
layers of cloud as it starts its
descent for Murtala Muhammed
International Airport in Lagos. Six
years have passed since my first
trip to Nigeria and, even at 32,000
feet, I’m not convinced returning is
such a good idea.
Back then we’d come to verify
rumours of a world-class wedge that
breaks on the outskirts of Lagos
harbour. The rumours proved to
be true. Swells would refract off a
mile-long breakwall like a pinball
machine, finally bouncing up into
dark tubes that spit metres from the
shore of Tarkwa Bay.
The trip was rewarding but
exhausting; the result of constantly
keeping our guard up while
simultaneously getting deeply
barrelled. Since then, however, the
West African country has dominated
global headlines with stories of
escalating terrorism, kidnappings and
ethnic violence. “Briton kidnapped
by armed gang while leaving Lagos
airport,” read one Sunday Express
headline in July, 2013. “Two hundred
and thirty-four schoolgirls kidnapped
by extremists,” said CBS News in
April, 2014. “Double suicide bombing
at Nigerian university,” reported
News Week in January, 2017.
“Gunmen attack UN team in
Nigeria,” announced DC World News,
a month later in February.
Even the man at the visa agency
was surprised when I checked
‘tourism’ on my application form.
“Tourist visa?” he said. “We’ve never
done one of these for Nigeria.”
SURFING LIFE 63

SURFING LIFE 64

The afternoon haze sets in as the
sun lowers and Luke Davis goes
high. The heat is so oppressive that
through the middle of the day it’s a
mission just to go to the toilet. Once
the sun starts to set, the little Bay
in Lagos comes alive with villagers,
and surfers.
Yet here we were, about to land in the
thick of Nigeria’s largest city, and it was
all because of the breakwall.
Lagos is actually a giant island, built
on reclaimed land and cut into slices by
the sprawling lagoon that seeps through
the metropolis and out to sea. Twentyone
million people live here, squeezed
into every inch of available space. The
breakwall was built to protect the
expanding harbour and act as the city’s
last line of defence against the hungry
Atlantic Ocean. The fact that it created
one of the best man-made wedges in the
world was purely coincidental.
Our contact, John Micheletti, had
told us about a left on the other side of
the wall during that first trip, saying
it got even better than the right in the
dry season. His claims were met with
scepticism, until he started sending
photos. After a couple of years the
grainy cell phone images became too
tempting to ignore, and we somehow
convinced California-born stylist Luke
Davis and French tube maestro William
Aliotti it was worth investigating,
regardless of the headlines.
The plane engines roar as the landing
flaps drop down for the approach. Neon
skyscrapers beckon in the distance, but
below us lies a spider web of sandbanks
and slick black waterways, their edges
defined by thousands of gaslights burning
in the shacks that crowd the water’s edge.
Micheletti is wearing his trademark
outfit of boardshorts, a vest and flipflops
when he greets us outside the
airport. “Yeah, everybody’s scared of
Nigeria,” he says as we pile into his
truck. “But it’s not such a bad place.”
Italian born, Nigerian bred,
Micheletti has made Tarkwa Bay his
unlikely paradise. For work he helps
keep the lights on in Lagos, managing
the gas generators that power much of
the city during the frequent blackouts.
When he’s not negotiating a power
crisis, he makes the commute out to
Tarkwa where his family has built a
bungalow, literally a stone’s throw from
the wedge we’d surfed back in 2011.
“What about Boko Haram?”
photographer Alan Van Gysen asks
as we drive through the dizzy traffic,
noting the extremist group infamous for
kidnapping schoolgirls and coordinating
attacks using suicide bombers.
“They’re still around, but all that’s
in the north,” replies Micheletti. “It’s
not really news anymore, it’s quietened
down a lot. Now the problem is starting
again in the south, by the Niger Delta.
That’s oil country, that’s where the
original kidnapping started.”
The coastline of western Nigeria
is notoriously straight, absorbing a
surprising amount of swell from the
South Atlantic as it funnels through the
Gulf of Guinea. But the long stretches
of beach offer poor surf, with the
exception of Tarkwa Bay. Further to the
south, however, where Nigeria curves
into the oil-rich armpit of Africa, is a
coastline laden with potential.
“Around the Niger Delta, that’s
where things get really interesting,” says
Micheletti, alluding to the sandbanks,
rivermouths and bays that dent the
southern coastline. “But there’s no way
you’re going to surf there.”
Micheletti claims that the
government used to pay off the regional
chiefs to keep the peace and protect
the lucrative oil business. Even then,
the oil capital of Port Harcourt was
listed by Bloomberg as one of the most
dangerous cities in the world, with
abductions and murder commonplace.
Oil was first discovered in the Delta
in 1956. Shortly after independence,
Nigeria was ruled by a succession
of iron-fisted military leaders who
treated the country’s oil-rich coffers
like their personal piggy bank, the
worst of whom was General Sani
Abacha. Abacha was reputedly worth
$10 billion in 1998 when he kicked
the bucket. The infamous despot died
in the arms of two prostitutes after
his heart packed in, no longer able to
keep up with the good times. And so,
Nigeria stumbled into democratic rule.
Well, kind of. The military relinquished
power in theory, but not entirely in
practice, and much of the country
is still governed by the ever-present
spectre of AK47-wielding soldiers.
“The new president, Buhari, he’s
Muslim, so that’s eased the troubles in
the north,” Micheletti tells us. “But he’s
forgotten about the south, so the chiefs
down there are saying, OK, you don’t
want to pay us? We’ll show you… The
people down there are very different;
it’s a completely different language,
culture, the food’s different, the way
they look is different. What you’ve
got to remember is Nigeria was never
a country. The British came, drew a
border around the region with all these
different people and said, Right, now
you’re a country. That was always going
to be trouble.”
He pauses, as if it occurs to him that
perhaps this isn’t helping to put our
minds at ease. “But Lagos, Lagos is cool,
man,” he finally says. “You’ve just got to
know what you’re doing.”
SURFING LIFE 65

The sky is full of sand the
following morning; a dense
blanket of grit and dust that
stretches from the horizon to the
tip of the city behind us. The sand
comes from the arid interior of
North Africa, swept along by the
Harmattan. This desert trade wind
is said to be so dry that it can fell
trees as it sucks all the moisture out
the air, causing the sapped trunks to
snap like toothpicks. But the breeze
is cool against our backs, flaring
open the waves that break on the
shoreline with a steady percussion.
After spending the night in a
secure hotel compound, we had
hopped on a water taxi early that
morning. The boat sped along the
waterway, under a bridge where
traffic barrelled overhead, before
spitting us out into the broad
expanse of Lagos harbour. Cargo
ships stacked as high as buildings
dwarfed our tiny skiff while the
city loomed behind us like rows of
broken teeth.
“It’s all kinda apocalyptic,” said
Davis, as we motored past the rusting
hulls of shipwrecks and mangled
remains of an old oil pipeline that
was blown up by rebel militants.
Twenty minutes later we were on the
beach at Tarkwa Bay, amongst palm
trees and wooden fishing boats.
Unlike the right-hand wedge
inside the bay, the wave we came to
surf at Lighthouse beach sits on the
opposite side of the breakwall, which
receives the full brunt of swells that
have travelled the length of the
African coastline. But the waves need
the Harmattan winds to groom them
into shape, which only happens a
few months of the year.
“This wind blows all the way
from the Sahara,” says Micheletti
as he hurriedly waxes a fresh 6’0.
“Sometimes the dust is so thick you
can’t see the sun. It gets so bad that
planes can’t take off for days, or if
you’re in the city, you feel like you
can’t breathe.”
Out in the lineup we dodge the
walled-up sets, gauging the swell’s
intensity. Micheletti says there’s too
much period, claiming it’s better
when the swell is peakier. Despite
this, he manages to find a handful
of open tubes in rapid succession,
employing a textbook pig-dog
technique. It takes Aliotti and Davis
a while to find their bearings, but
soon they are picking off the gems in
amongst the closeouts.
“It kinda looks like Indo, huh?”
says Davis, after scratching into a
double-up drainer that slingshots
him through the tube.
“I always say, why go to Indo
when you’ve got this?” Micheletti
jokes in reply. “Not because the
waves are like Indo, but if you catch
enough of them, it eventually adds
up to one perfect Indo wave!”
Now 33, Micheletti learnt to surf
inside the bay when he was eight
years old. Before that, the only
person surfing in Lagos was Wale Da
Silva, a Swiss-Nigerian artist. “He was
the first real local at Tarkwa and used
to let us play with his boards in the
shorebreak,” says Micheletti. “That
was more than 20 years ago.”
Despite the few expats who
surfed Tarkwa on and off over the
years, Micheletti would mostly find
himself alone in the lineup. When
we first visited in 2011, there was
barely a handful of local surfers from
the village. But a few days later when
we go for a paddle inside the bay,
the wedge is thronging with a legion
of kids riding all manner of craft –
half pieces of surfboard, self-shaped
handplanes, dilapidated boogie
boards, even a wooden crate.
Every time a set approaches,
the nose of a busted thruster flies
through the air. We eventually figure
out the surfer responsible does this
to avoid the broken board being
ripped out his hands whenever he is
caught inside. On a wayward toss the
nose lands inches away from another
grom who gives the perpetrator a
slap, then scornfully lobs the broken
piece of foam out to sea.
The kids without boards sit on
the rocks, goading their friends
into closeouts, throwing stones
half-heartedly to pass the time. But
whenever someone gets a good one,
the rocks erupt in a chorus of cheers
and whistles.
The chaos is reaching fever pitch
when a tall, powerfully built surfer
paddles out. Within minutes the
lineup self-corrects and an unspoken
pecking order kicks in, taking its cue
from the towering figure.
Godpower Tamarakuro
Pekipuma is one of Tarkwa’s first
generation surfers. Like Micheletti,
he too was enthralled when he saw
a couple of expats riding waves
outside his village.
“At first I thought they were
Jesus Christ!” he says. “You know
that story where Jesus walks on
the water? I wanted to walk on
water, too.”
Soon after, Pekipuma fashioned
himself a board made from stolen
wood. “My mother is a fisherwoman,
so she used to have wood from the
William Aliotti nearly didn’t make this trip. His
French embassy was not going to stamp his
passport to Nigeria. Too dangerous they said,
not unless you’re conducting business, they
said. William shrugged and convinced them it
was a work trip. Here’s Will doing work.
SURFING LIFE 66

SURFING LIFE 67

Luke Davis was right at home in this peaky right. Each day he’d share the lineup
with tons of frothing local groms, and Luke would out-froth the lot of ‘em!
boats,” he recalls. “I managed to
sneak some wood and I took it to
a neighbour’s compound where I
shaped the board. I still don’t want
her to know, because if she knows,
she’s going to kill me!” he laughs.
With encouragement from
Micheletti and hand-me-downs
from expats, Pekipuma and his
friend David became the first real
surfers from Tarkwa Bay. A few
years ago, the kids from the village
realised how much fun there was
to be had on their doorstep and
started asking Pekipuma to teach
them how to surf. When well-to-do
visitors from Lagos started asking
the same, Pekipuma scratched up a
couple of extra boards and opened
up Nigeria’s first surf school.
“Tarkwa is good, it’s peaceful,”
says the 25-year-old. “There are
different people from all over
Nigeria living together here. But it’s
hard here, man – finding work on
the island is hard. Most people do
fishing, or transport oil out to the
boats. But usually you end up going
into the city for work.”
Pekipuma still commutes to the
mainland during the week to work
as a logistics hand on the docks in
order to support his young family,
while his surf school ticks over on
the weekend. But his real passion
lies with the next generation of
Tarkwa surfers, whom he coaches
for free.
“When these kids came to me
and said they want to learn how to
surf, I saw the future in them, that
this could be the future of Nigeria,”
he says. “If not for surfing, the boys
would just be at home, roaming
about, fighting. Surfing gives them
strength, some purpose. It’s made
our community stronger.”
He singles out two of his
star pupils, Lucky Garuba and
Emmanuel Aladin. The goofyfooted
Aladin is refining his backhand rail
grab in the wedgy right, putting
himself deep behind the peak on
every wave. “They’ve only been
surfing a short time,” Pekipuma
says proudly. “But I promise you,
in two years they will be ripping
very hard.”
Pekipuma’s eventual goal is
to establish a surfing academy
that also teaches life skills. He
believes this will help Tarkwa’s
aspiring surfers deal with the
daily challenges that come with
growing up in Lagos, like endemic
unemployment. “We’ve even found
someone in Abuja who will maybe
sponsor it,” he tells me, referring to
Nigeria’s capital further north. “But
we can’t go to meet them, it’s too
dangerous to travel there.”
Later that night a mish-mash of
expats and locals drink beer and
eat roasted goat around a barbeque
on the beach. Nobody is allowed to
leave the island after sundown, a
curfew imposed by the military to
help curb terrorist attacks.
“You always hear about all the
crime and danger, but people don’t
talk about all the positive things
in Nigeria,” says Luis Mayoral, a
Spanish diplomat who has been
living in Lagos for seven years.
“Sure, the place can drive you
crazy sometimes, but it has an
energy you won’t find anywhere
else in the world. The music and
culture is incredible. It’s one of the
fastest growing cities in the world
and things are happening – it’s
dynamic. And the people here are
very warm and they look out for
each other. You can go downtown
during the day and it’s fine.”
“And at night?” I ask.
“No, not at night,” he says,
and shrugs. “This is Lagos, things
happen.”
Talk drifts to the Area Boys, a
loosely formed gang estimated to
be 30,000 strong, spread across
Lagos Island. The Area Boys are
mostly young teens from povertystricken
neighbourhoods who band
together in groups and terrorise
the public. Their offences range
from intimidating and extorting
commuters stuck in the perpetual
gridlock traffic, to murder and
assault. It’s commonly held that
unscrupulous politicians use them
to intimidate opposition, or worse,
during election time. There are
simply some places you just can’t
go because of the Area Boys.
In comparison, Tarkwa is a
wave-lapped oasis, but it’s not
entirely immune to the dangers
of the mainland. Micheletti tells
us about a gruesome discovery
they made on the beach on his last
birthday. “We all came here to have
a big party,” he explains. “And what
do I get for my birthday? There’s
a body lying on the beach, and it’s
got no f--king head. Sometimes you
forget that this is Lagos, too.”
The daily rhythm of tide
and wind draws us back to
Lighthouse every morning, where
we are alone with the fishermen
who ply the shoreline with their
heavy nets. The waves here are
still too demanding for most of
Tarkwa’s surfers, churned up
by rips that occasionally pull
The high rise in the background is the exclusive Eko Atlantic
development. The first stage in the development of Lagos. Where it ends
and how far it encroaches across the bay into Tarkwa is anyone’s guess.
SURFING LIFE 68

Godpower Tamarakuro Pekipuma has a great name. He is also the central
figure in the Nigerian surf scene. He’s responsible for getting all the kids
boards, and teaching them to surf. Godspeed, Godpower.
SURFING LIFE 69

hapless swimmers out into the
Gulf, never to be seen again.
The same rips are wreaking havoc
amongst a disorganised swell as
our videographer scrambles around
on the breakwall, trying to find a
good angle to film from.
“Oh man, I hope they don’t
shoot him!” Micheletti says in the
lineup. With his tripod hoisted
over his shoulder and his t-shirt
wrapped around his head, the
videographer looks like a guerrilla
with a bazooka.
Micheletti had pointed out the
ominous military gunboats idling
in the channel of the harbour
earlier. The boats are painted black
so the pirates, who raid the ships
anchored out to sea, can’t spot
them giving chase.
“Sometimes the military guys
drink too much and get trigger
happy,” says Micheletti, urgently
waving the videographer down
from the top of the
breakwall. “You don’t really want
to give them any excuse.”
The videographer reluctantly
gives up and gradually everyone
heads in until Aliotti and I are
the only surfers left in the lineup,
waiting patiently for a well-formed
wave that refuses to materialise.
“This is just like home,” Aliotti
had said the previous afternoon,
referring to the daily cross-shore
that blows into the left, much like
the Caribbean island of St Martin
where he was raised on a staple
diet of windswell and ramps.
Somehow he also developed an
affinity for dredging barrels, and
throws himself at either with no
fear of consequence.
We’re about to call it quits
when the tide shifts and the
Harmattan begins to puff,
opening up the waves. A solid set
bounces against the
breakwall and spits. Five minutes
later there’s another, then another,
and the Frenchman is suddenly
engaged in an hour-long tube duel
with himself.
“Shit, man, it’s getting really
shallow out here,” he laughs,
paddling back out after a thick
double-up. His elbow and hip are
raw and bleeding from where the
wave compressed him into the
sand. A few waves later Aliotti gets
obliterated in a closeout and his
board smashes into the side of his
face. His right eye immediately
starts swelling up with the first
signs of a puffy blue shiner, but he
stays out and threads a long, clean
barrel on his very next wave.
“Who would have thought it’s
possible to get waves like this in
Nigeria?” he asks.
Across the channel, a handful
of shiny new skyscrapers poke
into the sky like metallic flowers,
framed by the fishing huts of
Tarkwa Bay. Millions of cubic
metres of sand have been pumped
out to create the foundation for
this new development; an exclusive
Dubai-style project called Eko
Atlantic, which will house over a
quarter million people in luxury
apartments and office space once
complete. Micheletti had told us
about incredible new waves that
had sprung up on the corners of
this reclaimed land and then died
just as quickly when some subtle
nuance in the dredging changed.
Five miles away, across the
gridlocked
SURFING LIFE 70

traffic, under the longest bridge
in Africa, lies the sprawling
shantytown of Makoko. A few
years ago the government tried to
remove the people who have lived
here for generations, in shacks
built on stilts above the water.
Instead, the greater community
rallied to defend Makoko and a
Lagos architect designed a floating
school for its impoverished
children, which has become a
prototype for land-starved slums
around the world. Between Makoko
and Eko Atlantic lie a million
other daily tales of kindness and
brutality, ingenuity and survival
that make up the perpetual tug-ofwar
that is life in Lagos.
Eventually the tide gets too low
and we make our way back along
the concrete breakwall. The dust
has finally lifted and the ground
is baking hot under our feet, so
we pause under some shade. Up
ahead, the tin roofs and palm
trees of Tarkwa Bay melt into
the shimmering skyline of Lagos,
making it hard to tell where the
one version of Nigeria begins, and
the other ends.
Will is a complete surf junkie stoked on life and full of stoke. He
found a home in the fast seawall left and would surf for hours and
hours this trip, even when everyone else packed it in.
SURFING LIFE 71

SURFING LIFE 72

PIP
With
Jeff Divine
INTERVIEWED BY CRAIG BRAITHWAITE
Born in 1950, Jeff Divine
has watched the world
change. He’s also a master
of photography, having
documented the world’s
transformation, with a
camera in his hand, for over
five decades. A large chunk
of that career has been spent
shooting Hawaii’s North Shore. In
fact, for 35 winters, Jeff has been
perched front and centre aiming
his 600mm Canon lens into the
teeth of surfing’s most feared
and revered wave – Pipeline and
Backdoor. While the Pipe playing
field hasn’t changed from the
’60s, when it was first surfed,
the people charging it and
their equipment most certainly
have. There has not been a Pipe
moment go down, without Jeff
being there to capture it. From
Hakman to Lopez, and Curren
to John John, Divine was there
behind the lends observing,
documenting, witnessing.
There’s no one more qualified to
assemble a Pipeline scrapbook,
than Jeff Divine.
SURFING LIFE 73

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST
CHANGES TO PIPELINE
AND BACKDOOR YOU’VE
WITNESSED OVER THE
YEARS?
The biggest change was in
the ’70s, when the attention
of the surfers and spectators
shifted from the centre of the
surf universe, Sunset Beach,
to Pipeline. In 1971, I first
started to shoot Off The Wall,
aka Leongs, aka Kodak reef.
Jeff Hakman immediately went
into a stink bug stance not
wanting me to get good shots
of his secret spot.
He and his roommate Bill
Sikler proceeded to flip me off.
In 1970, a rarity was seeing Sam
Hawk pulling into Backdoor, soul
arching getting pitted and not
coming out. I remember setting
up to shoot Gerry Lopez with
no other cameras on the beach.
Just morning beach walkers and
puka shell pickers. I lost that
advantage after shooting him
for an hour and realising I didn’t
have film in the camera!
By the mid-’70s, the cameras
were thick. Aaron Chang
declared it a “maggot scene”.
Surfing mag called it “Kodak
reef”. The Pipeline Underground
– a group of friends who surfed
it all the time by themselves
– declared it “Paradise Lost”.
The girls started to come, the
tourists, the surfers from around
the world, all driven by heavy
magazine coverage and fantasy
looking waves.
And underneath all of that
was a rocketing money ball
coming from the blossoming
surf lifestyle garment industry,
advertising their team riders
and pumping money into
the magazines, and therefore
creating bigger issues with more
photos of Pipeline, Backdoor and
Off The Wall.
We used to be at Sunset
wondering how good Pipeline
would be. The typical report
was that no one good was out.
Or, there was too much north
in the swell. By the mid-’70s we
were all at Pipeline shooting; a
migration that included all of
the best surfers in the world. We
had figured out that, when there
was north in the swell, Backdoor
was good and people rode it. And
to a photographer it was a nobrainer
– the wave was right in
your face, not way out to sea.
The locals at Sunset soon saw
the crowd numbers drop. The
other biggest change has been
the early ‘we are all brothers and
friends’ vibe in the lineup to a
snarly, gnarly, aggressive pack
sitting on the take-off spots.
What’s the bravest or craziest thing
you’ve seen anyone do out there?
Butch Van Artsdalen lifeguarded at Pipeline
for years. The lifeguards are the ones who’ve
really seen everything, from crazy to mind
boggling.
In the mid-’70s, Butch swam out to rescue
some drunken marines caught in a radical
rip on a big blown-out day. To Butch’s horror,
his favourite dog had followed him out and
was drowning in the sets of waves. Butch
punched out one of the marines in anger and
proceeded to rescue his dog and the marines.
Sunny Garcia once broke his wrist in a
Pipe Masters heat; went to the medical centre
at Kahuku, got treated, and then hitchhiked
back down to the contest and entered his
next heat!
The most poignant thing I ever saw,
I started to cry on the beach. It was the
morning Malik Joyeux died at Pipeline. All of
the surfers in the lineup (around 40 of them)
swarmed through the inside to rescue him.
But he had disappeared. Minutes seemed like
hours; they eventually found him and he had
already passed.
Kahea Hart organised 60 surfers into a
large circle, holding hands. A prayer was said
and everyone raised their hands in unison to
the sky. The perfect west swell peak outside
was eight-foot, glassy, and there was no one
in the water.
“The most poignant thing I ever saw, I started to cry on the beach. It was the
morning Malik Joyeux died at Pipeline. Kahea Hart organised 60 surfers into a
large circle, holding hands. A prayer was said and everyone raised their hands in
unison to the sky.” – Jeff Divine
SURFING LIFE 74

Kelly Slater’s 1991 movie Black and White is still the
undisputed surf film of all time, and his no-hands Pipeline
barrel exploits are still a benchmark 26-years later.
Who’s been the biggest innovator
you have seen out at Pipeline?
It’s hard to call out names in the sense
that each generation has pushed the
envelope at Pipe.
Butch Van Artsdalen, Gerry Lopez,
James Jones, Rory Russell, Jackie Dunn,
Shaun Tomson, Rabbit, Dane Kealoha,
the Ho brothers, Ronnie Burns, both the
Irons, Owl Chapman, Mark Healy, Dorian,
Slater, etc… it’s kind of a group effort in
a sense. “It takes a village to raise a baby.”
Jamie O and John Florence watched it
all going on there as kids and absorbed it
all, and therefore all they had seen before
became a part of their innovative way of
surfing it.
Maybe one of the more historical
equipment innovations was when Lopez
figured out a better rail design which
allowed him to get down the steep face
better than anyone had before.
Born and bred in the islands, power
waves enhanced Andy Irons’ innovative
way of surfing Pipe and Backdoor. His
athleticism and skill allowed him to surf
it like it was a playful beach break. Just
aggressive and not intimidated; going for
it at all times. He definitely innovated
a new approach to surfing Pipe and
Backdoor.
If you had to draw up a four-man
final of all-time Pipeline/ Backdoor
surfers, who makes the four-man
heat?
Dane Kealoha, Shaun Tomson, Gerry
Lopez, John Florence.
Who wins that final?
John Florence!
SURFING LIFE 75

Mid 90’s Pipe where conventional wisdom went out the window,
and legropes were considered a danger out at massive Pipe.
Your board would tombstone on heavy wipeouts and anchor the
human they were attached to, firmly inside the impact zone.
Who has surfed the best wave
out there that you have seen?
The context surrounding a great
wave is important.
In 1982 there was a small
contingent of Westside surfers who
were beginning to influence the
mainstream surfing world. There
was kind of a snobbery going on
amongst the high-end pros as to
who could really cut it at Pipeline
and who was invited to surf the Pro
Class trials at the Pipeline Masters.
The Westsiders from Makaha were
from another planet
– mostly Hawaiian, poorer, no
sponsors and from a culture most
Haoles could hardly understand.
Especially their surf/ocean culture.
Enter Makaha local James ‘Bird’
Mahelona. He had a roofing
company, a strong friend in Jesus,
and roamed the North Shore in a
converted milk truck. He paddled
into his heats at the Pro trials and
got two perfect 10 rides.
The talking heads were
speechless.
In the ’90s, we had a house at
Pupukea. It was Flippy Hoffman’s
beachfront property. A quartermile
up the beach was the peak at
Pipeline.
Derek Hynd and I were checking
it from the front lawn when we
saw a small speck drop in, inside
of the surfers. It was bodyboarder
Mike Stewart. He negotiated
through three disappearing barrel
rides – climbing and dropping;
speed combined with hard turns
– all the way through the Ehukai
beach sandbar and almost to the
break at Pupukea.
I just shrugged as having just
witnessed another amazing ride
at Pipe. Derek corrected me and
described that as not just another
ride, but pronounced Mike as the
best surfer in the world. At that
point, the finless idea started
percolating in Derek’s head.
What advice would you give to
someone surfing Pipe/Backdoor
for the first time?
If you are not fit and are not an
expert surfer, forget about it. On
a good day with the pack on the
peak, I’d say head to Jocko’s.
What’s the best thing about
shooting Pipeline; is it the
closeness to the wave and
power, or something else?
On a pure west swell you can easily
make it out into the channel area
where it is relatively safe, and you
have a great angle on the wedge
peak. With any north in the swell,
watch out. When conditions are
right – good trades, sunny, worldclass
talent and with a good swell
– it is the closest you can come to
a studio type of set-up for shooting
surfing.
The wave itself makes it more
than just a surf shot; it morphs
and goes square, lines up and then
barrels on the inside sandbar. The
same waves off the reef going
right into Backdoor are just as
photogenic.
This 100-yard stretch of reef
has had more print coverage than
anywhere else in the world. As a
photographer, you can capture
some of the best late-drop photos,
wipeouts, barrel rides and cutbacks
you’ve ever gotten.
And it’s all up close and in your
face. It even has that rare window
where, as the sun sets, the whole
area from the water angle goes
golden.
SURFING LIFE 76

Mike Stewart, master of the bare descent on a concentrated Tahitian
drop which would challenge most surfers on their favourite board.
Check his body positioning; using his outside profile as his rails and
reaching down the face with his arm providing his body the rocker to
bend to the wave’s face and maintain speed. PHOTO: TMK
SURFING LIFE 78

The saltwater people of Australia started body surfing
thousands of years ago. Each of our first steps into the ocean
involved body surfing shorebreaks straight into the sand. But
in our life’s pursuit of surfing, why do we forsake this primitive
union of body on water?
WORDS BY LAWRIE VONHOFF
We had been in the Nusa
Tenggara Barat region of
the archipelago for several weeks
by this stage; each day fusing
into the next as it often does in
Indonesia. The main break we
were at, an A-frame over a sharp
and shallow reef, was becoming
ground-zero for overzealous
hassling. The peak was perfect,
but crowded; the sun was blaring
on surround sound, melting all
wax in its path. Wanting to just
get in the water, our mate Hamish
cracked the shits and skipped over
the reef with nothing but a pair
of fins. Five minutes later he was
dropping into a flawless three-footer
riding nothing but his torso; skilfully
using his entire left arm to control
speed and keep his body on rail.
Planing and dropping and cutting the
green! He was body surfing.
Ditch the board in perfect reef
waves? Why the heck not?
The quintessential path of the
Australian surfer begins its first steps
in the frothing, summer shore break,
where, as toddlers, we learn to ride
waves on our bellies. Later we might
graduate to a styrofoam boogieboard
and catch straighthanders into the
sand, before finally arriving at the
holy grail – the fibreglass surfboard.
Filmmaker and lifelong surfer of all
craft Nathan Oldfield tells us, “It’s
where it all began. That feeling when
you get picked up by a wave and
pushed towards shore, you don’t have
to be an expert surfer to experience
the joy of that. Just getting carried
along is beautiful and sacred and rad.”
We all move on from this earliest
mode of wave-riding. But why? Allow
us to convince you to leave the board
on the sand and really test your waveriding
credentials.
Many Australian surfers would
find it surprising that the true origins
of wave-riding on our coast actually
stem from our Indigenous Saltwater
People. While the early colonial
settlers were absolutely terrified of
the surf zone, the Saltwater People
had a strong relationship with the
surf that included ocean canoes,
free-diving for shellfish, and even
bodysurfing. The purest connection
to wave-riding; a primitive union.
As Nathan tells us reflectively,
“Bodysurfing is really elemental
human play.” Bodysurfing is the
closest a person can physically be
to a swell – not just on a wave, but
actually in the wave.
Mike Stewart, zillion-time World
Bodyboard champ, North Shore
surfing luminary and bodysurfing
savant, backs up Oldfield’s claim.
“Bodysurfing is certainly a more
immersive wave-riding experience.
Not only are you within the energies
of the surf zone, more of your body
(from head to toe) actually senses
or feels this energy. For me it is also
a much more engaging, interactive
experience, as you design your
planing surface on the fly.”
SURFING LIFE 79

But this concept can only be fully
experienced when we venture
out from the shore break and
into the high-calibre wave zone.
Bodysurfing begins to transcend
from the whomping frolic we’re
all familiar with, into another
dimension altogether.
The beauty of bodysurfing
is this: You can’t blame your
equipment. You are the goddamn
equipment! Have you watched
Mike or Rasta bodysurf ? Nathan
jokes about Rasta: “He’s got big old
feet. He’s sort of like an Olympic
level swimmer. He’s actually got a
single concave chest that helps; he
really planes up on it. We call him
Flat Stanley.”
Nathan describes the
immersive and primordial nature
of bodysurfing: “It’s a sensory
experience, using your whole body
to project along the wave and make
adjustments. All you need is your
earth-suit.”
The way these guys use their
limbs and torsos in contortions
and shape-making is instructive.
When you need to find a rail, you
just make one with your armpit
and hip; when you need a planing
surface, turn onto your chest,
flatten your upper body and maybe
pull your shoulders forward to
create a concave. It works. Speed
runs, turns and barrel stalls can
all be performed by an adept
bodysurfer.
The invention of the leggie
substantially dulled the edge of
the water skills possessed by the
vast majority of modern surfers.
Once upon a time when you lost
your board after a wipeout you
were swimming after it. The more
proficient swimmer and bodysurfer
you were, the easier that process
was. Is it any coincidence that
the most proficient ocean
dwellers among us are also deluxe
bodysurfers? Think – Mike Stewart,
Mark Cunningham, Kelly Slater and
Dave Rasta, who are all at the top
of the bodysurfing tree.
Mike Stewart says, “Swimming
to the lineup and into big surf is
physically rigorous and great for
your fitness. The real pay-off for
me is the mental one, as it builds
confidence as you learn so much
more about waves and how to
move through them; where to
be and where not to be.” And as
we mentioned before regarding
swimming in without a craft,
Mike explains, “There is also the
added challenge of getting back
into the beach without a board
– a much more challenging and
gratifying feat.”
These are critical water skills
that will improve your confidence
and wave knowledge in the heavy
water. Oldfield recalls his youth on
the Central Coast of NSW. “Heaps
of really good bodyboarders that I
knew and grew up with were really
great bodysurfers. They lived not
even to make it, but just to go and
get inside those slabs. They lived
for that vision.”
Holistic. Doesn’t that word
just bring to mind visions of pure,
A-grade, buzzword, gorgonzola
cheese? Regardless of the cheese,
there is no doubt bodysurfing
fosters a thoroughly holistic and
more complete relationship with
the wave zone. It could be just
the thing you’re missing in your
surfing life.
It doesn’t end there, either.
Mike touches on bodysurfing and
the role it plays in balance and
harmony with the ocean: “I think,
for starters, bodysurfing provides a
more intimate relationship with the
ocean and all the experiences that
come with it from sea-life to surf.
Being so connected to this really
helps to understand the impact we
are having [on the ocean] and the
challenges we now face.”
Do you really need yet another
fun-board or pop-out foamie to
spice things up? The accumulation
of stuff. Maybe just go whomping
instead? “It also teaches you
minimalism by how little you need
in terms of equipment, yet how
enjoyable it can be,” Mike surmises.
“It’s a more sustainable and
enjoyable approach to life for sure.”
It’s high-time for some serious
ego-shedding. Go bodysurfing
at a crowded break and see just
how fragile your ego really is. It
will be merciless. But the pay-off
will come, whole body aches and
all. Nathan Oldfield says with a
satisfied countenance, “If I swim
in the water for two hours it feels
like I’ve had a six-hour surf. It’s the
nicest surf-stoned feeling.”
It’s not just Nathan, either, as
he recalls the many times he’s
filmed Rasta. “I’ve seen him get the
barrels of a lifetime on a board and
not even mention ’em. But, I’ve
seen him come in from a bodysurf
really excited and say, Wow! That
was really fun! You can see it in his
eyes and in the smile on his dial.
He’s buzzing from it.”
Flat Stanley to his friends, Dave Rastovich to the rest of us. With his
concave chest, Rasta can warp into long speed runs and with his
arms tucked underneath him is the closest thing a human has ever
come to resembling a dolphin. PHOTO: OLDFIELD
SURFING LIFE 80

Matanavusi offers the perfect getaway
for surfers and their partners.
Enjoy the quiet, uncrowded side of Fiji at this
deluxe, beautifully designed, family-run resort.
Great waves – both lefts and rights – are on tap.
Relax poolside, indulge and recharge on epic cuisine.
You’ll be so glad you came. That’s our promise!

The Newport Wedge, California. Probably the world’s most famous
man made mutant. Swells bounce against opposing seawalls to
create chaos in the middle. Here’s Bobby Okvist getting his freak on in
the middle of surfing’s sideshow alley.
PHOTO: MATTHEWS
SURFING LIFE 82

HAPPY
ACCIDENTS
Development is often seen as the biggest threat to the
world’s surf spots, but a quick headcount suggests
human meddling has created more waves than it has
destroyed. So far.
WORDS BY WILL BENDIX
In 1963, in a small coastal town in
South Africa, a 28-year-old harbour
employee by the name of Aubrey
Kruger came up with the ultimate
tool for creating artificial waves.
Kruger didn’t surf. Instead, he was
a draughtsman at the port of East
London, tasked with designing a
more efficient structure that would
be able to withstand the heavy swells
that routinely battered the harbour
breakwater.
Puzzling over the idea while at home,
Kruger chopped a broomstick into three
pieces, which he then nailed together into
the shape of an H, with one leg twisted
sideways. Mrs Kruger was reportedly
unimpressed, but the design would
become a breakthrough in engineering
circles. When stacked together, the
interlocking blocks created a porous wall
that dissipated and deflected the energy of
breaking waves, instead of simply blocking
it. The new, more robust structures also
proved highly effective at trapping sand to
prevent erosion.
Kruger’s design, named the dolos, would
be replicated around the world in various
forms, and today you can find dolosse
everywhere from Queensland to Costa
Rica. Dolosse are, of course, not the first
building blocks used to fortify coastlines.
This has been happening for centuries,
using everything from rubble mounds to
massive chunks of quarried rock, but the
unintended consequence has often been
the same: the creation of new waves.
“The structures most likely to enhance
surf are groynes, breakwaters and training
walls,” says James Carley, Principal
Coastal Engineer at UNSW Sydney’s Water
Research Laboratory. When it comes to
waves, artificial or real, Carley knows his
stuff. A lifelong surfer, his great gramps
was also one of the first lifesavers and
bodysurfers at Manly in the early 1900s.
According to Carley, every site has a
unique combination of variables which
gives these artificially-induced waves their
shape and form, including the angle of
the coast to the dominant swell direction;
offshore features such as mounds and
shoals; sand supply and tidal range; right
down to the size of the actual sand grains.
SURFING LIFE 83

Nick Vasicek a Gold Coast local knows all about man made waves.
He’s grown up picking the delicious low hanging fruit from sand
pumping and seawall projects. Here at Lovers, there’s no better goofy
in town at doing these ones inside those ones.
PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 84

Maybe the greatest Happy Accident of them all. Big Groyne Kirra. Kelly Slater,
Steph Gilmore, Mick Fanning. Some of the greatest surfers in the world all have
one thing in common. Their favourite wave is Kirra.
PHOTO: SHIELD
There are currently hundreds of different
surf spots around the world sculpted by
this combination of natural forces and
artificial structures. A quick count puts
the number in New South Wales alone
at 30.
“There are only two artificial surf
breaks in Australia that were purposely
designed: Narrowneck and Cable
Stations,” adds Carley. “All other artificial
surf breaks in Australia are basically
happy accidents, and few people would
argue that many of these are much better
waves than the deliberate attempts.”
So what exactly are the magic
ingredients that make a happy accident?
“Most of the great artificial breaks
have an along-shore sand supply or
littoral drift that interacts with the
structure,” says Carley. In other words,
structures that help trap or shape a ready
supply of sand moving along the beach
are more likely to create those tapered
banks and wedges we love.
“Many sandy beaches will ultimately
try to make a closeout,” explains Carley
further. “This is because the sand will
move around so that the energy gradients
equalise... Structures may also reflect
waves and cause rips, which can make
waves more peaky or peel, rather than
close out.”
If sand pumping is involved, that’s
another essential variable to consider.
“By artificially pumping sand, you
(often) end up with more sand in a
location than nature would provide. This
can make the waves peak, barrel and peel.
This excess sand would soon get washed
away and the sand bed would change, but
if the infeed continues at the right rate,
the joy can continue.”
The Durban basin in South Africa is
one such strip of joy. The regular dredging
of the Durban harbour mouth, along with
a series of piers built since the 1950s,
has created a handful of high-quality surf
spots that now sit shoulder to shoulder.
And nobody needs a refresher on what
happened to Snapper Rocks when the
state governments of New South Wales
and Queensland set up the sand pumping
bypass scheme at the rivermouth in 2001.
But as Newton said, for every action there
is an equal and opposite reaction.
“With sand movement, sometimes it
is about robbing Peter to pay Paul,” says
Carley. “There is some sweet spot for
excess sand – the Superbank has been
somewhat at the expense of old Kirra,
which now often has too much sand
compared with its glory days.”
While surfers embrace these happy
accidents when they occur, no exact
science exists as to what makes a great
artificial wave. Point in case: the cheeky
wedge at Sebastian Inlet’s First Peak that
nurtured Kelly Slater and other Floridian
world champs all but disappeared after
the pier’s concrete wall was slightly
altered in the early 2000s. Engineers
and surfers are still puzzling as to why
exactly the wave vanished. Then there’s
the sublime Bay of Plenty, where Shaun
Tomson honed his revolutionary tuberiding
skills, but is now a shadow of its
SURFING LIFE 85

The down side to man-made intervention at premier wave spots. Jardim Do Mar, once a
world class rifling right, is now but a shell of her former self. Thanks to the ocean seawall it
only breaks on the biggest of swells, and for only an hour either side of the dead low tide. It
doesn’t end there either. If you do choose to surf it, don’t get washed in, there are thousands
of concrete teeth waiting for you on the inside.
PHOTO: SELWAY
former self after city authorities
removed the old Patterson Groyne
in 1985 and replaced it with a more
conventional pier.
“Groynes and sand
nourishment may enhance surfing,
but quantitative design and
prediction of this is challenging,”
says Carley, who also points out
that not all artificial structures
interact well with waves and sand
movement. “Most big coastal
structures in Australia were built
in the 1890s to 1910s, so we
have very few before and after
comparisons, with exceptions such
as Kirra Point and Snapper Rocks.
Best practice would be to try to
learn lessons and mimic from the
ones that work well… But who
knows, some of our artificial waves
which are good may have been
even better world-class rivermouth
breaks before.”
And then there’s the flipside of
the coin. Coastal structures that
have destroyed natural waves,
from Dana Point in California to
Jardim do Mar in Madeira. The
latest victim was the legendary
Balinese right-hander, Nikko,
which got cleaved in half after
developers built a jetty through
the lineup for hotel guests to moor
their boats.
Despite this, a simple numbers
comparison suggests we’ve
lost far fewer surf breaks than
we’ve gained. But looking to
the future, the development of
boating marinas, harbours and
seawalls associated with rising
sea levels pose a significant risk
to existing breaks, especially in
third world countries where public
consultation may be less rigorous.
“The big dollars in these
[developments] can swamp surfing,”
says Carley. “Throw in corruption,
big money and few surfers within
the government hierarchy, and the
worldwide risk for the loss of some
surf breaks is high.”
It’s hard not to get emotional
about the potential loss of any
half-decent wave, but there
are sometimes other factors to
consider. “While many surfers
think it is all about them and surf
breaks, if fishers or boaters are
drowning, or an area’s economy is
wracked by poverty, the political
imperative for coastal structures
can be appealing,” says Carley.
The best solution? A
compromise that balances out the
competing priorities of waves and
development, like Cabo Blanco in
Peru. The construction of a fishing
pier would have been disastrous
for the spitting left-hander, but
was moved a couple hundred
metres further north after a group
of surfer-activists convinced the
government it would destroy the
wave and the economic benefits it
brought to the area.
Nobody would argue it’s
essential we remain vigilant about
protecting surf breaks and coastal
development, but it’s also worth
remembering that many similar
developments in the past created the
happy accidents we now covet.
SURFING LIFE 86

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A fortune for the brave. What makes Teahupo’o so special is that it’s not situated at a reef pass. It sits inside a
reef pass, on a little elbow of reef, thus making it a closeout. The kind of critical closeout where if you do not
evacuate any particular wave, you are destined to meet some form of painful and brutish punishment.
PHOTO: TMK
SURFING LIFE 88

WAVE
?
ODDITIES
From Waimea Bay to Noosa
Heads, the general rule of
thumb goes that waves are biggest
on the outside and dissipate
towards the shoulder. Riding them
is a fairly straightforward affair:
take off at the apex, then go as far
as you can until you either fall or
the wave ends. Simple, right?
WORDS BY WILL BENDIX
But some waves don’t play by
the rules. They twist hydrodynamics
around, throwing
up steps, tempting you into
closeouts, or even get bigger and
more challenging the further you
ride ’em.
Jump aboard the HMAS Surfing
Life as we explore… Wave Oddities.
>
SURFING LIFE 89

The Step at Shipsterns. The surfing equivalent of running with the bulls. One minute
you’re speeding along, not a care in the world. Turn the corner and you’re confronted
with the step. Like a bull, it narrows its eyes, locks you in and runs straight at you. Like
they say in the classics, don’t mess with the bull if you don’t want to get the horns.
PHOTO: CHISHOLM
Slabology 101:
Unlike most ‘spilling’ waves
(the technical term for the
waves we most commonly
surf that generally break in
water that is 1.3 times as
deep as the wave is tall), a
‘surging’ or ‘collapsing’ wave
occurs when the steepness
of the ocean floor increases
dramatically over a short
distance. These surging
or collapsing kind of wave
oddities cause the swells
to stand up abruptly from
deep to shallow water, in
the process defying normal
wave physics and creating
those backless monsters we
surfers call slabs.
SURFING LIFE 90

Case Study:
Shipsterns
Bluff,
Tasmania
The
Stepp
Open any textbook on
oceanography and it will
tell you that waves start to
break in water that is 1.3
times as deep as the wave is
tall. This is the mathematical
depth where swells will ‘spill’
over as they find shallower
water. Waves like Shipsterns,
however, don’t subscribe to
textbook definitions. Instead,
it contorts swells into an
obstacle course, creating
ledges and giant steps that
have come to define the place,
and the lunacy that goes with
riding it.
“The step at Shipsterns is
caused by dramatic changes in
the depth of the ocean floor,” says
local charger Marti Paradisis. “It
starts off super-deep off the back
of the reef. Then the ledge out
the back makes the wave stand
up and start to fold on take-off. It
then wraps onto the next (even
shallower) platform, which is the
step, or end section.”
Specifically, it’s this abrupt
transition from a shallow rock
shelf to an even shallower
platform that creates the step. As
the concentrated energy of the
breaking wave gets forced onto
the shallower patch of rock ledge,
it causes the wave to effectively
trip over itself, throwing up
those mutant steps. Just how
pronounced the step is, often
comes down to the swell period.
We all know swell period
measures the energy of waves.
The higher the period or energy,
the more a wave’s going to feel
the bottom contours. The easiest
way to think of it is like this:
period represents how deep a
wave’s energy stretches under
water, and the higher the period,
the deeper this energy goes.
“It’s all to do with water
drawing off the reef,” explains
Marti. “Longer period swells draw
more water, therefore the bottom
which makes the step is shallower
– causing it to break (more
intensely). No matter how short
the period, there will generally
always be ‘steppy’ waves on some
sets at Shipsterns. Most of the
time finding the good ones is pure
luck of the draw… but if it’s a
solid swell and 20-second period,
you know it’s gonna be mutant.
Almost unrideable.”
Which begs the question:
just how much more mutant can
Shipsterns go?
“I think we’ve seen it at its
ugliest,” reckons Marti. “The
crazy thing is, you can be there
on those days for hours on end,
and then out of the blue, one will
break perfectly and leave you
awestruck.”
SURFING LIFE 91

The
GROW
er
Case Study:
Supertubes,
Jeffreys
Bay
A grower may start off as a
playful three-footer on the
outside, but down the line,
through no fault of your own,
you’re suddenly locked into
a six-foot drainer. These rare
species are found scattered
around the globe, from the
depths of the Lombok Strait
to the Eastern Cape of South
Africa, and have become
magnets for pilgrims seeking
endless tube time. But what
kind of witchcraft powers a
Grower’s secret juju?
The answer lies in one key
ingredient: refraction.
All swells will bend towards
shallower water where they ‘feel’
or hug the bottom contours of the
ocean the most. This process is
known as refraction. Under ideal
circumstances, this refraction is
amplified onto a focal point. Cue
your classic pointbreak, where a
headland curves into a deeper bay.
Swells drag across the shallow
ocean floor at the headland (the
focal point), slowing down and
bending towards the shore as they
wrap in along the contours of the
bay. The result is an evenly peeling
wave, where the unbroken part
of the swell is travelling through
deeper water and won’t be slowing
down as much; it’s racing ahead,
but it is spreading its energy evenly
over a wider area.
Typically, the deeper you go
into the bay, the less powerful the
waves become and the smaller
they get as they disperse their
SURFING LIFE 92

SPECIAL MENTION:
Other places where the grower
phenomenon is especially
pronounced include the inside
bowl of St Leu and the final section
of Desert Point, which has even
become known as The Grower.
Not too long ago, this section was
deemed impossible to ride, thanks
to its penchant for luring surfers
into gaping tubes before shutting
down over near-dry coral, but
nowadays there’s a dedicated crew
of loons from around the world who
are almost exclusively committed
to riding The Grower. Legendary
photographer Pete Frieden once
summed the wave up best, saying,
“There’s so much skin left on that
part of the reef that it’s practically
human.”
>
Evan Geiselman laces up his sneakers and stretches
one out through the Deserts Grower section.
PHOTO: FREIDEN
Connor Coffin has curated his style at Rincon, a wave that shares many
similarities with its South African cousin. It’s little wonder Conner has
taken to J-Bay like a lion to a rump steak. PHOTO: THURTELL
Overlooking Supertubes as the wave
refracts and bends down the line. If
Surfing Life’s office were right here, you
could bet granny’s milk bags we’d never
make a deadline for the rest of our lives.
PHOTO: GRAMBEAU
energy down the line. The wildcard
is when you’ve got a convex
shaped reef or bulge in the bottom
contours. This can exaggerate the
natural refraction and result in
intense focal points as the wave
peels down the line, like the
Carpark section at Supertubes.
“That’s where you often see
the wave grow a bit taller and get
faster,” says Dr Bjorn Backeberg,
oceanographer and researcher
at the Council for Scientific
and Industrial Research. “This
mostly has to do with a steeper
bathymetric slope and sharper
refraction as the wave gets
shallower and the angle of the reef
changes as it bends in along the
point, focusing the swell.”
Put simply, the wave will grow
in size and intensity as the deeper,
faster moving wave energy is
suddenly focused onto a shallower,
more prominent stretch of rock,
reef (or even sand).
“It depends on the swell
direction, but the grower section
at J-Bay really comes into play
when it’s around four- to six-foot,”
says Jordy Smith. “You’ll take off
on a four-footer at the top of the
point, and by the time you get
down the line, it can be six-foot
solid. The really good ones seem
to cap out wide and then twist in
and double-up on the inside at the
Carpark, throwing out big, wide
barrels. It’s definitely one of my
favourite characteristics of J-Bay.”
SURFING LIFE 93

What’s in a name?
Teahupo’o was forged eons ago when freshwater run-off from
the mountains and valleys surrounding the break carved out
the Passe Havae. This reef pass plunges dramatically into
the depths of the Pacific Ocean, giving Chopes its unfettered
power. Just like the wave, the history of the small village at
the end of the road is brutal. Literally translated, Teahupo’o
means ‘the pile of heads’. Local legend has it the fishing
village adopted the name after defeating their enemies in one
of Tahiti’s brutal tribal wars. To commemorate the victory,
they decapitated the slain warriors and piled the heads up
on the beach. So maybe try not to think of that – or the reef –
when you paddle out.
Teahupo’o translates to pile of heads ... upon learning
this; it’s these brief moments which life delivers, where
absolutely everything makes sense and is as it should be.
PHOTO: TMK
The
Closeout
Case Study:
Teahupo’o, Tahiti
We hate to break it to you, but
your favourite South Pacific
glory hole is actually a closeout.
Yep, that’s right. Teahupo’o is
technically a straight-hander,
briefly interrupted by a
narrow elbow in the reef that’s
generously called a channel.
Aside from making a nice place
to park your boat, this channel
allows some waves to stay open
long enough to pop out the tube
before shutting down entirely.
“What makes Teahupo’o so
special is probably the fact that it is
not actually situated at a reef pass,
but further up, at a bend in the
reef, with a narrow 15-metre-deep
channel close by,” says resident
photographer Tim McKenna.
“Unlike other passes, all its intensity
is compacted into the west bowl,
just metres away from the channel.
It’s this west bowl that concentrates
all the energy and makes the wave
accelerate and close out on that
ledge. But the closeout is so perfect
that it often gives you a gap to make
it, that will challenge any surfer.”
Tim has spent the better part of
his career studying and shooting
the wave from every conceivable
angle, and reckons the difference
between getting spit out the tube
of your life or being trapped in a
closeout that, conversely, could
end that very same life… all comes
down to swell direction.
“Any swell with too much west
direction will make the wave much
shorter and close out very close to
the channel or the end of the wave,”
says Tim. “The ideal conditions are
a south-south-west swell with glassy
conditions or north-east winds. This
makes the wave run a little longer
down the reef, allowing you to take
off a little further up the reef, and
the barrel is kind of wider and not
as thick and dangerous.”
No matter how perfect the swell
direction, though, there are always
closeouts and rogue sets during any
significant swell, says Tim, who has
seen his fair share of carnage in the
channel and the lineup. The only
way to choose the right ones?
Water time, and lots of it!
“To ride Teahupo’o successfully,
you need to spend a lot of time in
the water to be able to read the way
swell lines approach the reef and
the type of bend they take while
reaching the take-off zone. The
way the wave hits the shelf and
how the volume of water is sucked
up the face in the west bowl often
determines if a wave will shut down
or stay open a little longer. Then
you need to be fully committed.
There’s no room for hesitation once
you decide to go.”
SURFING LIFE 94

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North and South Islands
NEW ZEALAND
The land of the long white cloud
also happens to be land of the
long, luscious wave. All of which
are seriously underrated.
Maybe it’s the cold water, harsh
winds, and large fluctuations in
tides that are keeping the surfing
hordes away. Maybe it’s the fact
that New Zealand surfers don’t
like to brag too much about their
home breaks.
“The Kiwi surf culture is you
have to go overseas to score
waves,” says resident photographer
Cory Scott.
“But we’ve seen waves that blow
spots on the CT out of the water and
there is nobody out.”
When it comes to scoring in New
Zealand, you’ve got to be flexible
and prepared to rack up some
driving miles to score the waves.
“New Zealand is so
temperamental,” says Cory.
“Surf sessions don’t last four
or five days. You’d usually get two
great days and then your best bet is
to move on.
“The good thing is you can cross
from the east coast to the west coast
anywhere between two-and-a-half
to six hours. So if the winds are
blowing onshore on one side for a
few days, you should pull the pin
and head to the other side.”
Two of the more popular surf
towns also happen to be located
on different islands, with Gisborne
– home to the likes of Ricardo
Christie and the Quinn brothers –
on the North Island, and Dunedin
on the South. Both have a healthy
mixture of pointbreaks, beachies
and reefs, but both are also uniquely
different from each other.
“Gisborne is probably the surfing
capital of New Zealand. The water is
warmer and surfing is much more
common,” said Cory.
“But if you enjoy the elements
and surfing on your own with just
a sea lion or walrus with you, then
Dunedin is the way to go.”
So what’s the best way to do it?
Give yourself two weeks off work in
autumn, get a campervan, and hit
the road. Not only will you see some
of the most amazing scenery of your
life, there will be tonnes of waves
along the way. But remember to
respect the locals.
“Be friendly and talk to people
when you’re paddling out, especially
if it looks like a quiet local spot,”
Cory said.
“As surfers, the best way to enjoy
the environment is to get around
in a van. Just abide by the rules and
don’t go leaving rubbish.
“If a local comes along and says
you can’t stay there, then respect
their wishes and move on.”
North Island, or South? We can’t tell you, but we can
tell you this place exists, and it is magnificent.
PHOTO: SCOTT
SURFING LIFE 96

T H E
WORDS BY MICHAEL SAUNDERS
OTHER
BUCKET
L I S T
We all have a list of places
we want to visit and surf
before we leave this world. It
might not be written down on
paper, but you’ve got it stored
in your head somewhere. But,
rather than sticking to the
status quo of well-known spots,
maybe it’s time to cast your eyes
towards the waves less ridden.
Because, what’s life without a
little je ne sais quoi?
We asked four super
knowledgeable photographers
from various corners of the
planet about some of their
favourite spots that aren’t
exactly ‘go to’ locations. These
are the spots that don’t have
a place in the ‘world’s most
famous waves’ lists, but they
probably should. This is the
other bucket list!
SURFING LIFE 97

Technological advancements to wetsuits have opened up a whole
plethora of previously off-the-map surfing destinations.
PHOTO: PALADINO
Vancouver Island
Canada
Canada, eh? For a surf trip!?
Yes, you read that correctly! It’s
time to leave the bro-board in
Whistler and get yourself on the
next flight to Vancouver Island.
“The experience is oneof-a-kind,”
says Vancouver
Island native and resident surf
photographer Marcus Paladino.
“Walking through old growth
forest to get to the beach; having
bald eagles fly above you in the
lineup; meeting some of the
friendliest people you’ll ever
encounter; and of course the
adrenaline of surfing until you
can’t feel your limbs anymore.”
When you do make your way
to Vancouver Island, the small
west coast town of Tofino should
be your first port of call. The
region, which was originally a
hideaway for draft dodgers in the
’60s, has become known as the
‘surfing capital of Canada’, thanks
in no small part to the large
number of Californian natives
who ventured north and now call
Tofino home.
“The first known person to
surf here was Jim ‘The Paddler’
Sadler, and that was anywhere
between 1960 and 1970,” says
Marcus.
“As wetsuit technology got
more advanced, people started to
flock to the cold-water beaches
of Canada and got into surfing.
It’s been really popular in the last
decade, even though most people
in the country don’t know we
exist.”
There are a number of wellknown
surf spots in Tofino alone,
but if you buddy up with some of
the friendly locals, you might get
treated to some of the more secret
waves on other parts of the island.
SURFING LIFE 98

Plenty of pros, such as Dorian, Connor Coffin, The Malloys
and Machado make a yearly stop to Vancouver Island.
PHOTO: PALADINO
FIRST PRINCIPLE
THE TREND IS YOUR FRIEND.
We wouldn’t know whether to surf, or to
mindlessly gawk at our surrounds. Seriously!
PHOTO: PALADINO
“Most of our best waves and
slabs are boat access only, so it
can be really challenging to get
there unless the weather is being
generous,” Marcus said.
“My favourite wave is only
accessible by logging road, and
it’s extremely fickle. Everything
needs to line up perfectly, but
when it does there’s no place I’d
rather be in the world. You can
get barrelled, do three turns and
still have an air section all in one
wave – it’s a filmer’s dream!
“Another area, that shall
not be named, is riddled with
perfect pointbreaks. It’s a shame
photographers aren’t allowed to
shoot there, hence why you’ve
probably never seen a photo of
their waves.”
Once you get your surfing fix,
make sure to check out some
of the other things to do on the
island, including the ridiculous
amounts of hikes, as well as some
tasty ales at the local microbrews.
“I love surfing on Vancouver
Island because it’s so natural
here. You don’t see or hear any
cars driving by from the lineup
or have big, industrial buildings
around you as eyesores. It’s a very
calming and pure environment,
as surfing was meant to be.”
SURFING LIFE 99

This long roping righthander is fickle, only
breaking on a certain part of the tide. What
part of the tide and where it is ... you’ll have
to bite the bullet and find out for yourself.
PHOTO: CURLEY
SURFING LIFE 100

North Sumatra
Indonesia
Sick of sharing the lineup
with hordes of other blokes in
Bintang singlets? Or maybe that
remote location you went to
last year turned out to have less
people, but also less waves.
Well, maybe some of the lesserknown
areas on mainland Northern
Sumatra are for you.
Now we’re not going to make
ridiculous calls like, “no crowds!”
or “perfect waves guaranteed!”
But we can tell you that this area
certainly deserves more credit
than it currently gets – just ask
frequent visitor, and photographer
extraordinaire, Mick Curley.
“It’s a wild place, incredibly
beautiful,” Mick said.
“I take my family up there often
and go off the grid completely.”
So why is it that this region
doesn’t get the same attention that
its neighbours like the Mentawai
Islands get?
“The whole of Indonesia has
an incredible amount of waves to
explore [but] travel difficulties would
be up there as a solid reason why
some places are empty,” Mick said.
“There’s a mountain of reasons
why certain places in Indo are not as
popular as others, but that doesn’t
mean the waves don’t stack up to
the more known spots.”
If you’re a first-timer, then your
best way to score North Sumatra and
not end up being airlifted to hospital
is by hooking up with one of the
boat operators in the region. Once
you’ve got your bearings of the area,
a solo mission is certainly do-able.
Just make sure you have your wits
about you.
“With less travelled locations,
they have their challenges with
regards to food, language and clean
water. Like anywhere, once you get
away from resorts and developed
areas you have to be careful and
prepared for shit to get real. This is
an area where true surf pioneering
can still be done.
“To go explore potential breaks
all over Indonesia, most times the
only boats available are the local
fishing boats. I guess it depends on
where you’re looking and how good
your Bahasa and bargaining skills
are. Adventure is most definitely still
there if you want it!”
If you do decide to take the latter
option and walk on the wild side, it
would be wise to brush up on your
first-aid skills.
“The smallest cut you don’t treat
properly can mean life and death,”
Mick explains.
“It sounds far-fetched, but I’ve
seen at least five people have to get
emergency medical extractions out
of Indonesia for treatment because
of staph infections and tropical
diseases that start from a scratch.
“You have to be really vigilant
with looking after yourself, and your
mates, out there. It’s a long way
from anywhere and when things do
go wrong it’s a little more serious
than your typical Bali surf mission.”
Bryce Young packed the antibacterial meds
and headed north. This was his reward.
PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 101

It’s not Greenbush life and death lefts.
But shit a brick, it looks like fun.
PHOTO: SHIELD
The Telo Islands
Indonesia
Super fun waves, options in
all swell directions, gin-clear
water, low crowds and ‘in
season’ all year-round. So why
the hell are people bypassing a
trip to the Telos?
“Telos has a bit of a reputation
for cashed-up kooks,” says Surfing
Life senior photographer Andrew
Shield.
“It’s a lot of money. Even the
cheaper budget camps are pretty
expensive.”
Shieldsy’s not wrong; a weeklong
stay at some of the more
popular surf camps on the islands
can fetch upwards of $8000, and
that can be a hard sell when you
can get yourself the same amount
of time on a boat in the Ments for
less than half the price. But hey, this
is Indo we’re talking about. Surely
there is a cheaper option?
“You definitely can do it on
the other end of the spectrum,”
Shieldsy said.
“There are homestays you can
stay at for backpacker prices. But
you will be getting around to the
breaks on a wooden canoe with a
whipper-snipper on the back, and
your food will mostly consist of
just rice.
“Also, the cost of the charter
flight can put people off. But going
the other option can be a little
difficult. You’ll have to fly to Nias,
drive for two-and-a-half hours,
then get on a ferry for six hours to
reach Telo.”
But if you do have the coin to
splash, or are willing to endure the
travel mission, you will be rewarded
for your efforts, with some of the
best small- to medium-sized wave
setups in Indonesia.
“That’s definitely the attraction.
It doesn’t get as much swell as
somewhere like the Ments, it’s
normally a foot or two smaller,”
adds Shieldsy.
“But it is a lot less crowded,
and when it’s small you have got
at least four or five good spots to
go to. In the Ments, all you have is
Burgerworld.”
Another bonus is you don’t have
to rely on seasons like other areas
in Indonesia, with spots that work
well with the west swells during
monsoon season. This means that
you can book your trip during the
Christmas break, and not feel like
you’re getting skunked.
“If you are a big-wave charger
then you’d be better looking
somewhere else,” says Shieldsy.
“But if you know your
limitations, you’re going to have a
lot more fun than overextending
yourself at somewhere that gets
bigger swells.”
Top to bottom and grinding. While it’s not a big
wave destination, the old girl still has her days.
PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 102

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SURFING LIFE 104

RIDING
WOODEN
WAVES
The selection process for the front cover of this Issue was a little bit
different. The usual array of breath taking imagery flooded our inbox,
and the customary discussions took place over the merits of each. Then a
piece of artwork from Nathan Ledyard arrived to HQ and stopped us dead
in our tracks. Surfing Life designer Dave Read thought out loud that’d
it’d make a cool cover. And that was that. Discussions closed. In 32-years
of Surfing Life never have we had a shorter and more unanimous
front cover discussion. Before we had even one article written for this
magazine, we already had our front cover.
INTERVIEWED BY GRA MURDOCH
SURFING LIFE 105

Even as a kid growing up
in Mainland USA, far away
from the ocean, I’ve always felt
a connection to the sea. I’ve
dreamt about surfing as long
as I can remember. I’d always
been interested in drawing and
painting as a child, but soon
art took a backseat to sports
and school, when I ended up
studying law.
A few years ago, when my
friends started getting married,
I started making paintings as
wedding gifts and I began to
think seriously about making and
selling art. When I was studying
law, all I really cared about was
having time to go surf. So, I guess
it was inevitable that my love for
surfing and art would finally take
over. I quit my full-time job and
took a chance on becoming a fulltime
artist.
... And Surfing Life is so glad
Nathan did take that chance.
Nathan has always been intrigued
by wood, and he wanted to
incorporate the natural patterns of
the grain in his paintings...
I had an Aha! moment one day
when I carved too deeply into the
wood and came out the other side.
I tried to resolve the problem and
discovered I could go even deeper
by adding more wood to the back.
Since then I’ve been figuring out
new methods and techniques to
carve even deeper and make my
pieces more 3D.
While I always have a rough
plan of what I want to do, I always
let the wood be my main source
of inspiration. It keeps things
interesting, and I think it’s a way
for me to tap into nature’s energy.
I’ll flip through pieces of plywood
until I find one with a pattern that
I like, and then I’ll use the wood
grain to create the design of the
clouds or water. Once I have the
right piece of wood I start carving
the wave and other features that
I want to be 3D. After that I stain
the wood with acrylic paint, and
then use sandpaper to remove
any excess paint and bring out the
natural wood grain. Rather than
painting shadows and highlights, I
rely on the 3D carving to create all
of those little details.
When I’m in the zone and
things are flowing, nothing else
matters – it’s almost a meditative
state – similar to the feeling I get
from surfing and riding waves,
but with the art I’m able to
prolong that feeling for longer.
I always like to challenge myself
by experimenting and pushing
my style in new directions. I like
to try something new with every
piece I make. That’s what I enjoy
most, and it always keeps things
interesting for me.
It can take me a while to make a
new piece – anywhere from a week
to a couple of months for my largest
works. My prices range from a few
hundred to several thousands of
dollars. Most of my biggest fans are
surfers, so I’ll always try to produce
a number of affordable options.
SURFING LIFE 106

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the sea
has stories

Thanks for Coming
Harley Ingleby draws his asymmetrical lines
in a place of perfect Indonesian symmetry.
Next issue we delve into the allure of the
surfboard’s charms and unlock her secrets!
PHOTO: SHIELD
SURFING LIFE 110

Do you remember your first surfboard?
Of course you do. Maybe
you scratched away at your
pocket money for half a year,
eventually slinging three
hundred bucks at a long-haired
stud on Gumtree whose move
to retro-fab Byron Bay meant he
had a surplus five-six Rubble.
Or your parents caved in after
a year of yapping in their ears
and that Lost Rocket you’d been
eyeballing in the racks was yours.
Maybe it was a birthday gift you
didn’t know you wanted.
And this gift, this creation, this
sculpture, took you to places,
threw obstacles in front of you,
challenged you, rewarded you.
In the next issue of Surfing
Life every inch of The Surfboard
is examined. First, we drew up a
list of the world’s most significant
shapers, the jet-setters and the local
heroes. The categories included,
‘absolutely forbidden’, ‘reluctantly
allowed’ and ‘Must Get At All Cost’.
You want to see if it’s possible
to make a board that works in twofoot
and eight-foot waves?
You want to see what happens
when the two most important
shapers in the world combine to
create the one design?
You want to learn how to see,
actually see and not pretend you
see, concave?
You want a definitive
explanation of every element of
your surfboard?
You want to put down a surfing
magazine smarter than when you
waltzed in? Of course!
SURFING LIFE: THE SURFBOARD ISSUE. ON SALE OCTOBER 9
SURFING LIFE 111

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SURFING LIFE 112

PHOTO: CURLEY
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SURFING LIFE 113