FAST TRACKS

Who was the first surfer? What drove them to stand on a plank hurtling shoreward? The first woman, or perhaps even a man, bored of the prone belly-boarding frolics on rough-hewn wood or reed craft* decided to say ‘hold my beer’ one day and stand up. Which leads to the obvious point: at that moment in history they were the only surfer. Can you imagine the reaction?
“What the?”
“Mabel, what the fork are you doing? We’re riding the waves not walking on water! Get down right now! It’s ungainly, and possibly an insult to whichever deity we currently believe controls the sea.”
Change is always regarded with suspicion. Boards getting shorter, fins going from one to three, performance going into the air, surfing becoming mainstream. For a supposed counterculture surfing can be deeply conservative when forced in a new direction. So the prone to standing paradigm shift must have been a doozy. Campfire gossip about this new fangled way of riding the ocean-going rollers must’ve been heated. Will it catch on? Is it an insult to the proud culture of flopping around on belly boards? What happens next? Is it too damn hard? And how the hell do you decide which foot goes forward? The forethought and skill to ride a board carved out of a log (or bundled reeds) with stone tools would’ve been immense; especially as it was pure recreation. Our ancestors engaged in finding food, shelter and safety. Leisure time wasn’t a consideration. So surfing was one of the early, selfish for sure, hobbies or pastimes. “Can’t believe he’s riding the breakers again instead of tending the crops or hunting boars!” Maybe this is why the Easter Island culture failed. Chopped down all the trees to make kick-ass big olos to shred the gnar didn’t they? We are, of course, far removed from such matters. Change still happens. We can never put the genie back in the lamp. ‘Unspoilt by progress’ is a slogan merely on antique mirrors in old-school pubs. We are the now. The latest, greatest, best boards and suits are available at the mere press of a pocket computer. We can surf anywhere in the world if we have enough green in the bank. But some things don’t change, that first time you stand up on a surfboard the thrill echoes through the ages. ‘I am walking on water! I am a surfing god!’ Albeit briefly. But those few seconds of the first successful stand are priceless. Not to mention the transformational moment you go from being someone interested in surfing to being a surfer.
If you’ve been with us for years, thank you, if you’ve just started your surfing journey, welcome to the crew.

Now go get wet.

Sharpy

Editor

*The jury is still out on who the first surfers were, the Polynesians on their carved wooden craft or the Peruvians and their reed-based goat boats. It’s kind of nice not to know. Imagine if we knew who the first surfer was and they were an utter douchebag?

UNSPOILT BY PROGRESS

You will surely agree that Kelly’s Californian water feature is a marvellous feat of engineering. An excellent example of taking a first world problem and applying a Damonesque “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this” work ethic to its solution.
No one will argue the fact that the Surf Ranch produces the most exceptional human-made wave is without a doubt.  We’ve covered the rise of the machines in the pages of the magazine. These contraptions are newsworthy, fascinating and if you get the chance at a slide in a lake fun as hell. But are they the future? Are they the future we want? I couldn’t even bring myself to watch much of WSL Surf Ranch Pro. Witnessing minutes of my life steadily disappear while waiting for the machine to reset was painful. No surveying the horizon for sets, no wonder as to what curveballs nature would throw in the heat. Just painful predictability and repetitive surfing. The words ‘sterile’ and ‘boring’ kept flashing in my mind’s eye in giant neon letters. Surf comps work because they’re a gladiatorial battle. The person vs person dynamic is vital. The dance of randomness provided by an oceanic canvas keeps it interesting. There are no buzzer beaters, paddle battles or sporting drama in the pool. A four-day event is worse than flipping cricket. No sport needs to last four days of repetition, especially with waves literally at the press of a button. Surf comps aren’t fair. The ocean does not care what score anyone needs. It’s this capriciousness that keeps us on our toes.  The pool’s only advantage is you can say the comp will start bang on the dot Saturday morning at 8:30. It’s a good time keeper, a level playing field. As long as you don’t need a scoring left. It doesn’t satisfy the building performance level of snowboard and skate jam style comps where the excitement is palpable either. Non-snowboarders get the halfpipe comp in the Olympics. It’s fast, frenetic and exciting. Not like watching paint dry. The WSL doesn’t need to make surfing more popular. It needs to excite the folks that do it already. Of course, surfing competition means not a jot to most of you. The bulk of you won’t have ever competed or have the slightest interest in it. I’ll wager a lot of you don’t even watch the world tour either, which is fine. We surf because it enriches our souls. It’s fun. Being out in the sea is beneficial for you in so many ways. The pools won’t ever replace the ocean. One day we might look back on this era as an expensive cul-de-sac in surfing’s rich history, the possible fork in the timeline when pro surfing competitions jumped the shark into irrelevance. The waves will keep on coming without mechanical assistance in the salty realm. We will continue to seek solace and spiritual connection to the good earth in their briny embrace. When they can reproduce Cloudbreak in a tank maybe then I’ll change my mind.

Sharpy

Editor

THE MEN IN GREY SUITS

Strange times on the world tour this year. If John John currently languishing at 26th on the ratings isn’t weird enough the West Oz event was cancelled outright due to shark concerns.
Yep. You read that right.
Now it’s easy to forget about the WSL pro sports tour sometimes. The Australian events rarely set the pulse racing, Brazil is a yawn. It’s only when the tour hits J-Bay, that is handily in our time zone, that we can dodge doing anything productive at work by streaming the webcast on all day. This year we’ve got the bonus of Keramas back on tour, but wind wise it’s the wrong season, it doesn’t work for that much of the tide and word on the ground is the building of hotels has disrupted the sand flow from the stream which builds up in the lee of the reef.
Tahiti, of course, can be epic, but it’s been a long time between drinks for the sickest wave on tour delivering sphincter-clenching, brownshort-making, borderline tow size death boxes. No Cloudie this year either.
The high performance playground of Trestles has been replaced by Slater’s Water Feature in the farmlands of Central Cali.
So it leaves Europe and Pipe to bring the drama, for the last time in the current window. Yes. Again. You read that right. Portugal and France are reportedly being moved to spring (could be epic, could be awful, will be cold) in the 2019 rejig of the tour and as you’ll have read, a lot, online the Pipe event is in the wind due to permit problems that are yet to be resolved.
So in an era of big change, the rise of wave pools as serious venues, big question marks over the tour’s financial viability and a trimming of the tour back to a Mentawai play off style finish in September it’s pretty poor timing for the apex predators of the brine to throw their toys out of the pram.
If we’ve learned anything from recent weeks is everyone has an opinion. And we all know what opinions are like…
We’ve also learned not to bury whale carcasses on beaches, unless you want to encourage a massive shark all-you-can-eat buffet queue.
Sometimes don’t you just celebrate living in boring old Britain and Ireland? The biggest thing we have to worry about in the sea is bumping into a turd or a plastic bag not a prehistoric killing machine.

This is the quote from the WSL’s British boss, Soph, regarding Bitey McBitefacegate:
"The WSL puts the highest premium on safety. This cannot be just talk, and it cannot be compromised. Surfing is a sport that carries various forms of risk, and is unique in that wild animals inhabit our performance environment. Sharks are an occasional reality of WSL competitions, and of surfing in general. Everyone associated with our sport knows that. There have been incidents in the past - and it's possible that there will be incidents in the future - which did not (and will not) result in the cancellation of an event. However, current circumstances are very unusual and troubling, and we have decided that the elevated risk during this season's Margaret River Pro has crossed the threshold for what is acceptable."
Sophie Goldschmidt, WSL CEO

This is, of course, from Jaws:
“I think I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass.”

Sharpy
Editor

POLAR HEATWAVE

This morning I nearly tripped over the snowboard our neighbours have left in the hall. Nothing odd about that if you live in Chamonix.
But I donít. I live in Newquay.
For one weird night at the peak of the #BeastfromtheEast event it snowed enough in Cornwall for the all the ex-seasonaires to relive their youth carving a bit of fresh pow on the golf course. The Red Lion pub made for an ideal aprés venue and for one night only skis, snowboards, sledges and surfboards were littered around the place.
It was a joy. Fun was the order of the day. Folks were sledging down streets in Falmouth. Sure the snow was a pain in the derriere for a lot of folks, but if you got the chance to enjoy it, rather than be frustrated by it, it tapped into the thing we all get from surfing: the thrill of the slide.
Surfing is fun. If the insane act of riding a wave on a plank doesn’t put a smile on your dial then you’re doing it wrong.
Much as the snow day was a blast it owed its origins to something a bit more concerning. In basic terms the polar air couldn’t be arsed to stay at the North Pole and decided to come on a weekender to the shock of us Northern European folks.
The Arctic has been so warm scientists are calling it a heatwave; which considering it doesn’t even get any sunshine until March is pretty nuts. Overall it’s been 20C higher than the average for the last 50 years. Siberia has been 35C above historical averages. Which isn’t good. As thawing tundra releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and that could kick off a feedback loop. The sea ice as well has been at a record low extent since satellite observations began. The polar vortex, a high level wind, normally keeps the cold polar air in check but thanks to some sudden stratospheric warming it all went arse about face and the normal westerly jet stream got a massive kink in it sending all the polar fun right into our grills.
The science boffins are concerned. An unstable, warming Arctic in our ever changing world is not a good thing. Sure the melting sea ice doesn’t affect sea levels. But if the Greenland ice sheet does then we’ll be surfing in our beach carparks instead of the beaches and kind of pissed that we didn’t give an arse about being good citizens of the planet and doing everything we can to stop the joint warming up…

Sharpy
Editor