April 19th

Top Five Stories: (in no particular order)

1) Damien Hobgood, 29, and Courtney Conlogue, 19, win the Telstra Drug Aware Pro at Margaret River. The contest saw just about every different type of surf, beginning with beautiful six to ten foot peelers, followed by 10-15ft, victory at sea conditions, and finally three to four foot dribblers on the last day of the event. Although the fixture ended in barely contestable surf, it seemed fitting that the harsh and testing conditions of the first few days would yield to a sunny offshore final, with celebration and relaxation on everyone’s mind moving into ASP stop number two at Bells Beach in under a weeks. The final saw Hobgood face off against local favorite Yadin Nicol. Yadin had been watching conditions all day and opted for an eventually losing strategy: waiting for the one or two wave set that would never materialize. Early in the day, despite tapering conditions, every heat would still be able to produce one or two scoring waves, but by the end of the afternoon, the fading swell left Nicol out in the water wondering. The wave at Margaret River, according to Baldy, is, “Unlike anything around here.” The wave breaks on a reef and taking the predominate left will move you towards a section known as the surgeon’s table, where the reef becomes exposed on a low tide. This path leads you towards the channel and as a result, if you make the section, you can cruise back out into the lineup with ease. The Telstra drug aware pro saw many of the contestants choosing the right, due to the crossed up nature of the swell. The right offers a little bit steeper of a wall, followed by a close-out section with high scoring potential. The jet-ski assist is what makes the right out at Margaret’s River workable, since it is a battle to paddle back onto the peak after cruising down the line. Hobgood’s performance in Western Australia demonstrated how much of an effect rhythm can have on one’s performance. Damien never let the break get the best of him, catching wave after wave, despite height or scoring potential, ultimately using everything that the ocean was offering up to him. Congratulations to both surfers, who received hefty amounts of points and cash.

2) T.K. Brimer and his iconic Newport Beach surf shop, the Frog House, have received special zoning rights by the city of Newport Beach after initially being given notice that they would have to shut their doors due to new governmental regulations. The city was considering rescinding the businesses’ permits in accordance with the zoning districts that had been drawn almost forty years ago, but were never properly enforced. The area where Frog House now sits is considered a residential zone, but until 2008, when new legislation was passed, the city had never needed to protest the shops’ location. The 39 year-old mom and pop style surf shop, as well as other various small businesses, were out of place in the residential only district and were required to apply for special rezoning. After much support and protest from local surfers and residents, the city of Newport Beach has decided to ‘grandfather-in’ the Frog House and it’s sister shops in an effort to maintain the rich surf culture of Newport Beach.

3) A man was bitten by a snake during his morning surf check at Trestles State Beach in California. He parked his car and took a quick walk down the trail along the cliffside to have a look at the conditions, but on his way back to his car he was surprised by a fully grown rattlesnake. Early spring is the time of year that snakes will come out of hibernation and begin looking for food and shelter. This from the Orange County Register:

"Surfer bitten by rattlesnake on trail near Trestles"

San Clemente landscape contractor Jim Miller, a lifelong surfer, determined he would not go in the water for an afternoon session Sunday after checking the waves from a popular clifftop lookout off Basilone Road above Trestles surf beach.

As he returned to the road along an overgrown cliff trail, he was bitten on his right foot by a rattlesnake he never saw.

The trail he usually takes is overgrown because of recent rains and has narrowed to less than a foot from the usual 3 feet, he said.

"I heard the rattle just as he got me and then again as he was taking off," said Miller, 54. "I knew it was a rattlesnake right away and called 911 with my cellphone.

"At the hospital, the nurse asked me twice if my affairs were in order and if I had a will."

4 & 5) The ‘Travis-sham’ mockery of the decade is worth two ‘top-stories’ spots and is currently happening thousands of miles across the Pacific. After the enormous earthquake and tsunami that Japan recently suffered, many of the country’s nuclear power facilities began experiencing problems keeping their radioactive waste contained. This has led to Japan’s releasing up to 7.5 million times the legal limit of radioactive waste into the coastal waters around the island. Of course, the surfing culture in Japan has all but been destroyed, and this type of fallout will only contribute to further difficulties in re-establishing a solid surf family there in the future. The Surfrider Foundation is one of the few outlets who have even broached this subject, and theirs’ seems to be a minimal effort. You can find the blog-site explaining the situation and asking for donations for Japan’s Surfrider Chapter online. Unlike the non-stop news coverage received regarding the radioactive waste that was being released into the air, this story, which holds as much weight or more, seems to be shunned by the major news sources. A greater effort needs to be organized in order to mitigate the damage that is currently being done to our oceans. Of course, the people in Japan are suffering greatly right now, and they have huge problems to deal with, but loss of life does not equate to the degradation of our oceans on such a large scale.

Excerpts from Bassy and Baldy’s interview with Bill Sharp, executive director of the Billabong XXL Awards:

Bassy: Thank you for waking up and being with us so bright and early on this crisp Sunday morning. Now I’ve got to tell you Bill, last week, Baldy and I went through our potential winners, and I believe Jeff chose David Scard, at Cloudbreak, for its aesthetically pleasing style, and I claimed that Brennan at Shipsterns would be the winner. How do you feel about these picks?

Sharp: I think those are valid, and I kinda have to laugh because I think, more-so this year than in the past, a case can be made for every single ride. Everyone’s talking about [it], Mark Healey on his wave that looks like a flea circus; how can you not get excited by Danilo Couto paddling into Jaws, with that air drop, pulling into the pit.

Baldy: We went through every different idea like that, because you have three tow-ins and two paddle- ins, and they’re all kind of different angles and colors; Healey’s is hard to see, with the color and everything, you kind of lose some of the dynamics of how amazing because it’s just grainy and dark and far away.

Bassy: Yes, Healey’s ride is just not aesthetically pleasing simply because you can’t see it.

Sharp: That’s true. And without the advances in modern camera technology that wave would have never been seen by anyone that wasn’t there.

Bassy: I appreciate you throwing a bone to Mark Healey because that is an incredible ride. Obviously, it’s one of those waves where, if you could have had better clarity there, we probably would have been blown away. It’s something that only Mark Healey could have pulled off. He’s an incredible surfer, in the top two all time big wave chargers, right up there with Shane. Quite frankly, Benjamin Sanchis is an incredible ride but when you stack that up against Teahupoo - it’s just an average ride at Teahupoo.

Sharp: Ya, which is interesting, not to get off topic, but where was Teahupoo this year? We had so many places that are usually complete machines at cranking out XXL contenders that just didn’t come through this year; there wasn’t a single ride that came in from Teahupoo this year

Bassy: Bill is so good at deflecting. Did you notice that? He got away from the whole Ireland thing.

Baldy: A lot of places didn’t break. It was funny because right up until the day that Dorian and Walsh got that paddle in at Jaws - I was actually talking with Mike Parsons that night – there was nothing coming in from the North Pacific. It just came alive that week before the cutoff, but not as much paddle-in, where as the year before there was so many paddle- ins.

Sharp: A lot of the paddle-in missions didn’t quit live up to what had been hoped for. That November 2^nd swell at Mavericks, there was a whole crew there frothing to ride giant waves but it just wasn’t quit over-the-top big; a group of us went overnight to Cortez Bank, and again, it was solid, but compared to what had gone on the previous year it wasn’t that mind-blowing. That stuff just barely made it into circulation.

Bassy: The Europeans have got to be feeling like they got shafted at the last minute - it seemed like this was the year for the Europeans, just because the Pacific Northwest basically shut down while big things were happening in Europe. Then at the last minute, a flurry of stuff seems to have taken the ‘mojo’ from the Eastern Hemi.

I’d like to talk to you about the ‘big wave’ award. I’ve done some research and by my calculations the wave by Francisco Porcella, at Jaws on Maui, is 63 feet and this is the wave that will win the award. What are your thoughts?

Sharp: Well, it’s all unofficial until the group of surfing supreme court justices get in and measure it. I think that one is really big. Belharra is in contention too, even though they’ve got the short end of the stick in the past. If you look at the Bellharra wave just based on pure height, it could be the winner - and it’s not as soft as some of the Belharra waves of the past – it is certainly in contention for pure height

Baldy: It’s hard, they all look huge. It’s all just hundreds of feet to me

Bassy: Let’s move on to the paddle-in winner. As I went through these, the Danilo Couto wave with the air drop and thirty seconds of pure leg burning, driving his toes into the wax; that one stands out as the winner. Quite frankly, Dorian didn’t make the wave. I know he got to the bottom and made a bottom turn; perhaps that makes it a contender, but in my opinion he didn’t make that wave. Scion doesn’t really make his wave either. The Waiamaia Bay wave is just not as heavy as Danilo’s wave - Healey’s is the only one that might have a chance.

Baldy: The other wave that didn’t make it was Ian Walsh’s wave with Shane Dorian in that same session. Like we said last week, ‘Why did he do that? ‘It looked like he just fell when the hard part of the wave was done, and his wave would have been amazing had he finished it.

Bassy: Well Bill, you’ve got to be excited for the paddle-in nominees. I’ve got a question for you. The awards ceremony that will be on April 29^th is such an incredible event. The montage that Bill and his crew put together is insane and you can see it on the webcast. What is the webcast URL?

Sharp: www.Billabongxxl.com

Bassy: Tell me about this year’s awards, the montage - I’m sure you’ve been working on it - is it something we should be excited about?

Sharp: Yes. This year, with the help of God, we’re going to be taking the production values to an entirely new level. I think they’ve been pretty sophisticated in the past but this year Fuel TV and Fox Sports are coming in and handling a lot of the technical upgrading. We aren’t using the same system at the Grove. Not only is it going to be an amazing experience for anyone that is there, but it’s going to air as a TV show two days later, which is pretty unprecedented. So you’ll be able to tune into Fuel TV at 6-9 PM on Sunday night - settle in and make some popcorn, watch the show on TV.

Baldy: That’s gonna be great. And being there live, watching all these waves played on the massive screen, with the big sound system - my hearts already in my throat; it’s incredible

Sharp: Some people are saying that this year the waves weren’t as amazing as last year, but when you distill it down to the top five in each category, and turn it into a montage, there’s no getting around that there is some amazing surfing going on. It’s pretty astonishing stuff

Bassy: One of the biggest crowd pleasers, the Verizon Wipeout of the Year, has some mental ones. My favorite is Mark Matthews’ spectacular wipeout at Shipsterns - its right in your face. That’s the beauty of Shipsterns, from a cinematography standpoint, they are right there in the channel, sitting on their boats or skis – it’s such a good angle into what’s happening. Mark Matthews takes a spectacular wipeout, one in which the crowd is going to be…well, some laughing, some crying. It’s just incredible stuff.

Baldy: Some of the waves are shot from a helicopter, like Dorian’s and Danilo’s, and you wonder how they would look if they were filmed off a ski because the wave has that much more size, girth, and fear factor at a water angle.

Sharp: Well, I’ll tell you, actually none of those shots were off a helicopter. It’s off a cliff - those fellas sauntered down to a perilous point on the cliff to get the slightly different angle. And, ya, a lot of the times those water shots offer a more shocking view. For whatever reason no one was there to hook up on some of the great rides. I don’t think I saw a single A+ water shot at Jaws for some reason.

Baldy: I just wonder how big Dorian’s barrel was from the channel on a ski, looking in it?

Sharp: That’s an incredible question. That would have been a cover shot. How everyone missed that one - just the way it goes - how did they miss Healey’s wave? There had been a bunch of shooters out there earlier but they had all gone in to have dinner.

Baldy: On Danilo’s wave, you only see how steep the wave is by his body movements, where the board is dropping out and his arms fly up involuntarily. If it was from the water you could see how vertical and massive that thing was. It almost flattens it out from that cliff angle.

Bassy: Bill is there a changing of the guard? Where are Mike Parson, Peter Mel, Garret Macnamera, and the other guys we normally see involved in the awards?

Sharp: They’re out there doing it, but there is a luck factor in that there are only so many swells per year. I think there were five major storms in the Pacific where as last year there was something like 12. If you’re number doesn’t come up you can be left out of the rotation. Not only did those older guys miss out – where was Greg Long, Grant “Twiggy” Baker, and up until the final week, where was Shane Dorian? Those are probably the three top performers over the last four or five years and they almost went the entire year without an A+ wave. Shane did his part to climb back up into the history books, I’m sure we’ll see more shocking things to come. The rest of those guys haven’t gone anywhere, their number just didn’t come up this year.

Baldy: Breaking it down in that sort of context regarding the Billabong XXL awards, I don’t think those guys look back on their year an think that they haven’t got an A+ wave, but from the award’s perspective, they really didn’t get that perfect wave. They spent their whole year throwing themselves over giant ledges, getting beaten up, and having their skis die in front of sets and whatever other horrific things happened to them – from the viewers point, they just didn’t get an A+ wave this year.

Sharp: Well, in relation to that, you can go out in the ASP and have a “shocker”, come in and have the microphone shoved in your face for a few minutes, but then you’re done for a couple months – there’s always another wave coming in, there’s always tomorrow’s swell in the XXL so things can change quite rapidly.

Watch the webcast Friday April 29^th at www.Billabongxxl.com or catch the live show on Fuel TV, May 1^st. You can also head over to www.facebook.com/billabongxxl and “like” the event to let all of your friends know.

April 12

New quality video posted. Check it out.

April 7th

Top Five Stories, April 3rd, 2011 (as heard on Down the Line - Surf Talk Radio, Sundays 8-9AM, XTRA Sports 1360AM 'radio'):

1) Kelly Slater can rip on anything. Somewhere, nestled amongst the vast expanse of photos on Facebook, you can find videographic evidence that Kelly Slater rips, and can rip on anything. The footage shows Kelly arriving at a perfect Southern Australian beach break, where he quickly commences to snap his board in the heavy surf. One of the Gudaskas brothers (who have been aptly formed into one entity known as ‘the Gudaskas’) gives Kelly his Mini-Sim, a 5’6” squaretail with two hideous looking sidefins, almost resembling a boogie board, except for the hardness and density of the foam, and Kelly proceeds to shred the break to bits. Apparently functionality means little to the most decorated surfer in history, “He paddled out on a completely different shape and controls it perfectly. There’s not one displaced rail, he’s holding the line on that back fin of this big squaretail thing – and those fins don’t look like they help the board go faster…”

2) “Ultimate Boarder Surfing”. The second stage of the Ultimate Boarder Surfing Competition takes place at Seaside Reef, April 6-9. The competition features a mesh of the three major boarding sports, snow, surf, and skate. Participants in the contest will compete in three different events, beginning with the snowboard competition, which has already taken place in Mammoth, then moving onto the surfing portion, and finishing with the skateboarding competition. The winner will have to perform well in all three arenas in order to take home a victory. The contest also features team events, in which different members of a given team are chosen to compete in their specific field of expertise.

3) A special tour featuring the surf movie Melali:the Drifter Sessions, with musical guests Rob Machado and John Swift, will kick off Tuesday night April 5^th , at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, Ca, followed by dates in Santa Ana, San Francisco, New York, DC, Virginia, Carolina and Florida. The schedule is for the upcoming month, with the last public date being May 8^th. Melali is a pure surfing movie; a sort of branch off of Machado’s hit The Drifter, featuring all the extra footage that wasn’t used in the original film – the entire score will be performed live by Machado, Swift, and company. Support the guys and watch some great surfing.

4) Meteorologists are calling for a very active 2011 hurricane season in the Atlantic. Predictions state that we could see fifteen named tropical storms, eight of which reach hurricane force, and three of which will obtain enough force to cause heavy damages were they to make landfall. This could bode well for the Quiksilver New York, which will be held during the hurricane season and has direct access to the swell produced in the mid-Atlantic.

5) The Billabong XXL ride of the year award will be given out to one of five videos submitted of big wave riding. The winner of the award receives $50,000 as well as a Toyota Tacoma. The first video features Michael Brennan at Shipstern’s Bluff being towed into a twenty foot barrel, negotiating the notorious bubble that forms as it closes out, air-dropping fifteen back onto the face while still in the tube, and fighting off a front-rail pearl to emerge victorious. This wave is mean, nasty, and highly critical.

The second video shows Danilo Couto paddling into Jaws on his backside. Just as he transitions to his feet at the peak of the wave, you can see the his board flutter with the wind as it goes airborne – he maintains his composure, resetting his fins into the face and beginning his decent down the liquid avalanche. The inside section of the wave also proves to be critical forcing him to reset his rail twice as he narrowly escapes the spitting barrel by choosing his high line precisely. Of course, Jaws is known to be one of the biggest waves on the planet and you can see it’s full potential in this clip; it seems to dwarf the Shipstern’s wave in size, although the wave itself may not be considered as critical. The most compelling difference in the video is the fact that Couto paddles in to this monstrer – making it first XXL submission from Jaws to feature a paddler.

The third video comes from Mark Healey surfing Phantoms, an outer reef on the North Shore. The video was shot shortly after the cutoff date for the previous Billabong XXL award. The wave that is surfed is huge, no doubt, but because of the way it was filmed and lit, it will have a difficult time contending for the XXL award. You can barely make out a silhouetted figure as he drops into a huge set wave, and after ten seconds of dark, grainy film, you assume Healey made the wave as you see the tiny figure pulling out the back.

The next submission comes from Mullaghmore Head in Ireland. Benjamin Sanchis of France is towed in deep on this Teahupoo type left located on the island’s west coast. The dark, cloudy beach and slight wind-chop create hazardous conditions for Sanchez as he drops into a thick barrel, sticks the tube, and pulls out like a stoked grom. It isn’t groundbreaking footage, except that it was filmed in Ireland, but the wave itself and the way it is surfed resembles so many old Teahupoo submissions that the chances of it receiving the award are slim to none. This is Billabong throwing a bone to Ireland and Sanchis for the incredible wave they have discovered and surfed, but unfortunately it is not in a class that will win the award.

The final video is at Cloudbreak, featuring David Scard, and has enough production quality to stand next to the Shipsterns wave. It is a paddle-in wave filmed from up close, features a great set of dynamic colors and images, and is the longest wave submitted. Cloudbreak is known as a highly critical wave, and Scard surfs it expertly, staying high after the drop-in to get into upper barrel, driving the rail hard, and relaxing a bit as the barrel burps open and reveals its twenty foot cavern. You can hear the hoots from the water well before Scard has even exited the barrel, and by the time he is released, the entire scene on the Fijian reef is estatic with congratulations.

With the official call: Bassy claims Brennan at Shipsterns and Baldy goes with the pizzazz and style displayed by Scard at Cloudbreak. Keep an eye out for updates and check out the videos on youtube

April 4th

Hey there. So there will be a new format, and some changes made to the blog. There's really no reason to detail all of them, as you will see it manifesting itself, but hopefully it will involve quite a bit more writing, daily surf reports uploaded before 8AM, and biweekly surf videos. Keep an eye out and if you enjoy the content let me know. And let your friends know.

Thanks for reading.

Here is some surf news as heard on Down the Line - Surf Talk Radio, March 27th.

Top Five Stories, March 27^th, 2011 :

1) An infected Torrey Pine at Swami’s is slowly taking the shape of an Easter Island Tiki Head. Tim Richards, an Encinitas woodworker, is replicating what is known on Easter Island as a MoAi. He works on the sculpture every day, and has transformed the tree using a chainsaw to mold its basic shape, while now he is chiseling out the finer details and the nose and eyes are beginning to take shape.

2) A huge round of swell ploughs through the North Pacific just in time to see copious amounts of big-wave riding footage to flood the web as well as the judge’s headquarters for the Billabong XXL Award. The cutoff date to submit footage for the contest was March 21, and plenty of swell had the Western Coast of the US firing a week before that date. Most notably was the footage of Shane Dorian and Ian Walsh paddling into Jaws, a feat that is considered on the cutting edge of traditional paddle-in surfing. “It looked like there was disaster written on every take-off, and they just pulled them so gracefully.”

3) Also attracting a lot of attention was the short clip put together by Ken “Skin-Dog” Collins, of Scion Milosky’s last ride. It details the accounts before Scion and Nathan Fletcher paddled out into the huge surf at Mavericks. The pulse of swell that was set up over the last week was generated very close to shore, with a lot of power, meaning that the sets would stack up, being stronger and more consistent –the result being the death of a friend and renowned big wave rider – after Scion endured a three wave hold down. Despite the fact that there were skis and other surfers in the water, they could not get to him in time. He leaves behind a wife and two kids, bringing up the question, “Is it worth it.” The big wave guys put themselves in extreme amounts of danger – Scion Milosky was regarded as a hardcore charger, even amongst the ranks of other top echelon chargers, from Shane Dorian down. Scion’s death illuminates the danger involved in this arena, especially since he was fit and in form. “If Scion is gonna pass away and die at Mavericks, then other people are gonna die at Mavericks.” Technology may be able to give big wave surfers a fighting chance as we begin to see the emergence of blow-up vests that can be worn under your wetsuits. In the most dire of circumstances you can easily find the rip cord located around your chest, pull it, and be up to the surface within moments. There is still risk of injury when wearing one of these vests, but it gives you much better odds to remain alive is the worst case scenario were to transpire.

4) “Hollywood Don’t Surf” - The premiere of Soul Surfer, a film starring Bethany Hamilton, was held on Saturday, March 26^th, at the La Paloma Theatre in San Diego. The mid-day showing entertained a huge amount of fans, with the star of the film also in attendance. Soul Surfer is a film about Bethany Hamilton, a young woman from Hawaii, whose arm was taken by a shark when she was thirteen years old. The movie details how she has overcome diversity in the water and in life, continuing to surf while impacting the lives of others. Her story is very touching and through this film you gain a greater sense of the humanitarian that Hamilton is, as she looks past her own disability, using it as a motivation to go out and change the way people view a handicap, and ultimately transcending surfing altogether. It was an emotional moment to have Bethany there receiving a standing ovation from the full house at the end of the film with many in the room becoming teary-eyed. Bethany said after the movie that, “Since it happened to her at such a young age, she took to it and adapted, and has been able to use that mentality to effectively help others. The sneak peek was held to contribute to the Challenged Athletes Association, and the movie will be released in April. “The next time your surfing, try doing it with one arm, it’s incredibly difficult; try duck-diving.”

5) The number five story is a New York Times article about ASP Women’s Professional Longboard Champion, Cori Schumacher, and her boycotting of the ASP event in China, due to political and social reasons. Unfortunately, the ASP seems to regard longboarding, and especially womens longboarding, as the lowest rung on the ASP totem, and seems to lend little credence to Schumacher’s casuse. Shumaker makes her living as a waitress, and is not sponsored. She is holding her ground on not attending the event.

Bonus Shark Talk. It seems that sharks have come to the mainstream and it is the normal conversation now a day, as opposed to the hush-hush nature the topic maintained before. During the Snapper event there were up to thirty first-hand accounts of shark sighting, and even the webcasters would begin the shark frenzy if anything grey was seen in the water. How do we as surfers rationalize the real danger that sharks present?

[Bassy] “For Instance - when I was in Santa Cruz. For some reason I seem to think that If I’m inside of the kelp line there’s no sharks. ‘For some reason this is a fence, this kelp line’. And that’s one of the rationalizations that doesn’t make sense…” “I literally paddled in one time. Probably thirty years ago, I paddled in; at Cherry Hill there in Solana Beach.”

[Baldy] “Spooky area.”

[Bassy] “I’m by myself, grey, overcast, I kid you not, four dolphins did a SeaWorld jump right in front of me, and I thought to myself, ‘Okay something’s out to get me. If it’s not sharks, its dolphins, but I’m outta here.

[Baldy]”There’s no real rationalization, your just there and I think that once everyone confirms the sighting and the size and the attitude, they’re outta there.

[Bassy] “It’s interesting, I mean, everyone’s got their own way of dealing with it psychologically.”

[Baldy]”I thought I was gonna get hit by a shark at Fingle one day - which is right across the Tweed River from Duranbaugh - and I saw this mullet jump. I was out with a buddy of mine, Matt chatbolt from Electric; this mullet jumps about a hundred yard out from me in a swell, in a set that’s kinda coming, so I’m watching the set, the mullet jumps, it jumps again, and I see this big black shape, this missile, following the mullet, and it jumped three times. I kept going right, then left; everywhere I went the mullet kept jumping my way, like it was coming to me for protection. So finally I paddle left towards the jetty and the thing jumps a final time, goes right under my board. By now, this black missile, which is going mach speed, is coming straight at me. I lift on my board, as if I’m gonna float in the air to be out of the water, but I can’t really get anywhere. I just was on my tippy toes and my fingertips and this thing went right under me. My friends laughing because I had shiseido on, the white sunscreen, and he said I looked white through that. He’s crackin’ up; these three other kids on the inside were like, ‘What was that?’ Turns out it was a dolphin, another guy saw it jump down the line, but I didn’t know. It was going straight and fast and scary and you’re thinking about sharks anyway. Two seconds after that we look out and see another grey shape in a set, this one is much bigger, and ya, I just went in.”

[Bassy] “Another rationalization is the stand-up paddle guys who seem to think they’ll be safe because they are standing up.”

[Baldy] “How about the one in San Onofre, that bumped the guy and he fell on it and rode the shark. How about the other guy, in what, Kuai or Maui; the shark bit the back of his longboard and he actually slid onto the head of the tiger shark and was sitting on it, riding a bull or something.”

Just goes to show you that everyone has interest in hearing about sharks.

Adam Wright from solspot.com tells us about the upcoming week of surf. We have some more swell and a high pressure system that will bring in warmer weather. It should be more attractive than last week, which had some really good swell, but with the stormy conditions it was hit or miss, and water quality remained low all week. “ It shouldn’t be a full on eddy, but it should be kinda offshore, glassy in the morning, with the on-shores picking up later into the afternoon. Look to Aril 1^{st - rd} for the next big swell to arrive from the North Pacific.”

From an e-mail: “Slater now has to compete at 90%of the tour competitions, otherwise he is doing a disservice to the rest of his competitors by pulling a ‘just won ten so I’m going to cruise’ season. The reason is, if he doesn’t win the title, most likey due to him not competing in enough events, then whoever wins will have an asterisk championship, a la Hobgood, because Slater wasn’t on the complete tour.” Of course, the answer to this question remains to be seen, but it is likely that Kelly will participate in the entire tour, possibly using it as his farewell tour.

Within the same vein, the new ASP format is lending itself to the fans, since we are now seeing most of the top names compete at smaller events in order to ensure their position come the mid-season cutoff. Last year it seemed like after the first event the guys simply disappeared, but this year, they are all out competing for points and keeping the fans happy.