Innehållsförteckning för #349 Surfers från Surfing Life

As I sit here and write this, nearly all of Australia’s populated east coast is ablaze. Nearly a million hectares, they’re saying. Already more than what went up in the Amazon fires of 2019, and it’s not even summer yet. My dad left a couple of days ago, abandoning his post caring for his 97-year-old mother to drive ten hours and defend his home on NSW North Coast. He is one of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, all along Australia’s wave-rich east coast in this position. From South East Queensland to the South Coast of NSW, across to Perth, and down near Port Lincoln in South Australia, fires are raging out of control across Australia. On a day in which for the first time in recorded history, not a drop…

If you were the technical type and were good at maths, all that stuff that clever people do, you’d be well within your rights to support the case that five surfers remain in contention for the 2019 WSL Men’s World Title. However, if you were the betting type, you’d probably narrow it down to just two. Current world number one, Italo Ferreira has his destiny precariously resting in his own two hands. If he wins the event, he wins the world title. But we all know that Gabe Medina is a competitive beast, with a record at Pipe that many can only dream of. So if you’re digging into your pockets and researching the odds, these are the two men you need to focus on. But for the clever ones…

At 12 years old, I came home from a day of autograph hunting with friends Mitch Parkinson and Jack Freestone, from the 2004 Quiksilver Pro at Snapper Rocks and announced over dinner, my mates wanted to be pro-surfers, but I thought I’d prefer to shape their boards. My Dad was stoked and pulled out an old suitcase and inside was family surfing-history photos and memorabilia dating back as far as 1930. The next morning when I told him I was definitely going to be a shaper, he simply replied; Okay, let’s go buy some blanks! After studying photos of my great grandfather, Frank Adler, my grandfather, Ken Gudenswager and my Dad Chris I realised, being the 4th generation Australian surfer should prompt a great brand. Gen4 Surfboards was a natural…

I was on the back of a scooter, leaving one of my mate’s gigs. Going home early because I knew the surf was going to be massive in the morning. I wanted to get up super early and ride back to Uluwatu and beat all the traffic. So, I jumped on the back of the scooter and on the way home there was a cement truck overtaking a car on our side of the road. We swerved out of the way, the cement truck clipped the back of the bike, the back axle rolled over us. It was messed up. I flew back to Australia after 11 days of being in an Indonesian hospital; I had to charter my own plane to get medi-vacced out of there. Up until then…

As the shutters came down on Luke Munro’s world tour career, the reality of what lay ahead of him immediately set in. He’d performed well at the season ending Pipe Masters, claiming an upset victory over Hawaiian tube specialist Shane Dorian in the opening round at hollow Backdoor only to be eliminated the following heat in crumbly, onshore muck by Australian Kieren Perrow. As he stood in the outdoor shower next to his wife, he broke down. “I just remember crying in the shower going: ‘That’s it, it’s done.’ It was fun while it lasted but now I’ve gotta make this brutal adjustment I’ve been dreading as long as I’ve been on tour”, he says. From the moment he qualified, Luke says that the writing was on the wall. For…

SO YOU CAN GET IN SHAPE AND STAY IN SHAPE EVEN WHEN YOU’RE MILES FROM THE OCEAN OR WHEN THE SURF IS FLAT! INDO BOARD, THE PERFECT WAY TO EXERCISE THE BODY’S BALANCE CONTROL SYSTEMS. TO GO IN THE DRAW, ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS BE A SUBSCRIBER. IF YOU’RE NOT ONE, SUBSCRIBE NOW AND GET THE MAG DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR. EVERY ISSUE. IT’S A NO BRAINER. $49 1 YEAR 5 ISSUES WHY SUBSCRIBE? • You never miss an issue• Your copy gets delivered to your door before it’s on the store shelves• You are automatically entered into every prize draw• It’s easier and cheaper• It makes a perfect gift• Each issue contains essential content created to inform and enhance your surfing life TO SUBSCRIBE: www.surfinglife.com.au/subscribe DIGITAL EDITIONS…

FIGHT THE POWER—TRACING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF “SURFBOARD DIPLOMACY”. The late ‘60s into the ‘70s was more than the shortboard revolution and hippies on acid. Surfing was politically active, towards the progressive and away from the status quo—away from the so-called military industrial complex. Wayne Lynch stood for a generation who wanted no part of the Vietnam War. Ian Cohen—in the most famous surfer–activist image of all time—hitching a ride on the USS Oldendorf as it steamed up Sydney Harbour in 1986 to protest nuclear capable warships. A classic example of what he later called “surfboard diplomacy”. Cohen was subsequently elected to NSW parliament as a senator and spent 16 years as a Greens politician, whilst remaining a hard-core surfer. Cohen remained a committed combination of surfer–politician who…

Love the idea or loath it, surfing will be in the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. 20 men and 20 women draped in their national flags will march with pride representing their nations, as the opening ceremony gets under way in less than seven months from now. The event will take place in the ocean and not in a wave pool as many had initially assumed. The location, Chiba, just a few hours outside of Tokyo, will be set up for an eight-day waiting period with the hope that the northern hemisphere typhoon season sends a spinning swell-producing storm their way. So how did we get here? The International Surfing Association (ISA) is the only surfing body recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Its President, Fernando Aguerre (co-founder of…

Jodie Cooper is lying face down on the ground with her hands tied behind her back and her mouth taped shut, as several masked gunmen stand around her screaming instructions. “Get down, I’m gonna put a bullet in your head! We want all the money and drugs”, she recalls. “It was intense.” Jodie had been eating ice cream in the kitchen of her Oahu rental when they burst through the door. “(It was) like that scene out of Point Break”, she says, referencing the Hollywood blockbuster she’d later serve as the surfing stunt double for. But this was no movie. They rifle-butted the owner of the home in the head, splitting him open and dropping him to the floor. Jodie ducked behind the kitchen counter and eyed an escape route.…

Tahlija: We’d surfed that swell in the Mentawais in 2017, at Kanduis, and we’d come back pumped. We heard there were good banks at Iluka so we went there to camp. We paddled out the first morning, it was a solid six foot with bigger ones, really heavy, no one out, overcast, and real stormy. You would never really surf it like that but there were a couple of sick barrels. We surfed for a few hours, got a couple, then Mick took off on the first wave of a set. He got flipped in the barrel and the board whacked him on each side of his temple and jaw, knocking him out instantly. You surf any wall and you get spat out the back pretty quickly with the rip,…

When competition increases, consumers benefit. That’s the general train of thought anyway. Quality and choice inevitably go up, and we even see prices sometimes come down. So it’s with a unified shout of approval that surfers all across the world come together to say thank you to those involved in the wave pool war! And my, hasn’t it heated up over the last few months. Slater’s pool tweaked a little for the Surf Ranch Pro (plus the news of a possible Kelly Slater Wave Co pool on the Sunshine Coast), the Yeppoon plunger re-revealed for Surf Lakes, Waco has re-opened with cleaner water for American Wave Machines, and now URBNSURF reveal its updated Wavegarden technology that has us all salivating about a surf trip to Melbourne! We have been teased…

If I were to say to you: Gold Coast pro surfer/model with 100,000 plus Instagram followers, what image springs to mind? I’m prepared to bet it’s nothing like the reality of Pacha Light, passionate environmental activist, born in an Ecuadorian rainforest, who grew up in a shack in Iluka and busked for her first surfboard. Pacha had an unconventional upbringing from day one. “I was born in the offices of this rainforest action centre in Ecuador. There were 100 volunteers from around the world and I grew up in this family of people all caring about the earth”, says Pacha. It’s been an unlikely path from there to one of Australia’s top juniors, embarking on the World Qualifying Series and aspiring to a coveted place on the elite World Surf…

Ash Grunwald has been in and around the surf scene for decades. Not as a comp or freesurfing shredder, but as a lover and participant of the craft we all know and love. Although he’s not a “pro” surfer, as a professional musician—playing predominantly roots and blues—he’s been able to shape his career around his love of surfing. Ash has made friends with many well-known surfers along the way, and has the privilege of calling a bunch of them mates. I jumped in the car and headed down to hang with Ash for the day. Not to interview him, but to hang, go surfing, grab some lunch, and understand who he is in the flesh. Almost everything I needed to know was in his new book—Surf by Day, Jam by…

So my dad’s house survived, for the moment. The potentially deadly wind change arrived, but it wasn’t strong enough to send the fire front down on him. Well over a million hectares were burned. Who knows how much wildlife was killed? Around 150 houses were destroyed with four confirmed dead. The fires are still burning out of control with more hot and dry conditions forecasted, and possibly another hot summer on record is setting in. These are troubling times and if I’ve taken anything away from this issue it’s that humans, in particular surfers, have what it takes to turn it all around. The dedication, clarity, and vision of Pacha Light is a model we should all adopt. The strength, courage and virtuosity of Jodie Cooper is a reminder of…