Innehållsförteckning för #373 - Summer 2024 från Surfing Life

Nhundu wanhtharra, fellow frother—welcome to another Aussie summer! No longer slinking in spring’s shadows, summertime vibes intensify as the darkest hours become the shortest and daylight stretches to its longest form. Bare feet dash across sadistic sand, tanned torsos slash through sweaty air and launch into the denim drink, adding more brine to those salt-matted manes. From December to February, a seething heat beckons all to the sea. To the sea! The Southern Hemisphere’s summer holiday celebrates Christmas and New Year’s with many businesses shutting up shop for their slice of sandy paradise, envious of teachers and students who enjoy six to eight weeks of prime beach time. Summer’s aura is intense and bright. Her sunny disposition is glaringly evident as she gazes at us reflectively. The blistering days conjure…

“Deserts … I had always wanted to go there. It was definitely high on my bucket list.” Pro-surfer Nathan Cook states a common dream of many wave-hunters. When planning a bragfest surf trip, laced with Endless Summer undertones, there are nostalgic-themed specifics one wants to achieve, places to visit and breaks worthy of epic tales. The initial plan is to surf around Lombok, then cruise to Sumbawa to check a few more breaks. Three days in, and swell is coming. The kind of swell that makes Desert Point more lucrative than other breaks we were eye-balling. And, as all good frothmongers know, positioning is everything, so Desert Point rapidly becomes our single focus. Planning any trip, we enlist expert help. Fringe Holidays are renowned for their adaptiveness. It’s important to…

Wave pools are surfers’ aquatic skateparks. It’s how serious contenders muscle their way to land tricks, push boundaries, and feel less dejected when the ocean becomes a large, lifeless puddle. There are stacks of year-round benefits, but are all wave pools created equal? What’s the reality of securing perpetual waves and maintaining structural longevity, or are we looking through rose-coloured sunglasses, distracted by the next gen of surf aerialists at their liquid gym? We’re in an era where wave pools have financial backing and are popping up topside like mushrooms after a storm. So, what makes Rotterdam’s wave pool different from the others? At first glance, the wave quality might not match Dubai’s Surf Abu Dhabi, but neither does the price tag of AU$1,460 for a 90-minute session versus a…

Surfing Life: After serving as the ASP Events Council Chairman leading up to the sale to the WSL, do you think the direction of the World Tour will hold its current form? Rod: The old ASP was really on its last legs when it was sold in 2013 to the WSL. All the events on Tour were financed along with the TV broadcast by three major surf companies, Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl and one or two others from time to time. By 2013, that surf industry was running into trouble financially, and ASP WCT events were costing about three million dollars each to run. The WSL offered a new plan that would allow for a better broadcast for fans and more prize money for the surfers. Since that sale,…

As Bruce Brown famously said in his 1994 classic The Endless Summer II, “Surfers are riding waves in virtually every country in the world that has a coastline.” Now, 30 years on, not only are we definitely riding waves on every coastline, but we’ve upped our game from exclusively coastal locations to riding artificial waves we’ve made ourselves in landlocked locales throughout Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Some of the waves we ride break on angry rocks and jagged reefs. Some break on manufactured deposits of sand and lazy beds of seaweed. Some break on literal concrete. One thing they all have in common. It’s not fun when you slam into them. At Surfing Life, we’re all about helping you surf better and stay off the bottom. Jump on…

The harbour in Newcastle breaks only on big swells, so it’s a rare wave to score. The water is gross from all the run-off (it’s not uncommon to get a sore throat), and no-one really knows what’s on the bottom. The wave itself, though, is great. This day, the vibes amongst the crowd were full of stoke. Shooting fish-eye nicely places the wave with how close it is to the breakwall. This was Josh’s first wave that day, and he had to scratch hard to get into it as it snuck under the pack. The wedge off the harbour wall linked up to turn it into a whole different beast. Surfer: Josh LeveyAperture value: f/8Exposure time: 1/1000Focal length: 15 mm FisheyeISO speed: 160…

Have you ever watched an old surf film and found yourself drifting off, wondering what it would have been like to live back then? Enveloped in mellow guitar riffs and choir-like harmonies, movies like The Endless Summer and Morning of the Earth speak of an idyllic wonderland of uncomplicated, unembellished living, chasing waves in spiritual harmony with nature and the sea. Imagine stumbling across a time machine, à la Marty McFly from Back to the Future. After tinkering to get the flux capacitor working, you tear through the space-time continuum to a bygone era of surfing utopia and land at Bells Beach in 1955. Standing atop the cliffs, staring at corduroy lines stretching as far as you can see, a gentle offshore breeze sculpting each one into a clean, glassy…

“IT WAS EYEBALLED AND SET IN THE GREY MATTER!” Truly, the engine room for the modern surfboards, the bottom curve or rocker as it is commonly called, is the most difficult to measure and quantify in numbers. Back in the old days, the shapers had no idea what they were shaping into the bottom of the blank since they varied so much for many reasons. That is, the way the blanks were stacked in the factory or rushed stringer glue ups, which never really delivered a consistent rocker you could count on engineering from there on. Cometh machine technology, it then did not matter what the canvas was as long as there was a blank thick enough to be machined, and of course, the numbers were in the design to…