Sommaire pour September 2017 de Surfer

The midweek crowd at Ala Moana Bowls on the south shore of Oahu was light despite the dreamy shoulder-high left-handers consistently peeling along the reef. But even with plenty of waves to go around, the small local crew fell into an exclusive rotation, taking turns picking off the best set waves while outsiders were mostly left with scraps. I couldn’t have cared less about being relegated to second-tier waves; after all, as a visiting San Diegan, what was my alternative? The locals likely surfed that break every day, had intimate knowledge of every piece of coral on the reef and therefore had earned the right to the best sets, so sayeth surfing’s unwritten code of wave worthiness. But not everyone in the lineup shared my perspective. A slightly overweight, sunscreen-caked,…

For the highly anticipated third season of “Planet Earth,” set for release this fall on BBC, Sir David Attenborough and his film crew went to Southern California for a look at some truly unique creatures. “Lower Trestles was an obvious choice for us when we were scouting locations for the new season,” Attenborough told SURFER. “The extremely diverse resource- acquiring strategies employed by local surfers suggest that human evolution has taken a much different course in the lineup than it has on land. Technically speaking, if we follow ‘The Zoologist’s Guide to Flora and Fauna,’ not all the surfers in this lineup can actually be considered human. So we proceeded to classify the species that we found. That was a ‘Planet Earth’ first.” To promote the new season of the…

For the most part, big-wave guns have looked much the same for the last few decades. Sure, shapers have made incremental changes to volume, fin placement, rocker, bottom contours, etc., but the general shape of a big-wave surfboard looks about the same today as it did 30 years ago. Until now, that is. Southern California shaper Chris Christenson, who makes boards for Greg Long, Ian Walsh and many more of the world’s best big-wave riders, recently unveiled a unique craft. With a bulbous nose that’s over 9 inches thick (yes, you read that right), shaped from EPS and glassed with carbon fiber, it looks unlike any big-wave board you’ve ever seen. “This surfboard came about because of an aerospace engineer from Pennsylvania named Roger Birkbeck,” says Christenson. “And the funny…

An old air conditioner rattled on the wall of the sterile, beige room as the visa agent dropped a thick mound of paperwork in front of me with a thud. The small Durban, South Africa, office was sweltering, yet the agent wore a thick suit with a pinstriped shirt, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead as he guided me through the forms. He paused when he saw me check “tourism” as my reason for traveling to Nigeria. “Tourist visa?” the agent said, arching his eyebrows. “We’ve never done one of these for Nigeria.” I knew they had, however, since this was my second trip to Nigeria in six years. I’d visited in 2011 to verify rumors of a world-class wedge that breaks on the outskirts of Lagos Harbor.…

The public perception of surfers has come a long way since their portrayal in 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but surfers still battle stereotypes, especially around school campuses. Just ask any surfer who’s come to class with eyes tinged red from sun and saltwater and gotten skeptical looks from their professor. Pterygiums? Yeah, they’re not buying it. So it makes sense that Cliff Kapono, a surfer and University of California San Diego (UCSD) graduate student studying biotechnology, bioengineering and chemistry, hid his affinity for the ocean from his teachers for the first half of his college career. “I didn’t want them thinking I was just chasing swells all the time,” Kapono says when asked about balancing surf and school at a campus just a stone’s throw from a playful…

According to esteemed historian, author and former SURFER editor Matt Warshaw, it’s an uphill battle getting surfers to click on links with terms like “history” and “encyclopedia” in the headline. “People hear those two words and in their mind it’s like, ‘Eat your vegetables,’” says Warshaw. “But I know how to make surf history dance and move. Our past is just as funny and tragic and ridiculous as the present, and you get a 3D quality when what you’re experiencing today connects to what surfers experienced in the past. There’s a resonance to that.” Although the Encyclopedia of Surfing (EOS) is technically a reference site, that doesn’t stop it from being a vibrant living document, constantly changing to accommodate the present and spotlighting some of the most obscure corners of…

List of Works 78 “San Simeon, CA,” 2014 79 “British Columbia,” 2016 80 “Derrick Disney, San Francisco, CA,” 2017 81 “January Storm,” 2017 82 “Samoa Beach, Humboldt, CA,” 2016 83 “Maui,” 2014 84 “Topanga Canyon, CA” 2015 Few young artists avoid the anxiety of influence. Southern California photographer Kenny Hurtado—who picked up a camera while taking photography classes at a junior college in Orange County—was no exception. At 18, Hurtado found himself taken under the wing of some of surfing’s most influential lensmen, landing an internship at Surfing magazine in the final year of the late, great Larry “Flame” Moore’s 30- year tenure, and as Steve Sherman picked up Flame’s torch. “I met Pat Stacy, who was on staff with Surfing, when I was at OCC [Orange Coast College],” Hurtado…

On a warm June day, under Indonesia’s harsh midday sun, a row of soft turquoise peaks is stacking up and bending into a wide cove tucked neatly behind a headland overrun by tropical greenery. A pack of 10 or so local surfers scraps for the frontrunners. Meanwhile, sitting wide of the peak, 21-year-old Deni Firdaus — a fit, 5'8" Indonesian with jet-black hair that’s trimmed short on the sides, with a longer, tousled shock on top — calmly strokes toward the last wave of the set, aiming the nose of his board toward the whitewash of the cresting peak before climbing to his feet and stylishly swinging his dark-red, 9'4" log into the pocket of a racy section. Now locked in trim, Firdaus nimbly cross-steps to the front of his…

No one knows exactly how or when the Canary Islands were first settled, but the indigenous Guanches people existed on them, 60 miles off the southern coast of Morocco, for centuries before the Spanish conquest in the 1400s. The volcanic isles of Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro, Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara and others balance seemingly opposite traits, with some areas overgrown and tropical while others resemble barren deserts. Some assert that this paradoxical land was the inspiration for the Greek poet Homer’s Elysium, where the righteous went to enjoy eternity. In terms of surf, the Canaries were pioneered by vacationing Englishmen in the late 1960s. The first Canarian locals picked up whatever equipment the travelers left behind, exploring spots like Las Américas…

While many Indonesian lineups are swarming with visiting surfers, this wave in Sumba, commonly referred to as Nihiwatu or Occy’s Left, has remained relatively uncrowded throughout the years. Thanks to the exclusive resort that fronts the break (which is privately owned by the ex-husband of American fashion mogul Tory Burch), only 10 surfers are allowed to paddle out at any given time. But if that sounds like your dream surf destination, keep this in mind: Accommodation rates range from $750 to $14,000 a night, and Nihiwatu is one of the most fickle waves in the world, extremely sensitive to high and low tides. Sometimes, even with solid swell in the water, the wave might be good for only half an hour a day, making this wave a tough sell to…