Tabla de contenidos para August 2015 en Surfer

For true surf addicts, the ultimate goal is getting as many great waves to yourself as possible, and to do that, it pays to keep their locations close to your chest. “This was one of the best sessions I’ve ever had,” says John Florence, pictured here. “But I’m not gonna say where it is, or even drop any hints. Even if you knew where this wave was, it wouldn’t do you much good because it’s so fickle. But on this day, on this particular swell, my best friends and I scored it absolutely alone. We were just trading huge barrels for six hours. We’re still talking about it. I think it just goes to show you that, even when you think you know of every conceivable spot in one area,…

December 2015 Gabriel Medina (19.80) defeats John Florence (19.75) in punishing 12-foot surf at the Pipe Masters final with the winner taking the world title. Eighty percent of comments on non-Brazilian surf websites declare that Medina still needs to prove himself in waves of consequence. FEBRUARY 2017 Kelly Slater launches a weeklong media campaign called “Resolution” consisting of nothing but an image of a digital clock counting down the minutes until his big reveal on February 8. The surf world assumes he’s finally announcing his retirement. Instead, Slater’s “Resolution” declares that he’s returning to narrow, low-volume thrusters. He wins the first WSL event of the year riding a 17"-wide, 1 ½"-thick rockered-out Channel Islands model called “The Elf Shoe.” It becomes the best-selling surfboard in history. MARCH 2018 The first…

Mark Occhilupo tells me his life story is under option in Hollywood. He starts running through A-listers who could play him. With the jut of the jaw, the koala blink, and the tick between the teeth followed by the “Yeaaaah” or the “Naaaahh” or the “Yeah-nah,” he explains why none of them would be any good. DiCaprio? “Nah, too serious.” Pitt? “Yeah-nah, too American.” Depp? “Maaaaaaybe…but can he surf ?” The obvious candidate for the role, of course, is sitting in front of me. When Occ tells me he wants to play himself in the movie of his own life, I laugh, but he doesn’t. He’s dead serious. Occ’s already played himself in a Hollywood movie and was pro surfing’s original child actor, globally adored at 16 and burnt to…

Way back in the dark recesses of time—three years ago, if we’re going to suspend my hyperbolic ways—I compared the work we do here at SURFER to the Greek myth about Sisyphus, who was condemned to push a boulder up a hill only to watch, dejectedly, as it rolled down the other side before he started the whole process over again. It’s exactly what magazine-making often feels like. Just how heavy these monthly rocks are varies, but this particular one has mass physically, philosophically, and, for me, emotionally. As I said three years ago, the Big Issue remains the heaviest rock that the SURFER editorial staff pushes all year. It will also be the last I help over the summit. Although it’s tempting to use this space to reminisce about…

It all started with one of Tom Curren’s boards. I was picking up some boards for a surf trip and saw it at my friend’s shop: a 1980s 6'5" Al Merrick hand-shaped for Curren. I rode that board on my trip, and it was such an amazing feeling. As you get older and start reflecting on your formative surfing years, you think about the boards that defined that time. Riding that board inspired me to start collecting these pieces of surfing’s past. I have hundreds of boards now, spanning from early-1900s Waikiki redwood boards all the way up to modern shortboards, but I’m most passionate about the era from the late ’60s through the ’80s. There was a lot happening in surfboard design during that time. We evolved from riding…

FILMMAKERS Eric Knutson Featuring John Florence Chris Bryan Featuring Craig Anderson and Jack Robinson Bryce Lowe-White Featuring Nic Vaughan Riley Blakeway Featuring Chippa Wilson, Dion Agius, and Nate Tyler Jason Baffa Featuring Tyler Hatzikian Noah Alani Featuring Kolohe Andino Jacob Wooden Featuring Josh Kerr David Malcolm Featuring Dylan Graves Jensen Young Sik Featuring Chad Jackson and Cliff Kapono Ryan Perry Featuring Conner and Parker Coffin Matt Shuster Featuring Mike Morrissey Aaron Lieber Featuring Noah Beschen I don’t remember much about my early teenage years, but I do remember Montaj. That worn-out VHS tape, packed with sequences of Taj Burrow pulling into mutant barrels and flying high above the lip, stayed in my family’s VCR for most of my adolescence. I had every section memorized, every song played in my head…

“If we don’t do something, we’re going to lose this coast. But one person can’t save the day. It’s got to be everyone together.” Ramón Navarro Surfer, farmer and fisherman Help protect Punta de Lobos patagonia.com/surf We believe in standing up for the spots we love. That’s why we’re supporting Save The Waves and local activists in their work at Punta de Lobos. From now until the dedication of Lobos as a World Surfing Reserve this fall, Patagonia will match up to $100,000 of your donations, dollar for dollar, to help protect the future of this iconic point. Funds go directly to the development of the World Surfing Reserve, protection of the area’s marine and terrestrial biodiversity, safeguarding of its traditional fishing culture, and creation of a local foundation to…

I sat in clear view of the point and next to the very lagoon in question as a local told me about the boy from the next village down the coast and a deal he’d struck with an old drunken American who’d washed up here. Surfing was all but brand new to the area, and no equipment existed that wasn’t spoken for. So, their deal was a simple one: The boy could use the American’s surfboard anytime he liked, provided that he return it to the American’s palapa in decent shape directly after its use. The boy held a similar deal with his parents concerning the family horse. And this is where the two things came into conflict. More and more the boy rode the horse up from his village,…

There is an adage repeated among adults who have both devoted their lives to, and have been swept away by, surfing “It’s like the mob,” they say, conspiratorially. “If you work at it, you can get in…but you can never get out.” This hokey yet suspiciously accurate riff is complicated by an equally long-lived bumper sticker that reads, “God created surfing to keep the truly gifted from ruling the world.” We love our tropes. These two, taken together, might move one to assume that surfers are both highly intelligent and trapped in their own foamy, glistening, repetitive little worlds. Good people made dumb by too much of a good thing. It’s a stereotype the surf crowd has wrestled with, but never beaten. We suspect this is the case, partly, because…