Tabla de contenidos para April 2017 en Surfer

Just down the hall from my office, in the room where we meet to brainstorm features and drink beer after finishing particularly taxing issues, sits the entire SURFER Magazine archive. It amounts to 57 years worth of surf history, starting with the 36-page pamphlet that SURFER founder John Severson made to promote his 1960 film, Surf Fever, and ending with whatever the last issue was that we remembered to put on the shelf (seriously, don’t we have an intern for that?). I often find myself in that room, flipping through the discolored, dog-eared volumes of yesteryear, usually searching for a specific article that may lend context to a current project. But, inevitably, I find myself going down rabbit holes of Severson-painted covers, intricately-drawn Rick Griffin cartoons, oddball articles that were…

Talking with Neal Purchase Junior, it’s clear the renowned Queensland shaper is a firm believer in the design-world adage that form should follow function. “I don’t like to see crazy or wacky shit with no thought behind it, just for the sake of being weird,” Purchase says. “I like to see function.” Purchase’s Duo model—a voluminous egg with two raked single-fins that curve backward from parallel fin boxes—may look like “wacky shit” at a glance, but the design is no gimmick, and Purchase has made believers of surfers like Jared Mell, Harrison Roach, Chippa Wilson, and many others. The parallel-finned design is a product of Purchase’s unique perspective on shaping and surfing. As a second-generation shaper, he knows his way around a planer, and as a surfer who’s featured in…

D ave Pearson didn’t notice the shark rushing toward him until it was too late. He was paddling through the lineup at Crowdy Head, on Australia’s New South Wales coast, on March 23, 2011. The swell was pumping, and only Pearson and a few friends were out, trading overhead point waves. Just as Pearson was about to take a stroke with his right arm, a 10-foot bull shark charged at him from below, jaws agape. The shark missed Pearson’s arm, sinking its teeth into his board instead. As the shark tried to shake free, it struck Pearson in the head with its nose, fracturing several of his vertebrae. After releasing the board, the shark then latched onto Pearson’s left arm, filleting muscle and tendon from the bone. Seconds later, the…

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — During the last run of west swell to hit Santa Barbara, threetime world champion and surf-world spirit animal Tom Curren was spotted at Sandspit, flying through the tube on an unusual surfcraft “I was sitting on the shoulder when I saw him pop up on this tiny piece of plastic and get the deepest tube I’d ever seen,” said local Geoff Marshall. “I knew that red rectangle instantly; I’ve eaten about a hundred Big Macs off of those.” A handful of local and visiting videographers captured the ride, and the resulting video clips went viral within minutes on social media. Once word got out that the craft was a lunch tray from a McDonald’s franchise, surfers all around the world descended upon the chain restaurants in…

On wind-torn days from San Diego to Crescent City, California surfers have always had an unsung ally in kelp forests during wind-torn days. Those large accumulations of kelp you see floating outside the lineup have the ability to groom and comb waves as they make their way toward shore, which is why those of us obsessed with riding clean, glassy lines tend to flock to kelp-protected breaks on blustery days. But surfers aren’t the only creatures reliant on these forests. Kelp supplies food for herbivorous sea creatures, prevents coastal erosion, and provides protection for fish and other marine life against larger predators. Kelp even produces alginate, a carbohydrate used to thicken toothpaste and, more importantly, that glorious tubful of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream you probably have sitting in your…

When I called John Florence at his home on the North Shore of Oahu, he’d just stepped off his sailboat. He’d been decompressing from a year in the spotlight, which saw him hoisting trophies for his Eddie Invitational, Rio Pro, Portugal Pro, Haleiwa Pro, Triple Crown, and World Championship wins. But Florence’s definition of “decompressing” may be a little different from most. He’d been on a white-knuckle journey between Hawaiian Islands, getting rocked by strong winds and rough seas en route to Maui. “It was really fun to figure out,” said Florence, without a hint of sarcasm. It’s this same attitude that earned Florence all that silverware last year. He approached the 2016 season like an eager student, and even though most surf fans already viewed him as the best…

We surfers are a fickle bunch. We’ll latch onto a certain break every few years, convinced that it represents everything we love about waves, right until the next fantasy-fueling discovery comes along. To think that there was a time when we believed Waikiki was as good as surf got—that’s right, the same stretch of mostly crumbly reefbreaks where thousands of tourists now search for their sea legs every year. But as our boards evolved from crude redwood planks to finely tuned composite craft, and our idea of high performance shifted from standing statuesquely on the shoulder to launching over lips and tucking into deep caverns, our criteria for great surf followed suit. For the last six decades our concept of perfection has changed from gently tapering California pointbreaks to bone-rattling…

On December 8, 2015, Owen and Tyler Wright ate a late breakfast at Café Haleiwa. The door of the old Hawaiian diner squeaked on its hinges as Tyler walked in like she was stepping onto the set of a situation comedy. Her face was comically loaded and her eyes darted as if the single funniest thing in the history of mankind was going down somewhere in the room. Owen followed, filling the doorway like a spaghetti Western character, long and tall with a bushman’s hat and a pair of dusty Crocs. He sat down and explained he’d bought the Crocs in honor of their late Uncle Mark, who was famous for wearing them into the exclusive country club back home in Australia where he held a $90,000 membership. Owen had…

Earlier this year (he won’t say when), Mick Fanning was having dinner with friends (he won’t say who), when an old pal leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Psst. Check this out.” It was a photo of an empty right-hand, ruler-straight, sand-bottom drainer—an absolute dream wave for any natural footer. His friend offered few details. They called it “The Snake.” “As soon as I saw the photo, I just lost it,” says Fanning. “I started begging, ‘How? Where? What can I do?’ My friend was like, ‘Nah, you’re not doing anything. I’ll book you a ticket. Just show up at the airport.’” Fanning’s mind raced at the possibility of getting such a perfect wave to himself. With a typically grueling schedule as a World Tour competitor, it had been…

For centuries, New England’s grittiest fisherman caught glimpses of this death trap slab folding on cold North Atlantic rock, and they wisely steered clear of it. Even when advancements in wetsuits made surfing through frigid Northeast winters feasible, this rocky corner was still avoided by all but the most unhinged tube hunters. New York’s Balaram Stack, however, is no stranger to shallow slabs and icy waters, which put this particular Atlantic grinder right in his wheelhouse. For Stack and his ilk, numb extremities and dry-reef bruises are a small price to pay for cylinders like this.…