Feature Articles:
July 2007 Issue
BlueEdge 2007 Photographer's Issue
It's like riding a great wave. It's fleeting, yet memorable.
However, once it's over you want another and another. It's the same way for photographers.
An epic shot is never enough. It might be up on the wall or grace the pages of a surfing publication for all eyes to see, but the proverbial "what have you done for me lately" looms large for each photographer wanting to make a name for him or herself.
It's why surfers surf and lens men push the shutter.
The Blue Edge 2007 Photo Annual is a collection of images taken from the past year and that's all. It's a tight edit of photos from right out the back door and around the globe.
Flip through the pages and absorb the action, because before you know it, 2008 will be upon us.
Chuck Graham, Editor, BE
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Posted July 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
June 2007 Issue
Pavones
6 DEGREES North
I guess my daughter Sarah’s right (she usually is). She's been insisting for awhile now that I get some kind of living trust or Will or something, especially if I’m gonna be traveling as much as I have been. It sunk in last week, half way into a four hour bus ride from San Jose, Costa Rica, to a small town south named San Isidro General. Usually my wife Debi and I rent a car to cruise around Costa Rica, but this time our friends that live in San Isidro offered to drive, so we decided to bus it to their place.
Traveling for surf is an inherently dangerous business, and using public transport i.e, buses and ferries, usually increases that risk substantially. The bus driver was passing eight cars at once, going down very steep mountain roads, with cliffs on each side. No one really seemed to notice, especially the 62 year old Tico man who'd been talking my ear off since he figured out I understand Spanish. By the time we got to San Isidro, I knew his life story, and he knew mine.
Whenever I’m in Costa Rica, heading south, I stop to visit The McConnells on the way down. Carol and her two children, Casey and Terri, are ex Santa Barbara residents. Carol’s husband Robbie was a really good friend, who left us all way to early in a tragic accident at S.B. harbor. Carol and the kids started a new life down in Costa Rica shortly after, and for the last 15 years they’ve called Costa Rica home.
The house they live in is a dream. Surrounded by 100% Costa Rican jungle, it sits on the banks of a good size river. The soothing sounds quickly help wash away the stress and tension from two days of traveling. It's easy to gather your thoughts and prioritize tasks at hand, but usually after a day or so of just vegging out and drinking tons of good strong coffee, I get a little antsy and have to make a beeline for the beach.
Our trip was blessed from the get go. I booked the tickets using air miles nine months ago. Then, a week before we were to leave, I checked all the swell forecasts, and low and behold there was swell coming. How’s that? Not just some piddly, weak, swell but a real live deep-water six foot southern hemi groundswell. All three forecasters were in agreement, it was gonna be 6-8 ft the entire 10 days of our trip. Yippee!
As we drove down the canyon from Carol’s, towards the beach at Dominical, I strained my eyes to see the surf. We finally reached the coast and I could see the swell--solid and consistent. Dominical beachbreak was closed out and whomping as usual, so we headed the car south, and started our four hour drive to Pavones.
I’ve been out to "the end of the road" three times now. Pavones is an unreal wave, that very well may be the longest left in the world. I've ridden G-land, Ulu, Raglan, Asu, and Cloudbreak, and can truthfully say the lefts I’ve gotten at Povones are way longer than any of those spots. Three or four long waves in the midday sun, and you're done.
Going on some inside info, we decided not to take ferry across the Rio Clara. There hasn’t been much rain and rumor is that the ferry only goes at high tide, and only takes one car at a time. We didn't want to risk an hour wait in the equatorial heat, so we opted for the slightly longer drive to the Panamanian border, than west out to Punta Barrica.
When we got there, there was plenty of swell running. I tried to talk the girls into just dumpin' me off at the beach, so they could go find a place to stay and check in and stuff, but they weren't buyin it.
We cruised down the "Cabinas de Ponderosa" to see if there were any rooms. The place is owned by a really nice couple, Marshall and Angela who have been there since day one. I stayed a couple a times before and have always had a good time. The rooms have A.C., the food is great and available all day, and they have a big rec room with ping pong, DVD, TV, and music. There’s a fridge stocked with cold beer, water and sodas, and they operate on the honor system, where you mark down how much you consume. It’s a great place to stay for the younger crowd, who like to stay up a little later and have a couple of beers before hitting the sack. You can walk to the point from there, but you wouldn’t want to do it more than once or twice a day. It’s hot--you're only six degrees north of equator there, and at 60 nautical miles a degree, that’s a mere 360 miles.
Because it was Easter week, Marsh had nothing for us, so we headed down the road and up a hill to "Casa Siempre Domingo" (always Sunday). Owned by a couple with one child, Gregorio and Heidi keep a really clean ship at their bed and breakfast on the hill over looks Pavones. Heidi doesn’t cook lunch or dinner, but every morning you wake up to the smell of fresh brewed coffee, bacon and eggs of your choice, and a large plate of local fruits and juices. It’s a great way to start another very long day of three hour surf sessions mixed with intermittent lounging on the towel with wifey in the shade.
Latin Americans are really big on Easter-- it’s mass exodus from the cities to the beach Easter week--and they don’t pack light either. You can see them driving, couch from home tied to the roof. T.V. and generator in the trunk. They plop their bed down in the sand, set up a kitchen for mama and commence having a good time. The kids love it. Luckily not many of them surf…
After three days of six hour sessions in the water, the nubs on the bottom of my ribs were sore and red. The insides of my thighs were rubbed raw from the wax on my rails, and I couldn't hear a ring out of my right ear. The whole world sounded like an echo chamber, but ya know what? I’m not complaining. Anyway, there’s no sympathy for surf related injuries. Every married surfer knows that... Late in the day on Thursday, I dragged my self out for another session. No one was around, Just me and two guys off the top, with 10 foot faces grinding around the point. One set had 15 plus waves. Pavones is the kind of place where when you see a set coming your better off just putting your head down and paddling as hard as you can out and over. The next wave is always way out there and down the line.
I glanced around to check out who was around me. No one….just one chick from Florida with a pink surf hat 50 yards down the line. Just what the doctor ordered. Finally, just me and the waves. No pesky group of 20-something year old pro surfer wannabes trying to paddle up my back or contesting my position. And after one of the worst winters ever recorded back home, it felt really, really good. My next wave was probably the longest left I’ve ever ridden, close to a quarter mile of top pumping and backside driving at full speed. Hot offshores were blowing in my face and grooming the waves as well. The wave stretches in front like an unpainted canvas, waiting for me.
That night the surf was really loud. I could barely sleep. I was overly tired and sunburnt from head to toe. With each cracking lip came a little squirt of adrenalin. In the dawns early light, I could see the whole GolfoDulce stacked up with solid swell. I was too amped to eat. I guzzled down a bunch of water, left the girls at home and headed down. It was cranking. I tried to pace my self. I waited for a lull but half way out, a 17-wave set came. I took 'em all right on the head. By the time I got out I was already exhausted.
It was 7:30 am and 95 degrees in the sun. The water was like 84. I was fading fast and after three or four of the best waves I’d had in sometime, I was done. Maybe overdone. But I knew that it was 'back to business as usual' in the states, so I had to get back on the treadmill and paddle until my arms couldn't paddle anymore. I was physically ruined, but mentally at ease.
After 40 years of chasing surf around the world, I’m still amazed on how content I feel, and how right everything in the world is after five days of good surf.
After a couple a days back in Cali at work, I knocked off early and paddled out at Rincon for a surf. It was freezing cold, the water was so brown I couldn't see the Al Merrick logo on my deck, and the same little kid back paddled me two times for what amounted to muddy three foot mushy whitecaps. My Jacuzzi was calling.
With a tall Guinness in hand I gloated to myself about last week's incredible surf and also try to muster up the strength for the next eight weeks of work. Then, it’s off to Mainland Mex. The area between Pascuales and Ixtapa is holding. It’s like the Big Sur of Mexico, and after a really good trip there last year with Hog and Joel, I promised myself to go back with my wife to do some exploring. It’s called the Bandito Coast (for good reason) and probably not the best place to travel alone with your wife. Kinda dangerous.
Maybe I’ll just try to stay off the buses...
Late,
Scar
Posted June 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Haida Gwaii
Hours of Darkness
Trailing the Raven in Haida Gwaii
Words and Photos by Michael Kew
“Better put your jackets on,” the stewardess warned. “It’s a bit breezy out there.”
Tyler Smith, Raph Bruhwiler, Josh Mulcoy, Chris Burkard, and I stepped through the Dash 8’s door and were nearly blown off the airplane stairs. The wind was sharp, the air freezing. Black storm clouds loomed. Alaska lay within sight. Behind us were jagged, snow-covered mountains, and ahead lay shallow Hecate Strait, one of the world’s most feared waterfetches, just wicked today, smeared white by the southeasterly gale.
“At least it’s offshore somewhere!” someone yelled over the din.
Of course, this was expected. Daily, for months leading up to our departure, I’d monitored Haida Gwaii’s weather online, and the forecasts were repetitive, like the one posted the day of our arrival:
Storm warning continued. Wind warning in effect.
Tonight..Rain. Amount 20 mm. Wind southeast 50 to 70 km/h increasing to 70 to 100 overnight. Low plus 5.
Thursday..Rain. Amount 20 mm. Wind southeast 70 to 100 km/h becoming south 40 to 60 in the afternoon. High 8.
Thursday night..Rain. Amount 10 to 15 mm. Wind southeast 50 to 80 km/h. Low 8.
Friday..Rain. Wind southeast 50 to 70 km/h increasing to 70 to 100 then becoming south 30 late this afternoon. High 10.
On the bus into town, once he learned that Smith was a Maverick’s fiend, a white fisherman with a redneck
drawl promised us that there was a giant wave “just like Maverick’s” that broke out in front of a fishing lodge his friend worked for, out on the west coast. “It breaks best when the winds are about 70 knots onshore,” the man said. “Just comes up out of nowhere and boom, this huge roller, taller’n a cedar totem pole.”
“Which way does it break?” Smith asked, eyebrows raised. “Left or right?”
“Oh, just straight in, right toward shore.”
We were mocked by passersby outside our hotel; one woman thought we’d brought oversized snowboards. Three burly loggers in the café next door thought we were hippie tree-planters from Vancouver. Tree-planters are not particularly liked on Haida Gwaii, despite the island’s forests being logged at twice the rate that is considered sustainable.
“In the past 50 years,” says the Haida Nation homepage, “industrial logging has transformed the landscape of Haida Gwaii from diverse old forest to young, even-aged stands of one or two species. The major river systems that once provided Haida villages with salmon; large cedars for longhouses and monumental art; and, plants for food, medicines, fiber and animal habitat have been eradicated by logging without consideration for these values.”
Still, we would not be digging holes for cedar saplings.
“You guys are here to go surfing?” the loggers asked, amused at our quest. “Good luck!”
Down at the quaint harbor, another local—a Haida—said we were out of our minds, that if we wanted to go surfing, we needed to go somewhere like California or Hawai’i. He suggested that we start drinking instead, joining him at a nearby cocktail lounge, where there would be “guaranteed fights.”
Reputedly the Haida were fierce, physically large, historically feared by all other Indians in the northwest. Every Haida we met was extremely friendly, but, back in the day, the kin of these folks would routinely sail across the Hecate Strait in cedar canoes to terrorize mainland tribes, acquire slaves and provisions, and return to Haida Gwaii with the proud gaze of dominance.
“The Haida, and only the Haida, were immune from attack,” Christie Harris wrote in Raven’s Cry. “In consequence, the pride of the Haida shaded even that of their mighty neighbors [the Tsimshian and Tlingit]. They were lords of the coast, the aristocrats of their world.”
While the offer of drinking and fighting proved nearly irresistible, we declined and repaired to a Chinese restaurant where we checked the online forecast and brainstormed between forkloads of MSG. West coast buoys reported a nine-meter swell. Otherwise, things looked grim.
“It might be stormy like this the whole time,” Mulcoy said.
“Could get worse,” Bruhwiler said.
“The west coast is going mental right now,” Smith said.
“Only if it’s blowing 70 knots onshore,” I said.
Along Haida Gwaii’s desolate and savage west side, the highest-energy coastline in North America, it’s not a matter of getting swell—aside from finding a surfable spot, it’s a matter of getting to that swell. There are no roads, no harbors, no hiking trails, nothing but deep, black fjords, vertical cliffs, impassable alpine ridges of rock and snow, and ancient forests averaging 20 feet of rain annually, pelted by furious winds and enormous seas. The island’s refined, pointbreak-rich east coast is one big tease, receiving basically no swell, ever.
“I’ll say that the east, or leeward, side…is the biggest waste of prime surf geography I have ever seen,” Ben Marcus wrote when he visited the island in the late 1990s. And so, perhaps in desperation late one woolly afternoon, Smith braved 50-knot onshores and horizontal rain to surf rocky waist-high wind slop in 42-degree water at a spot that could be world-class. Considering the huge swell hitting the west coast at that very moment, if Smith could’ve flipped the island, turning east coast to west, he would have been surfing a gargantuan Malibu. Alas, in geographical terms, it is not meant to be.
The west coast’s only car-accessible zone required a careful three-hour (each way) negotiation of a snowbound, signless logging road with many forks in it; eventually we reached the inlet, though sheltered it was. There we found a couple of pebbly beachbreaks, a flawless right point, and an enticing left rivermouth, but despite epic scenery and exposure to open ocean, these “spots” were flat while the truly exposed coast outside was bombing left and right. Smith’s binoculars confirmed this. “We need jet skis!” came the consensus.
But there are few jet skis in Haida Gwaii. Renting one was impossible. Even if we had our own, trailering it out atop that road would likely bang the thing to bits; having nowhere to launch it was another problem. Bruhwiler had considered bringing his two skis on the ferry from Port Hardy, but that would’ve been bloody expensive.
For all the world’s surfers, Haida Gwaii is a cruel and unusual place. We had a good crew for the task: Vancouver Island’s Raphael Bruhwiler really needs no introduction, a gritty lifelong soldier of the Pacific Northwest; Santa Cruz’s Tyler Smith, a Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Award finalist, top-placing Maverick’s competitor and Ghost Tree charger, is fearless; fellow Westsider Josh Mulcoy is a core coldwater freak, actively seeking juice along some of the globe’s harshest coasts—Norway, Alaska, Iceland, Oregon. “Still,” Mulcoy said, “Haida Gwaii is definitely the coldest place I’ve ever been.”
Cold was not an issue when it came to accessing the west coast. One day Raph and I lunched on Reubens and coffee in the Purple Onion Deli; soon Mulcoy arrived and the conversation returned to boats. A cute brunette named Lindsey overheard our plight; she handed me a scrap of paper containing the phone number of her friend, a local fishing-charter guy who just might be stoked to take us out yonder for a look-see.
“He’s got a killer, brand-spankin’-new Boston Whaler,” Lindsey said. “He just christened it the other day. Super fun guy, knows where to go out there—he works for the Coast Guard. Give him a call.”
A lifetime of cigarettes bespoke Chumma’s even, disc-jockey-modulated voice. It suggested that he knew his stuff, and I could tell he was keen for a real bluewater chance to test his new vessel before salmon season started.
“If it’s big water you’re after,” Chumma said, “the west is the place. I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid the damn breakers out there.”
We arranged to meet Thursday at the dock at 5:30 a.m. Today was Monday—Thursday seemed an awfully long way off considering the severe but mesmerizing weather we were having. Locals said it would ease. The myth was, if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes. Unfortunately we had to wait much longer than that.
Indeed, mythology saturates Northwest Indian culture, and true to universal theme, supernatural entities are created to explain the unknowable, interpreted through generations via intricate art, dance, and detailed verbology. For the Haida, the most prominent figure of myth and legend is the jet-black raven, something we saw every day. Technically the raven is a hawk-sized songbird, a skilled predator and scavenger, never short on food or wit, and, mythologically, the raven is a transformer, able to become anything, anytime, anywhere. “As a transformer he is responsible for the present order of the universe,” Martine Reid wrote in The Children of the Raven. “He discovers mankind, acquires and controls food, brings the light into the world.”
Episodes of raven myth are illustrated on totem poles throughout Haida Gwaii, and the one we found of most interest, considering the violent weather we faced, was how the raven discovered a man who possessed a small box containing a ball of light, which was all the light in the universe. The raven, cunning as he was, managed to steal the ball and use it to illuminate the entire world, previously an “inky, pitchy, all-consuming dark, blacker than a thousand stormy winter midnights, blacker than anything anywhere has been since,” Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst wrote in The Raven Steals the Light. “The world was at once transformed. Mountains and valleys were starkly silhouetted, the river sparkled with broken reflections, and everywhere life began to stir. The Raven flew on, rejoicing in his wonderful new possession, admiring the effect it had on the world below, revelling in the experience of being able to see where he was going, instead of flying blind and hoping for the best.”
Halfway into the trip, staring out at clouds and rain and distant snowcaps, listening to the wind shriek past the hotel windows, we could almost—almost—relate. We’d found fun albeit gutless waves at one rivermouth, but really, until then, searching for waves, we’d driven an average of 150 miles a day, very slowly, with no music, in a rented four-wheel-drive truck, progressively coating the cab’s floor with food wrappers and empty water bottles. Five of us in the truck for hour upon hour, fidgeting and farting and letting the comedy flow freely. “Let’s see what’s down that road” became a common utterance, the driver (me) repeatedly and abruptly veering the truck off the main road and down sketchy singletracks in dense rain forest in the middle of nowhere, usually leading to an impassable hole or horizontal tree, or to another flat beachbreak, or to the cabin of a Haida family or hippie outcast who didn’t want us there.
That night, crew morale threatened to plunge irreversibly. “We need something,” Burkard said, glumly clicking through the Internet on his laptop. “It can’t stay like this forever, can it?”
“We’re definitely due for a change,” I said.
“Check the forecast,” Mulcoy said.
And it had changed—drastically:
Wednesday..A mix of sun and cloud. Low 7. High 11.
Thursday..A mix of sun and cloud with 30 percent chance of showers.
Low plus 5. High 12.
Friday..A mix of sun and cloud. Low 6. High 13.
We looked at each other. “High of 13? A mix of clouds and sun?”
Buoyweather.com confirmed a swing in swell angle, from southwest to west, optimum for both the entire west coast and a certain beachbreak up north. Our luck had risen.
Since hiring Chumma’s boat for the next day was unlikely, we settled for the beachbreak, which turned out to be an impressive score.
Moss Landing or Hossegor—take your pick. That was what we found, only minus the crowds and traffic and topless girls, and the water was much colder, the driftwood much bigger. Aside from a brief shower, the sun shone warmly all day and the offshore wind puffed gently, grooming the consistent and overhead lines, which, based on their orderliness, had come from afar. Only problem were the extraordinary tides, which in Haida Gwaii range 25 feet. So one sandbar that was good for 45 minutes would send us down the beach to sample another bar for maybe 30 minutes, then another, and another, and so forth.
For lunch in total solitude, we lounged in the dunes and roasted sausages over a driftwood fire, and the sweet scent of woodsmoke in the lineup that golden afternoon accented what had actually been a very good day, better than most in terms of any surf trip any of us had ever been on.
“Weather-wise,” said Smith upon sunset, “we probably just got the nicest day of the year. We got sunburned in a place where that normally doesn’t happen.”
And then it was Thursday. Chumma and deckhand Gary finished prepping the Whaler as we pulled onto the wooden dock an hour before first light, the scene faintly aglow under the orange harbor lights. As luck would have it, our hours of darkness—figuratively and literally—were about to end for good. Surfing beneath sun for an entire day at an empty, hollow beachbreak proved prescient for the second half of our trip—from now until departure, we would bid farewell to the darkness, dissolved by the raven, perhaps, and quickly forgotten.
On the last day, waiting for our airport taxi, a woman in a coffee shop said, “From the looks of your tans, you’re definitely not from around here.” Actually, we weren’t quite sure where we were, I told her, but we weren’t ready to leave it behind.
“I know what you mean,” the woman said, turning her face up toward the midday sun, smiling and squinting into the warmth.
In his book Haida Gwaii, Ian Gill wrote that there is “nowhere more beguiling, more hypnotic, more intoxicating and infuriating and enigmatic, more ineffable” than where we found waves, and, fittingly, nothing could better describe our path and our eventual taste—our feast—of it on Haida Gwaii, a.k.a. Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaii to native elders, these “islands of the people” where climatic traits are not mythical, the rain perpetual, the darkness vast. Yet Haida Gwaii is no site of monotony. Nothing remains the same for long.
Posted June 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Bali: On a Road Less Traveled
Bali: On a Road Less Traveled
By David Pu’u
It has been said many times by writers and travelers: “Bali is an amazing, magical experience.” I had heard that from Aussie traveler and surfer Jim Banks who had been there thirty years prior, exploring the surf potential: “Mate you HAVE to go there” was his principal direction. Being a little slow, it only took me those 
thirty years.
I have found that the Gods of Bali dictate the tempo and timbre of the voice, heartbeat and siren song that drew a long history of transients into the island country from the ancient Chinese to present day Euro tourists, Japanese, a dwindling number of Aussies and now only occasional Americans. A world in turmoil has thrown Bali on the do not call list for international tourism. The US consulate had warnings up as we had left, about radical terrorism threats in Bali and Java. Asking around, I had decided to come anyway. It was a relief to see who and what actually controlled this part of the world. It definitely was not Al Quaida, as I was to learn in passing. It was a people who embraced me and taught me about the dance with the Gods of their land.
A case in point would be Petulu. The village we stayed in. In the sixties a clash with government troops had caused the entire village to be slaughtered. Genocide as our driver Gusti had described it. An even more horrible concept than a Western mind could accommodate when one experiences the closeness of the Balinese family unit. The silent homes of the vanquished lay dormant, waiting seemingly, he said. But for what? A couple seasons later something odd occurred. White herons descended into the trees above the village, a huge number of them. The Balinese believe. It was said to be the incarnation of their belief and proof by their Gods: the slaughtered innocent returned in the guise of those white herons. They are there to this day. I was dumbfounded when I saw that they would return at sunset each night to roost overhead. But that is “The Real Bali”: a land that urges one to believe.
Then there is the smile. Yes, a miraculous thing when one hails from the West where smiles are reserved for special occasions. In Bali people just look at you, and the first reaction is generally a smile. It is a reflection of what they have on the inside I found, and entirely infectious. I was a little confused when the first light of a Balinese smile fell on me, as it was in passing through Customs, a place where stories of touts and forced offerings to the government abound. The customs officer did it when he waved us through, opting NOT to search our huge pile of luggage, gear and boards.
So how does one discover “the real Bali” these days? I mean typically one books a hotel rents a car and sits in a Westernized version of Bali for a week or two and if lucky gets tiny, diluted doses of indigenous culture. What if you want to go where there are not so many surfers and tourists? Maybe take that road less traveled? Out of my years of travel experience, here is a little of what I have learned regarding Bali.
When you land at Denpassar, have $25 American cash in pocket. It is for your entry visa. (When you leave, exit is 200 rupia). Then go pick up your bags. If you have nice little chalk exes on your luggage it is marked for search. You have several choices here:
1.Ignore the exes, get searched and likely have to pay a tout or bribe as we call them here (clerks generally keep part or all of it, depending on what they are able to talk you into)
2. Wipe off the chalk mark if no one is looking.
3.Employ a porter or group of porters who if you point out the chalk marks will generally slide you through.
I have done all three. It is an icky experience and a strange way for a Westerner to be introduced to Indonesia. But it is what it is.
Now legally in Bali, you need transport. Taxi is not a bad deal initially. But you must have an idea of where you want to go. Historically surfers always head up to the Bukit Peninsula, home to Uluwatu, Padang Padang and a host of famous spots Jim Banks helped pioneer. Great surf, lots of crowds, lots of surf tourism activity. It is a typical surf tourism destination. Unless you like the crowds of Rincon or Malibu or Trestles you may want to go somewhere else.
Pick a locale you are interested in and book a driver. Driving is dangerous in Bali. You do need an international drivers license to operate any motor vehicle. You get those at the DMV or AAA here in the states. Local drivers generally go for between $35 and $50 US dollars per day. (Vehicle and gas included for the most part.) A good driver knows Balinese culture, the ins and outs of the myriad number of holidays which often create travel complications, and best of all can direct you into a variety of “homestay” accommodations. This sort of lodging is very abundant in Bali and varies widely in service and quality. But basically you can get a standard of accommodation that would cost 500 a day in a Western style resort for $20-$50 per night. We frequently find great accommodations for $5-$10 per night.
Surf is where you find it. Bali is a series of islands and there can be surf everywhere. Your driver, and a decent knowledge of internet surf forcasting, can land you in the right locale at the right time without much trouble.
Bali is primarily Hindu and is therefore a Karma based society. So you get back what you put out, in a manner of speaking. A smile goes a very long way in Bali and will cover a multitude of cultural blunders common to Westerners. Here again, your driver can help ease the cultural crevasse. A good driver will be very motivated to share everything about Indonesia with you.
Travel safety is an issue within Indonesia. Register your travel itinerary with the State Department. When in Bali avoid restaurants and places frequented by Westerners and the risk goes down. The Karma thing allows for a certain amount of craziness to exist but I do know that the Balinese hate the few random bombings and those who engaged in them. Several times we found that places were earmarked for bombings. Though extremely rare, it can happen. Use prudence and you avoid the potential.
Drug use. Don’t do it. Don’t bring any in. Don’t take anything offered to you. Lock and secure your luggage. Keep everything with you and in eyesight at all times when passing through airports. Penalties are stiff. Capital punishment exists. Over time people have been executed for it. Including Westerners. Do you feel lucky, or are you just stupid? The end effect will be the same if you are caught.
All of the islands off Bali are available via various ferry companies through the local ports. Again, your driver can book it for you and often suggest homestays where you are headed. We found multiple great places on Nusa Lembongan, which is a short hour plus ride out of Sanur. These islands are a great option for cleaner water and more pristine conditions.
As in any geographic location, things are cleanest where there are less people. Western Bali, (Legian) is less populated than the East Coast and is surf rich. Avoid rivermouths in populous locales. They are the worst of the worst in terms of disease potential.
Inland locales such as Ubud and many other places are incredibly rich in culture and actually not that far from the beach. It sort of all depends on what road you choose for your trip.
Check out Lonely Planet guides for a glimpse into what your options are. Book your flight, (EVA Air is a great Indo carrier, as is Singapore Air) and go, and in so doing go well, as a guest, willing to contribute to this remarkable places recovery from the acts of a few misguided fools. Contrary to what you read in contemporary media, a decent human being is the single best agent of positive change in the third world. Plus, it will be an adventure and a lot of fun.
Posted June 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
May 2007 Issue
Wavelengths/How to Surf Well
Wavelengths
Words and Photo by Michael Kew
First Generation, South Pacific
Today, groms exist just about everywhere.
Papua New Guinea’s natural cornucopia is of Oceania’s most pristine. A maze of islands, reefs, mangroves, and passes, here lies a marine domain of dazzling fertility. Dangling from the eastern edge of southeast Asia’s center of coral reef biodiversity, Papua New Guinea’s waters are poorly surveyed, hosting thousands of uncharted of coral reefs—including fringing, barrier, and atoll formations—and is one of the world’s most stunning marine habitats, exceeding species known to the Australian Great Barrier Reef, the Hawai’ian islands, and the West Indies combined.
Before surfing above one today, I was informed that because Kavieng’s reefs lie at low latitude, they are hidden from the seasonal cyclone belt and, consequentially, the upper reef slope and reef crest are rarely impacted by extreme high seas. Largely untouched by human activities—result of the country’s low population and absence of material development—Papua New Guinea offers one of the world’s few remaining opportunities for conservation of stellar coral reef zones.
A scuba mecca, the number of fish species recorded on single dives here is usually among the highest recorded during rapid ecological South Pacific surveys. Constantly swept with oceanic and tidal currents, Kavieng has a reputation for being the pelagic species capital of Papua New Guinea.
Sweating and scanning for sharks between sets, I sit on my surfboard and marvel at these facts. Several colorful species—staghorn corals, table corals, tree corals, brain corals—coat the ocean bottom, mere inches from my feet. Basslets, parrotfish, wrasses, groupers swarm. A coral eden, they say, leading the globe in pure coral glory, but falling far short in native surfing population.
In fact, surfing islanders are scarce. Of Oceania’s first surf-generation, teenaged boat driver Stanley drops anchor and enters the mood. Rare is the small black figure on a thrashed surfboard atop turquoise translucence. This is not the modern Action Sports Retailer surf image. In Papua New Guinea, reality supplants time.
Stanley’s people, likely migrants from the Indonesian archipelago, arrived here some 50,000 years ago. They flocked in several waves, and the islands sired a unique effect on cultural texture. Since the bulk of Papua New Guinea’s terrain is quite mountainous and rugged, the islanders evolved in virtual isolation, developing their own languages and tribal cultures, lending Papua New Guinea one of the planet’s most diverse and intriguing island demographics. Most still reside in small villages, adhering to traditional tribal customs.
Before the arrival of aircraft, islanders were as isolated from the rest of Papua New Guinea as people living on other continents. Though English is lingua franca in government and schools, the islands feature 800 different pidgin-based dialects.
First contact between white men and the islanders occurred in the early 16th century, when Portuguese explorer Jorge de Meneses sighted the place, naming it Ilhas dos Papuas (“Land of the Fuzzy-Haired People”). However, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that traders and missionaries began settling. Throughout the following decades, Papua New Guinea was claimed by England, Germany, and Holland, finally succumbing to Australia after World War I.
The inland Highland area, thought to be too inhospitable for human habitation, wasn’t explored until the 1930s. European gold-seekers instead found a million people living in fertile mountain valleys—cultures steadfast since the Stone Age. By the 1960s, a significant independence movement emerged, and, in 1975, after a brief period of internal autonomy, Papua New Guinea declared full independence.
Grommet Stanley realizes none of this. He does, however, realize his reef’s charm and ideal symmetry. A regularfoot, lefts are not a problem, evident by his confidence and savvy positioning. Without a DVD or VHS player for miles in either direction, surf videos are alien things; Stanley draws inspiration and technique from within and from sojourning surfers, mostly Australian. His is a realization of imported stoke, a life path forever altered by the gift of a surfboard.
Skimming fast above the reef, one eye on the horrific coral heads, my own realization of Fletcher’s epoxy shaping genius unfolds. Later, wide-eyed Stanley is bequeathed the 6’0” Patagonia fish following his premier interview:
What did you do before you started surfing?
“Before I went out surfing I talk with God first. Then I go out surfing.”
What do you like most about surfing?
“I like surfing with people happy. We sing and make fun when the waves coming.”
Does singing bring the waves?
“Yeah. Singing to make a waves getting bigger. We call it ‘tolak.’”
Will you surf forever?
“Yeah. On and on.”
How to Surf Well: A Primer
First in a series
By David Pu’u
The height and breadth of the concept of learning to surf well is broad. In this primer we're going to look at a few basics.
First of all, the question:
What is good surfing? Surfing being sort of a subjective activity, what makes one technique or surfer stand out from another? Opinions vary on this, but in great surfers from the past and to date, we see certain common traits. Let’s look at a few.
1.Every great athlete knows his game and playing field inside and out. What this means to a surfer is that one must understand the nature of something pretty vast. Water, the ocean, storms which make waves, weather which affects waves, the wave itself, and the variety of different breaks and approaches to riding them are all part of our basic field of play which one must master.
2.Approach. There are many great approaches to riding a wave. But logically, since surfing historically has been viewed as being a relatively creative free form means of expression, what constitutes a “good” approach?
3.Technique. The application of an athlete’s ability to a task. How one performs that task most efficiently. In this primer we're going to start with the very basics of surfing. You would be surprised at the number of really good surfers that skipped this because no one ever explained it, and had to relearn later in their careers in order to move forward and on to a higher level of performance.
If you want to be a good surfer, get to know and understand water. Originally surfing was part of the culture of an ocean centric people. The Pacific Islanders were a water based culture. It was their home. Land was where they went to rest. When I was four, my Hawaiian father tossed me in the deep end of a pool. I swam. Get to know water and develop your ability in it. Every great surfer is as comfortable out at sea as a non surfer in front of the TV. It starts with your ability to be comfortable in water and get around in it. Learn to swim well. It provides a feeling of security and self confidence and as your surfing ability expands to larger more challenging surf your confidence will grow. It's the essence and starting point of being a waterman which lies at the core of the sport.
Understand what a wave is and it’s physical dynamics. It's a rolling energy pulse formed by a storm. Pulses vary in frequency and duration, which are measured in height and interval. For example a 4 foot swell at a 20 second interval is traveling faster and carries more energy than a six foot swell traveling at a 10 second interval.
When that 4 at 20 swell feels the drag/pressure of a shallowing bottom it will pitch forward or “break” and make a much larger wave than the shorter interval swell would. This is the basic physics illustration behind riding a wave.
“Forward” is the operative word here. Surfing is all about riding an energy wave and putting your board and body in a position to maximize that ocean embodied storm energy. In a breaking wave the point of energy release is in the top half of the wave, nearest the lip. This is because the lip is moving faster than the trough. The top half of a wave is where the speed and power lie. All great surfers generally surf “from the top of the energy wave” because great surfing is a function of speed, and most easily obtained by learning to utilize the top half of the wave.
Now let’s look at approach. What constitutes a good approach? A good approach is one that allows you to make the wave you want to ride. But a great surfer's approach is embodied in the concept of imagination. A great surfer does whatever he sees in his mind’s eye. It's this approach that made George Freeth, Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake great. It's that same concept that has caused Kelly Slater to recently redefine what's possible in ultimate expression of imagination.
How does one develop approach? One must start with the basics. You will read that a lot from me and many others. Basics. A good athlete is sort of like a good house. He has to have a complete foundation, or at some point his house teeters and collapses. In surfing the amount of foundational knowledge required to be good is vast.
Assuming one has a basic understanding of when and how to paddle for a wave lets look at a facet of surfing that hampers many people. It's so simple that it's often overlooked.
It's the basic action of standing up. The physical act of standing up on a board, going from prone paddling to one’s feet is actually a maneuver. Great surfers do it so well that you don't notice it. It appears to happen quickly and easily. But it's actually is one of the most difficult things to learn to do well.
Here's a pretty standard technique many elite athletes use. It works especially well in surfing. It's called “visualization”. Visualization is when you sit quietly and think about what you want to accomplish. You “see” the act in your minds eye. It's a dress rehearsal for the action to be accomplished. It pre programs you to accomplish an action that must take place in an instinctual manner.
Let’s apply it to standing up. Lie down on the floor of your room or on the beach, close your eyes and imagine a cat getting to its feet. It happens quickly and effortlessly. You hardly notice the effort. Then imagine yourself at the starting line for a race. The starter fires his gun. In that instant you spring to your feet. The act of standing on a board should take place in one swift powerful movement. It should leave you with your feet centered over the drive points of your surfboard and weight loaded. In the next instant you un weight yourself and the board will respond yet again. The act of standing up is surfing’s first maneuver, and when mastered makes surfing much easier and is the first step in developing one’s individual approach. To get better at it simply apply the visualization technique and do repeats. Cross training exercises are abdominal exercises, and push ups.
When you go surfing after applying this technique over a relatively short period of time you will experience rapid improvement.
Posted May 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
April 2007 Issue
Peggy Oki
Origami Whales
By Sonia Fernandez
The ocean has always inspired Peggy Oki. Whether it gave her the skill and grace to lay down on concrete moves informed by surf sessions as Dogtown’s only Z-girl, or beckoned her to reproduce the beauty of seascapes in her later life as an artist, her eyes and ears seem to always be tuned to the sea, its beauty and mystery.
It’s no surprise, then, that the call of the ocean led her into environmental activism, a passion she pursues as avidly as she chases the perfect wave. It seems the call has become a plea for help, and Oki is ready to respond.
“I was surfing Blacks Beach when two Grays came within 25 yards of me,” she said. It was the last Christmas of the last millennium and the Christmas present she got from the sea made up her mind.
“This experience led to my commitment as an activist to help the whales,” she said.
Since then, she’s launched several efforts to bring awareness to the plight of these magnificent mammals.
“As the time nears the IWC (International Whaling Commission) meetings, I've been putting in some 10-12 hour days on top of doing my best to maintain my livelihood and life,” said Oki.
Far from being your typical save-the-whales activist however, Oki chose another route: art, and the natural enthusiasm of children and lovers of nature.
The project is called Origami Whales Project, a curtain of folded whales that draws the eye with its color, but more importantly, its size. This year’s curtain is going to be almost 30,000 origami whales big, representing the number of whales targeted in the oceans all over the world. It’s both beautiful and saddening, and Oki hopes that its impact will be enough to motivate the hearts and minds of IWC attendees at their meeting next month, because, while the IWC has maintained a moratorium on whaling since 1982, whales continue to be slaughtered all over the world.
Putting together a 28,500 origami whale curtain is not an easy task, acknowledges Oki. But it’s fun, and because she’s spent her life doing things that are fun, she knows exactly where to go for the kind of boundless energy and enthusiasm needed to get the job done.
“It was wonderful to be working with children again,” said Oki. “They seemed very interested in the ‘cool things about whales’ that I shared with them.” The kids in question are 11-12 year olds from a school in Camarillo, and children in the Kid’s Club at Patagonia in Ventura.
“For the Kid's Club at Patagonia, we had the large conference room with big screen. With the little ones seated on the floor, and the large screen, 7 minutes of ‘Blues, Bryde's, & Humpbacks’ from Earl Richmond, and my personal one minute of close encounters with bubblenet feeding Humpbacks in Alaska, the whales seemed lifesize, bringing lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhhs’,” she said. “I think that between the two groups, probably 500 whales were folded!”
Then it was off to Cate School, a private school in Carpinteria, where the community service educator rallied her kids around the project.
“We had about 20 students in and out, some stitching with us, and all folded enthusiastically, making nearly 1,500 whales. We accomplished our goal of 22 strands, and the instructor wants to promote continued involvement of the school. There are about 4,600 origami whales towards the goal of 28,500--with additional pledges of whales coming in.” said Oki.
28,500 origami whales aren’t going to fold themselves however, and Oki is calling out to anyone willing to fold even a single paper whale for her curtain/art project/ whale memorial.
“It is a small sacrifice compared to the suffering of thousands of whales; and I am glad to do what I believe to be the most important action I can dedicate to them at this time.”
Visit http://www.peggy-oki.com/cu_origami.part.html to get information on Origami Whales, and how you can contribute your mad paper folding skills to the project. The page has links to folding diagrams and petitions you can download, as well as contact and deadline information, as well as links to Oki’s other projects. Don’t wait – you have one more month to become part of this year’s Origami Whales Project.
Volunteers needed to stitch strands of origami whales with a simple hand-sewing method at the “Origami Whale Stitching Parties” in creating the “Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” to raise awareness about commercial whaling. All ages & genders are most welcome.
All materials, including origami whales, will be provided.
Please check the online calendar at:
http://www.peggy-oki.com/events.html
• TUESDAY, 17th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
5:30-8:30 PM
The Treasure Hunt
919 Maple Avenue, Carpinteria, CA. 93013, ph: 684.3360
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• THURSDAY, 19th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
2-7 PM
Carpinteria Community Arts Center (outdoors by the arbor)*
855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA 93013, ph: 684.3573
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• SATURDAY, 21st of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
12-5 PM
Carpinteria Community Arts Center (outdoors by the arbor)*
855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA 93013, ph: 684.3573
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• SUNDAY, 22nd of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
11AM - 3PM
Great Pacific Iron Works Patagonia
235 West Santa Clara Street, Ventura, CA 93001-2717, ph: 805.643.6074
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• TUESDAY, 24th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
5:30-8:30 PM
The Treasure Hunt
919 Maple Avenue, Carpinteria, CA. 93013, ph: 684.3360
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• WEDNESDAY, 25th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
6:00-9:00 PM
Arcobaleno Trade
7 W. Haley St., Santa Barbara, CA. 93101, ph: 963.2726
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• THURSDAY, 26th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
2-7 PM
Carpinteria Community Arts Center (outdoors by the arbor)*
855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA 93013, ph: 684.3573
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• SATURDAY, 28th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
12-5 PM
Carpinteria Community Arts Center (outdoors by the arbor)*
855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA 93013, ph: 684.3573
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• SUNDAY, 29th of April
“Curtain of 28,500 Origami Whales” Stitching Party
12-5 PM
Carpinteria Community Arts Center (outdoors by the arbor)*
855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA 93013, ph: 684.3573
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* In the event of "user unfriendly weather", please call 684.3573 for alternate indoor location.
Peggy and the curtain: Photo Courtesy of Matt Dayka
Posted April 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Atolis Fanditha: Black Magic from Coraline Reefs
By Michael Kew
Photos by David Pu'u
A sunny, numb, mid-week afternoon. Nothing but birdsong and the breeze. I doze at home, dreaming of solace in an island paradise. Good waves exist there, the natives are happy and friendly. It is a peaceful, divine place. The sun is endless, like Southern California of late, and no one has surfed there. These are virginal isles in the middle of infinitude, ripe for discovery and—yes, I am dreaming—a surf excursion is slated for next month.
Neither shipwreck nor human sacrifice enters the psyche of a surfer wreathed in the barrel of a utopian tropical aquarium. After all, alighting to the Laccadive Sea for a clandestine junket of waves and color veiled the promise of conjecture and sultanic dynasties, not travesty and sin.
Medieval maps portrayed the islands as threatening ranks of shark-like teeth. This were, after all, the Maldives—sensationally hazardous to mariners, a sublime archipelago of the Chagos Ridge, unseen by blue Western eyes and unsurfed to the hymns of Allah…until now.
Such locales entice adventure and hidden loot. A California delegation sought these floating pearls, steeped in the mystic aura preceding distant Arabias. On tap was The New and Different. What they found were The Idioms of Magic, like only such a place can instill.
In the Maldives, jinnis are cosmic specters existing parallel with tangible life forms, much like angels and humans. Jinnis who deviate, however, are blamed for everything bad that happens to the local people.
Jinnis live anywhere unsuitable for humans—the seafloor, cemeteries, thorny bushes—and emerge at peculiar moments of inconvenience for the islanders, wrongdoers or no. These islanders say the sea surrounding their main atoll is haunted by an evil jinni of enormous power, demanding frequent sacrifice of young female virgins. Girls are kidnapped and abandoned, tied to a pole on the beach at dusk, found raped and dead at dawn.
Ancient Islamic explorer Ibn Battuta: “I looked to sea and there was something like a great ship which seemed as though it were full of lamps and torches.”
Aligulha, or fireballs, are apparitions from the world of jinnis—spirits under the guise of flame. After surfing a dreamy right-hand barrel, a gaunt, engaging fisherman motored up to our boat and described a phenomenon he’d recently witnessed while working with his crew of five a half-mile offshore the isle of Suheli. One twilight, he was tormented by one of these jinnis appearing as a fireball, first clinging to the mast then jouncing atop the sea surface aside the ship, taunting its crew.
The man attacked it with a fishing pole, but struck nothing solid. In the wake of the thing's distaste for the animosity from the man and his crew, the fireball constructed illusions of great dimensions.
"Suddenly we found ourselves in shallow water," the man told me. "Then, on the horizon, a whale surfaced, its mouth wide open, its teeth glowing. It was coming straight at us to swallow our ship!
"We quickly motored back the island and narrowly managed to dodge the whale by reaching the sanctuary of the lagoon. Then, just as soon as it had appeared, the beast and fireball vanished. The lagoon saved us."
Other fishermen regaled us with stories of fireballs, detailing a pattern of similarity in the fireball behavior: they appear magically and stick themselves on the ship's mast. Fisherman then dip a cloth into a fish paste and offer it to the fireball, which will leap onto the ship's deck and roll overboard, not to reappear that particular night.
Origins of the Maldives’ pre-Muslim culture are vague and vulnerable to speculation. Legend says that, pre-Christ, the isles were inhabited by a sun-worshipping society of the Amin people, a pagan, worldly stew of seafaring Romans, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Indus Valleyites. Their home existed in the center of an ancient maritime trading crossroads, renowned for its abundance of white cowry shells, widely cherished units of currency from the mountains of Tibet to the deserts of Mauritania.
The Amin thought their seas to be possessed by jinnis, aquatic demons of many names and shapes, full of black magic, responsible for anything unexplainable by education or religion. One jinni was the Dalhan, which paralyzed shipwrecked sailors with its horrific shrieks before gorging on human flesh, tainting blue sea with red blood. Another jinni required deliberate sacrifice, notably with virgin girls placed at seafront temples at dusk for a jinni’s midnight snack.
Islam arrived in 1153 AD via a North African Arabic saint, who, according to scholars, converted the islands after convincing the Amin king that Islamic faith had the power to control even the most baneful jinni. The king hence ordered his people to embrace Islam, and the saint was rewarded with the title of sultan.
Social life in the Maldives was steeped in fanditha, a mélange of spirit charms, magic, and folk medicine, founded on beliefs and superstitions circa the Amin, but with the addition of Arabic verses from the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Fanditha was used to combat the evil jinnis plaguing fishermen and sailors, many of whom vanished without a trace.
White magic flourished under these circumstances, additionally used in political intrigue, courtship and marriage rites, in launching virgin boats, ensuring good fishing, finding guilty parties when a crime had been committed, and treating the sick. Fanditha assumed less benign forms when it was employed to weaken or kill enemies.
In 2004 AD the Maldives were a pious, barefooted society shrouded in jungle and dense equatorial air, which, on windless days, settled and corrupted all human motion into a lethargic leak of sweat. Here was a valid, smiling people, slight of stature, licorice-skinned, circumspect yet sophisticated, living by selling dried fish, coconut-fiber rope, and cowry shells.
Their islands were infused with magic spanning the entire metaphysical spectrum, today undwelling on the fanditha but focusing on geological mastery and its deft acquittance of all vice, pollution, profanity, occultism.
Blandness and religious deviates cannot remain afloat. Immoral incarnates are unknown, nor are thieves or murderers. Booze and porn are shunned, mirroring the purity of this Laccadive Sea, essentially an aqueous turquoise canvas nurturing multicolored gardens—living colonies of coral polyps—and frequent swells.
Rumors loomed of inconsistency, high costs, flooding, U.S. resentment, terrorism, sharks, lack of access. The locals promised that black magic would maim—possibly kill—us if we ventured into forbidden sea, where fearsome waves caressed the backs of diabolical jinnis hunkered invisibly inside the reef. Black magic created the breaking waves; they had taken many native lives and destroyed many good intentions from eons ago.
* * *
Magic, as we saw it, was a dreamy blue, not black, existing in the perfect lineups spooling around the Maldives’ unseen reef passes—one of those environs you always fantasized of but soundly denied. Viewed bird’s-eye, the islands were convoluted pockmarks of coral, shimmering, idyllic. From the land, they were glary, sandy oases of searing heat, bristling with breadfruit and coconut palms, enhanced by fluorescent lagoons. And from the sea, they were hallucinogenic green smudges on the horizon, trinkets of coral atop a submerged volcanic ridge, wholly unsullied by the 21st century.
Out there, so very far away, wickedness manifested itself as reef lacerations, heatstroke, sunburn, and dehydration. For the surfer, malevolence is boredom and flatness. For the Maldivian, it is garrulousness and unenlightenment. Benevolence for all would be a bounteous sea and absence of serpent-like behavior, both at home and abroad. To the natives, otherworldliness of wealthy vacationers imported occasional drunken conduct and selfish motives. After all, they viewed kayaking and windsurfing as sporty narcissism, roguish myopics with poor taste in music and an overall evil intent.
Our wave-obsessed posture was regarded with frank suspicion. We were not divers or snorkelers or fishermen or honeymooners. We were not European executives working in Delhi or Dubai. We preferred not the calm sanctuary of the lagoon, nor the reefy blue wilderness between the passes. Instead, we sought the hazards of shallow water, of remote, swell-exposed seas fronting uninhabited islands. Sharks and exposed coral heads dunked by whitewater were not a problem.
To the natives, however, we were perverse anomalies among their denseness of tradition, hence latent purveyors of black magic. Our surfboards were harmful spears, our scented sunscreen an elixir of evil, applied over our entire bodies to appease corrupted jinnis living beneath the surf. Like buoys, waves were designed to warn local mariners and the general public that jinnis indeed haunted these places. Reef passes with waves—especially those on uninhabited islands—were akin to the gates of Hell, with Satan lurking below. The lagoons were Heaven, where God walked on water.
These lagoons were avoided. As such, we were investigated.
Posted April 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Profile: Aubrey Faulk
By Janna Irons
Photos: Jack Buttler
6:15 am. The simultaneous blare of alarms wakes thousands of young, intelligent women across the nation. They roll out of bed just in time to shower, dress, sit in traffic for an hour to spend the next eight behind a computer screen, before dragging themselves back through traffic home. Day after day, year after year is spent waiting for the two weeks a year of vacation, and the eventual comfort of retirement. Carpinteria resident Aubrey Falk is rooted in a different life philosophy. “Everything in our society trains us to be that way- fast and running to the future because that’s our only hope and salvation- being away from this moment,” she explains. “It’s all a matter of finding your talents and the gifts you have to offer.” As an exceptional surfer and artist, she carries with her the wisdom derived from ceaseless travel
experience and the values entwined in a small-town upbringing.
Growing up a quick, run-for-your-life freeway dash from the ocean in La Conchita, Aubrey Falk enjoyed a childhood full of all the benefits of a small-town beach community. Like the old adage “it takes a village to raise a child,” Aubrey’s interest in surfing may be greatly attributed to her seaside village. She credits a babysitter with introducing her to surfing by taking her out tandem for the first time at age 7, and a neighbor for her actual initiation into the sport through the gift of a used neon Kennedy quad, at age 12.
Now 24, Aubrey Falk has seen and experienced more than most of us have even dreamed of. Beginning with solo journeys to Hawaii and Costa Rica at only sixteen, she has since traveled to Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Mexico. Her first international adventure began as a study abroad program where she would finish her last few high school credits while living with a host family in a small mountain village in Costa Rica. While down in the surf town of Jaco, she met a local surfer girl, who was likely taken by
Aubrey’s genial disposition, and within moments of meeting, invited her to live with them in their home. Discontented by her current residence’s far distance from the ocean, she gladly accepted the offer and spent the next 6 months working in the family restaurant, surfing throughout Puntarenas and taking frequent solitary expeditions southward. In the eight months she spent there, she never ran into any burglary or other harm. “I don’t believe in luck, I think you attract what ever comes to you,” she tells me in her ever-grounded, optimistic way.
The variety of surf breaks and conditions she has experienced have shaped her into a phenomenal surfer, but have also allowed her to hone her skills as a painter. “I realized that’s what life is about.,” she tells me, “creating beautiful things.” Currently Aubrey’s paintings adorn the walls of the Brewhouse, serving not only for the ambiance of the restaurant, but as a great source of exposure for this humble artist. Her work can easily be mistaken for that of a seasoned, finely trained artisan, yet most of the work on display was created with no formal training. Her pieces predominantly feature the splendors of Santa Barbara, from the peeling point breaks to the rolling foothills and all that lies in between. She was blessed with the ability to translate the light and colors of nature on to canvas with remarkable accuracy and grace.
Aubrey is a person of impeccable balance. “Traveling has made me really grateful. After seeing the poverty and the way other people have to live, it’s made me really appreciate what we have here,” she explains. “We get so spoiled here. We live in this amazing place and so many people are unhappy. People are cutting their bodies open for plastic surgery… it’s crazy, the duality of that.” Aubrey recognizes the inadequacy of a life dominated by money and external beauty and has thus created an existence in which happiness is the currency and beauty is measured simply by its capacity to reflect nature.
Aubrey has worked the past several years as a tender on a dive boat off of the Channel Islands, which she describes as “really hard work, but amazing- a magical spot for sure.” Toting with her a wealth of nautical expertise, she recently accepted a position as crewmember aboard a surf charter boat in mainland Mexico. The Royal Pelagic, a 125 ft. revamped Alaskan King Crab fishing boat, equipped with three small skiffs and two jet skis, will explore the coast of Oaxaca, home of the recently publicized “new wave” Barra, and apparently a handful of equally perfect breaks. As a crewmember, Aubrey will be able to surf and experience Mexico alongside those who have paid thousands to embark on the same endeavor. Granted, she will be working while the ships guests are at play, but for Aubrey it’s just another chapter in the adventure tale of her life.
By some advantageous twist of fate, surfers have been blessed with a creativity that can often be translated to some other medium outside the water. Aubrey has thus discovered the key to being a successful “surf bum.” She has established a firm grasp on her priorities, harnessing her artistry and using it to construct of lifestyle of opulent simplicity. “Money doesn’t buy you happiness,” she explains, “You can have all the cars and houses in the world and still not find that peace. It’s not there. It’s not in the outside. It how you’re living your life and how that makes you feel.”
Perhaps the incessant blare of the 6:15 alarm is inescapable, but with a little imagination and determination, that noise can trumpet the jump-start of a dawn patrol session rather than the beginning of another leg of the perpetual rat race.
Posted April 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Julia Christian
Julia has had a busy last year winning all kinds of events including the prestigious Honda Women's Open and the Lost ISA world surfing games in which she won the gold medal for the USA. Previous to this win the US placed 19th during the '04 games which was held in Ecuador. Julia deemed this placement as “pretty pathetic” and thought the US should at least be in the top three. So convinced that her team should win, Julia surfed her way to the gold medal for '06. The next games will be held in 2008 in Portugal.
So how did you get so good at surfing? Both of my older brothers surf, so I started tagging along with them. We lived a block from the beach and we would surf everyday. In the summer, I would spend all day at the beach surfing and body surfing. All that time I spent at the beach help me become a good surfer.
How were your years on the 'CT, how old were you when you first
qualified? The first time I qualified on the WCT I was 20 and again when I was 23. Being on the WCT was hard for me because I was the only girl from Cali and I had no travel partner, I was always traveling by myself and meeting up with the other girls. Also I had to surf waves like Teahupoo and here in Cali there are no waves to prepare you. I learned a lot and did better the second time. I enjoyed my time getting to go to new places, I've been lucky to see so much of the world.
Can you tell us about some of the highlights of your career? For me the best highlight was winning the US Open in 2005. I've also won some other big WQS events in France, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Lowers and the East Coast. Also winning the ISA Gold medal was really important. I took a lot of pride representing the USA and bringing home a gold medal.
Where are you living now? I'm between Carlsbad, California and Lima, Peru.
What were/are your most challenging moments in the contest
atmosphere? At contests it hard not to get nervous, but usually after the first heat it's better.
Is your dream trip still Peru? Yes because I always score good waves when I go there. There are really long lefts that are uncrowded.
Can you talk about the differences surfing Peru and California? California is mostly beach breaks and Peru there are point breaks. Peru is more consistent for waves and has bigger swells. The climates are about the same and the water temp too.
What was it like training with Magoo de la Rosa? Magoo is a great coach, he really helped me become a more fluid surfer. He also pushes you in bigger surf. He loves surfing and is very passionate about the sport and it rubs off on you.
Who would you say has influenced you the most as a surfer? It would be a combination of my brother and the local guys that I grew up with. I probably wouldn't be a surfer if I didn't have my brothers. When I was learning a lot of the local guys encouraged me and gave me waves. I get a lot of support for them too.
Is there other things in your life you are just as passionate about? My family and friends, without them life would be boring.
Are you married or single? I just got married in Nov. on the north shore [of Oahu] to Magoo De La Rosa.
Sponsors? Rip Curl, Channel Islands, Electric and Surfride
Do you still love Metallica? Which album do you like better Ride
the Lightning or Black and why? I love Metallica and I still have it painted on some of my boards. It always pumps me up to surf. My favorite album is And Justice for All.
You have traveled with some of surfing's most elite, who has been your toughest competitor? It's hard to single out just one of the girls because there are so many girls that are ripping. There are a lot of younger girls coming up and it's inspiring to see how good there are getting.
Who are your favorite surfers? Tom Curren; I just love his style.
Is there anyone who has inspired you who isn't necessarily in the
industry? My parents. They showed me that with hard work you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to.
How would you describe the progression/evolution of women's surfing? You just have to take a look and Carissa Moore or Coco Ho, those girls are so young and are already polished surfers.
Future plans or aspirations? Right now I'm just enjoying being on tour.
Posted April 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
February 2007 Issue
Shaun Tomson
Shaun Tomson-Paddling Back Out
Photos and Story by Glenn Dubock
Full of the exuberance that only youth and foolishness can bring, I showed up in Carpinteria in 1976 with a long telephoto and a large dream of being a surf photographer. I called the late Larry Moore, then photo editor at Surfing Magazine, and announced that I was on station at Rincon Point and ready to provide him with a steady stream of action photos. He poured a bucket of cold salt water on my grand plans by telling me that I shouldn’t even bother to shoot unless there was 10-foot surf and Shaun Tomson was out. His reasoning was that the “clear board, black wetsuit” look adopted by the media-shunning locals would never make for good color photos. Only a world class surfer like Tomson would make the pages because he was sponsored by O’Neill wetsuits, a big advertiser, and only Shaun could turn those cold dark walls of water into things of beauty. Good thing I didn’t listen to Larry and kept on shooting anyway. But in a way, he was right, because Shaun had a very special relationship with Rincon and with the Santa Barbara surfing scene that lives on today.
Recently, I sat down with Shaun to talk about the Santa Barbara surfing experience, past and present, and what he sees in the future.
For Shaun and his wife Carla, life in the recent past has been a wave of difficult emotions. Their young son Mathew died in a tragic accident last year, far away in Tomson’s South Africa homeland, where he was attending school. Looking into Shaun’s eyes, I saw the pain of a father who has felt the agony of losing a dear sweet child. Also in those eyes, I could see the competitive fire that has kept him in the game for so long. In his warm smile, I could see his great desire to pass along to the next generation of surfers some advice in the form of "Surfer's Code," his guidebook for surfing through the sometimes-rough seas of life in the water or on land.
When quizzed about first surfing Rincon in the late 70’s, Tomson replies,
“I love Rincon, that wave is dear to me. I don’t have the relationship there that I have with my earliest memories of Jeffery’s Bay in South Africa, but I loved surfing Rincon with Al Merrick all morning then going into the shaping bay in the afternoon."
According to Tomson, he and Channel Islands Surfboards shaper Al Merrick, had the ultimate work/play ethic going. They would mix the lessons learned at the Rincon sessions with Shaun’s exposure to the latest designs he would see out on the World Tour in Hawaii, Australia and beyond.
“The late 70’s was a time when surfing was starting to change in Santa Barbara. For many years there had been an active surf culture but it was dominated by people looking to the past rather than into the future in terms of the equipment and the experience they were having in the water. We’d paddle out and there weren’t a lot of guys on cutting edge equipment. Certainly, there were good surfers up here, but it was fun to be with Al when there was a whole new crew of young guys just starting up.”
Tomson loves to reminisce about those long gone days of empty Rincon walls and all the excitement of connecting with Merrick on so many levels.
“I met him though Hawaiian surfboard shaper Bill Barnfield. It was a great opportunity to be with a guy who was really just starting out on the journey of his shaping philosophy. Even though he was a good shaper, he was always excited to hear about the new stuff and look at the new designs. He had a whole young surf team, he was very progressive. I would be in the shaping bay with Al and a day later I would ride the board, then Al would ride it, then back into the bay again.”
Those young team members benefited from all of this intense activity. Future stars Tom Curren and Kim Mearig were just getting their hair wet in preparation for the growing world of professional surfing that Tomson and others had laid the groundwork for.
“When I first saw Tommy surf, I definitely thought this kid had a lot of potential. But I have seen so many kids over the years, with so much potential, that just get lost along the way. They get lost to drugs, lack of focus and motivation. Tom really had that special touch and had that single-minded focus and determination. It was good to surf with him when was just a young little guy starting out in the Rincon swells.”
Speaking of those swells, Shaun and a lot of long time Rincon aficionados recall that the waves came to the Queen of The Coast more often and stayed a lot longer back in the 70’s and 80’s.
On his longer visits, Shaun would stay at the Merrick’s home, “surf for hours and hours, then his wife Terry would make us these huge dinners and we would just collapse in front of the fireplace. Their kids Britt and Heidi were very young and they had a 3-legged dog named Sadie. It was almost as though I had a second family up here.”
That warm welcome to the Santa Barbara surf scene helped Shaun decide to put down permanent roots here in 1995. And that same spirit of care continues to help Shaun and Carla get through the loss of their only son. “We are so thankful to be a part of this community. We feel embraced during the incredible tragedy we’ve suffered through…” Shaun’s voice trails off as tears form in the eyes of a man who is perhaps riding a very difficult wave though an ocean of sadness.
In spite of the rough patch that is woven into his present life, Tomson can still look ahead and see some bright moments. I ask him to comment on the latest crop of pro surfers in the area and the two names that come quickly off his tongue are Bobby Martinez and Dane Reynolds.
“I’ve been surfing with Martinez for a number of years now and I think everyone in Santa Barbara ought to admire what he has done. He didn’t have the route to pro surfing like Tom did. Curren was an incredibly gifted athlete and he had great support from Al and the industry, he was sort of the ‘wonder boy’ from the start. Bobby had a really good amateur career but he couldn’t cut it for years on the WQS (World Qualifying Series). The credit to him is that he kept going, persevering with incredible courage and determination.”
It’s very clear that Shaun is impressed with that set of traits. He is a living example of where that spirit will get you in life long after the surfing contest circuit.
“Bobby has that fighting spirit. He came from a tough side of town and maybe that’s what helped him – that hard fighting spirit. To me, that’s really something to be admired. For four years he slugged it out – and got slugged. Eventually, when he came on the WCT (World Contest Tour), he had one of the best starts, won two events and really showed that he was tempered in that fire”
Shaun greatly admires the incredible talents of young Dane Reynolds but is adamant that he goes out on the tour and likewise proves himself.
“Dane needs to stand up and be counted, he needs to get on the WQS tour because he will never be considered a great surfer until he competes against the best surfers in the world in the most challenging waves in the world. It’s one thing to be an aerial wiz kid at your home beach. It’s another thing to paddle out at Pipeline or Teahupoo, take on Andy Irons or Kelly Slater or Bobby Martinez. That’s the true test of being a man. I love to watch the young kids and innovative surfing but that’s just one small part of what being a great surfer is all about. Maybe that’s not what Dane wants, but that’s what it is for me. What ever he decides, he is still fun to watch.”
I asked him how all this surfing competition has helped Shaun and the everyday surfer in Santa Barbara.
“I’m 51 years old now and I’m surfing better today than I did when I was 19 because I have this great equipment that Al Merrick and other shapers around the world have developed in association with the greatest surfers in the world. So surfers all over the world are having a vastly better surfing experience with the greatly improved equipment. The contests are watched by millions of people on the web and it has created this wonderful community of people that are all focused on watching the best surfing in the world. Moms, Dads, kids, Americans, Africans, Asians, Europeans and Australians - surfing has brought them all together.”
And now it’s that community that is helping Shaun get back in the water and heal himself. As Shaun says, “Surfing never lets me down, it always keeps me paddling back out.”
Posted February 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
January 2007 Issue
The Mentawais
by Grey Lockwood
What do you get when you take six of Santa Barbara's best young surfers, one legendary pro from San Clemente, three surf stoked dads, and put them all on a 75ft. catamaran in the middle of the Indian Ocean for two weeks?
Posted January 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Rainbow Garden: Palau’s Kaleid Of Life
By Michael Kew
There are five hundred islandsin Polynesia (Hawai’i included); Melanesia has fifteen hundred. Micronesia has more than two thousand and sprawls four and a half million square miles across the Pacific, the world's biggest ocean, which theoretically would make Micronesia the Pacific’s most surf-rich region, with the largest number of reef passes, the most swell exposure, and the fewest surfers.
One is William, who lives in the Republic of Palau, westernmost of Micronesian isles, in the blue Philippine
Sea. William moved from southern California to Palau in 1987 to work two years as a government lawyer. But, like so many expats, eventually he wed a local woman, had kids, and set root.
I met William through photographer Art Brewer, who visited Palau twice on assignment for Islands magazine.
"Niceguy—saw him once," Art said. "Tell him hello for me."
So I did upon late arrival at busy Koror International Airport, where I had deplaned from Guam with the entire cast and crew of the reality television series "Survivor," filming their next series in the famed Rock Islands south of Koror. As such, large areas of the Rock Islands were closed to the public due to the ‘confidential’ nature of the filming.
This irked me, so I was happy to tell everyone I knew that "Survivor" was being filmed in Palau. And after viewing a few episodes filmed in Vanuatu, I hoped they could do better here. But how could they? It was all crap.
"Guess you'll just have to see the Rock Islands on television," William said.
He ended up showing them to me from his little boat one day, with his wife Tlau and daughter Barbie, dodging squalls, touring the maze of pretty green limestone mounds in their warm turquoise lagoon. We lunched on a white beach, snorkeled at a few holes, and I even got to bodysurf with sharks at Blue Corner, Palau's premier scuba spot. The "Survivor" posse was invisible, and that pleased me. They could have their ridiculous 'reality' and I could have mine, because Palau is ridiculously beautiful.
A ruby sunriseand crowing roosters and twittering birds found my hotel, run by Filipinos, which was cheap, spartan, old but efficient—I was broke and alone, after all. It was on a secluded residential side street, ideally quiet and unassuming, which meant no screaming kids, no barking dogs, no loud juke boxes in a hotel bar, or bums, or hookers, or clanking dishes. Oh, but yes, there were birds and roosters and the irritatingly ancient air-conditioner, which made my throat sore, so I slept sticky and hot for the rest of the trip.
But none of this amounted to anything. I was the hotel's only guest, and its surroundings were the real draw: blue sky, warm sea, bananas, coconuts, betel nut, sago palms, fragrant flowers, ferns and vines. It seemed like it could be a touristy botanical garden in Singapore, or the atrium of a vogue Australian resort, or what you pay three hundred bucks a night for at Tavarua, but it wasn't. Of the Pacific islands, Palau immediately struck me as being of the most unique.
Which is not lost in the tourism office's glossy brochures or the smug grins of the local people, most of whom own cars. On my first morning I took a sweaty walk west of town and realized I was the only pedestrian—Koror is a settlement of the automobile. Everybody drives. It harked of Majuro, and several times I came very close to being roadkill. Motorists honked and swerved and the air was exhausty and the gutters were trashy; people smoked cigarettes and ate Cheetos and drank Coke and were obese and illiterate; the sun was out and Koror was hotter than hell. But what did I care? I was a grubby white guy visiting from the great land of SUVs and Wal-Mart, I was minding my own business, here to surf and to look around, and, no, I wasn't part of that damn "Survivor" cast.
Around three in the afternoon I rendezvoused with William at his moored boat, a twenty-foot fiberglass panga with canopy, in a private harbor beneath the Japan-Palau Friendship Bridge aside a rusting hulk of a half-sunken ship.
(This modern suspension bridge joins Koror to Babeldaob, which is the second largest island in Micronesia [Guam is the first], and was built by Japan in 2002 after the original Koror-Babeldaob Bridge collapsed in 1996, killing two people.)
"Before, the ship was valuable and people argued about who owned it," he said. "After it started to sink, everyone forgot about it."
An hour later, miles from land off the coast of Babeldaob Island, William looked toward Koror and said, “Sometimes I just don’t want to go back.”
“You don’t say.”
We'd skimmed for a half-hour through squalls across the lagoon after William bailed early from work. He is an attorney and was very busy, but the swell was on its last legs.
The wave we were surfing was a long and fun right-hander reminiscent of Cojo Point, but there weren't fifteen boats in the channel and forty people out hassling each other in the middle of nowhere, and it was much warmer.
"Two few days before you arrived," he said, "this spot was as good as it gets."
* * *
On my final night in Palau I ordered sushi in a restaurant called Mingles, but I did no mingling because the place was empty. So I ate in silence; the food was inexpensive and good.
Walking back to my hotel I came upon a gaunt, geriatric white man sitting in a folding chair on the corner of the road, in front of the Koror post office, smoking a cigar. He wore a blue floral shirt and beige shorts; his bare legs were skinny pale pins of veiny flesh, and his eyeglasses were a quarter-inch thick. Two pieces of luggage were at his side.
“Your cigar smells quite good,” I said.
“Want one?”
“Oh, no thank you. I don’t smoke.”
“Good for you. You don’t need it.”
He was an eighty-six-year-old World War II veteran named Cecil. He was sitting there waiting for his ride to the airport to fly back to his retirement home in Kansas, a tiresome red-eye route stopping in Guam, Honolulu, Houston, and finally Wichita.
“That seems like an awful lot of flying for a guy like you,” I said.
He scoffed. “I got here, didn’t I?”
“What brings you to Koror?”
“Peleliu.
Posted January 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
64 Degrees: A Surf Trip to Iceland
By: Teasha Curren
A partially frozen volcanic landmass juts out of the North Atlantic near the top of the globe, midway between New York and Moscow. Irish monks first settle this island, then around the year 900 Viking and Celtic people move in, fleeing tyrannous governments and seeking abundant lands to put down roots. Today, Icelanders are descendants of the original settlers; ancient Viking language is still spoken and has not changed much in the last 1000 years. Despite the settlement’s longstanding history, in geological time Iceland is relatively 'new' which explains the dramatic, rough, jagged and actively volcanic landscapes. Glaciers cover ten percent of the island and the interior is an uninhabited, barren arctic desert. In this land of fire and ice as the saying goes, if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it will probably get worse. This is not really what I want to hear traveling to Iceland with surfboards. I am also advised that everything is expensive and to watch out for elves and trolls…
At the Leif Erikson airport terminal customs agents eyeball our oversize luggage with curiosity. A local man bundled in a scarf stops to inquire. When I tell him I have come here to go surfing his face contorts with surprise as he responds, “Surfing in Iceland? Weird!” In addition to surfboards I brought along the following: substantial hooded wetsuit with gloves and booties, sleeping bag, long underwear, warm clothes, rain jacket, swim suit, waterproof shoes, camera, towel, usual toiletries, jar of peanut butter, a stash of tea and as many Cliff bars as I could squeeze in without going overweight. In a country where a beer cost ten bucks I have taken it upon myself to import snacks.
My trip begins in Reykjavik the world's northernmost capital city. It is Sunday and people are worn out from the Runter, which translates indirectly to 'wild all-night pub-crawls' which occurs every Friday and Saturday. Gossip has infiltrated the globe with reports that gorgeous Icelandic women outnumber the men seven to one at bars; the boys on my trip are hoping to get lucky. If you are planning to stay in the city on the weekend and want to sleep during the night you will need earplugs, and depending on the time of year, an eye mask, to block out the midnight sun. Reykjavik is teeming with budding musicians and artsy folk. The inhabitants are stylish, friendly, highly educated and speak better English than I do.
On our way to the surf break, we drive on a two-lane highway across windswept lava fields cloaked with bright green spongy moss, passing by stacked rock formations and steaming mountains. Heavy clouds hang in the sky by the time we get to the beach, but its not raining. The ocean is glassy and I am going surfing in Iceland! It is really cold. A blanket of slimy seaweed deceptively covers the slick rocks. At last, expecting the worst I plunge into the sea and am surprised to find that it's not as cold as I thought it was going to be. Feeling more like a seal insulated by a thick layer of blubber than a surfer, I duck dive through the translucent icy-blue water on my way to the line up. Trading waves, the surf is bigger than it looked and it’s fun and barreling. The mighty North Atlantic tosses me around like a rag doll and my body takes a few relentless beatings. A frigid breeze starts to blow piercing my wetsuit, and all of a sudden I find myself as cold as I thought I should be. My friends go in. I am shivering alone, waiting on a decent last wave when a gigantic seal pops its spotted head up and peers at me with bulging, concentrated eyes before sinking back down beneath the surface of the water. Time to go in! Back in the car rain pelts the roof. I am informed that local Icelandic seals are curiously friendly, however once in a while an aggressively mean one will migrate over from Greenland. I imagine that my pinniped friend with whiskers and fangs was only a curious local.
Due to the nature of any island, somewhere will always be offshore, unfortunately in Iceland it is often gale force offshore. Powerful waves emerge from deep water breaking on the volcanic shoreline. There are reefs, points, black sand beaches, jetties and river mouths. Surf shops do not exist in Iceland and there are only about 15-20 full time surfers who frequent the breaks.
Being highly volcanic, Iceland is famous for hot springs and almost every town has at least one open air geothermic swimming pool with hot pots. An outdoor aquatic complex in Reykjavik has Olympic size lap pools, a recreational shallow pool equipped with basketball hoop, a twisty waterslide, an eggy steam room and a selection of hot pots that vary in temperature. Lounging in a hot pot surrounded by chitchat spoken in the language of the Vikings, I spy the thermometer from the corner of my eye and the air temperature is one degree. Swimming is the one thing in Iceland that is cheap, costing less than a measly hot dog to gain access to the warm water. Be aware, you will be asked to follow a strict pre-dip bathing regime before you can even stick your toe in. Don’t even try to cheat!
Weather changes frequently here. One session I paddle out to glassy peaks, and within a half hour the swell picks up and the conditions turn into victory at sea. Another day, the rain clouds part like heavy velvet stage curtains revealing the brilliant sun and it becomes delightfully warm. As we surf in this pristine ocean, offshore plumes streak across a cloudless azure sky.
Partly responsible for Iceland’s unpredictable weather is the Gulf Stream. This ocean surface current carries warmth from the Gulf of Mexico as it travels up the east coast of North America and along the west coast of Europe before finally reaching Iceland, bringing with it relatively mild weather given the countries geographical location. Reykjavik’s latitude is 64 degrees north. Off the west coast of Iceland the warm salty current collides with less saline Arctic waters and sinks into the depths of the North Atlantic, essentially forming an underwater waterfall. The global warming trend is of particular interest to Icelanders because if the salinity of the Gulf Stream is diluted with melting ice, by laws of chemistry and physics it will stop sinking causing the conveyor belt bringing warmth to come to a grinding halt. If this happens, Europe will have a mini ice age and Iceland will live up to its name becoming uninhabitable, frozen over and entrapped by polar ice.
The sun comes out for the last week of our trip, but this time it does not bring warmth and the surf goes flat. Thermometers plummet, puddles freeze over and icicles cling to jagged cliff faces. Chilly wind blows down from glaciers and snow-dusted peaks. Joe and I leave our base in Reykjavik and head east on the ring road to do some serious sightseeing. Landscapes are spectacular and around every corner Joe mutters, “wow…” or “impressive…” We see visible rifts between tectonic plates, steam holes, geysers and bubbling pools of mud. Waterfalls cascade down mountains and ruins of ancient turf houses rest peacefully alongside the road. Glacial tongues slither down valleys, and in one place into a lagoon that has doubled in size over the last few years as the glacier retreats. Bluish chunks of ice break apart and bump together as they drift out to sea creating a soothing clicking, crackling sound.
In this harsh environment any creature would have to be extremely determined to live without the comfort of modern conveniences such as grocery stores and central heating. The only indigenous land mammals are the arctic fox and the occasional starving polar bear that sails over from Greenland on an ice floe. Upon arrival, fates of the transient bears are gloomy because sheep farmers exterminate them. Bears visited more often in past centuries because there was more polar ice. The presence of polar ice comes and goes; the last time it menaced the coast blocking ocean traffic and bringing freezing weather was 1979. No one has seen a Polar Bear in Iceland since 1988. Other land mammals including: stowaway rats and mice, feral minks and introduced reindeer manage to survive the somehow survive. On the contrary, the unspoiled ocean is crowded with life upon which a plethora of nesting seabirds, seals, whales and humans feed. While I am in Iceland, despite international protest, commercial whaling resumes.
Iceland is a magical place. The countryside reminds me of J.R.R. Tolkien’s depiction of Middle Earth and I almost expect to see hobbits emerge from turf houses. Folklore goes that trolls caught in an evil deed by the sunrise have been turned to stone, and more than once I see the lava rock silhouette of the unlucky creature. Along with local Icelanders, I am now a firm believer that the wee people do actually existence in this mysterious land and I think its better not to bother them, choosing to live harmoniously with them instead.
Even though the northern tip of the country extends slightly into the Arctic Circle, thanks to the Gulf Stream Iceland is not entirely covered with ice. Regardless, it is still quite cold and unless you are a Viking or of direct Viking decent, I would strongly suggest taking the following advice, “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” Come prepared. Quality surf breaks are already on the map, and with 3,100 miles of largely unexplored coastline more are waiting to be discovered. Once you get your bearings the secret to getting good waves is to check the conditions often, since the weather seems to change about every five minutes.
On my way home I am funneled through a tourist shop crammed with plastic horned Viking helmets, woolen knitwear, reindeer pelts, canned pure Icelandic air, troll figurines and Bjork CDs. Passing it all by, I leave this pristine geological wonderment with the unforgettable memory of the prettiest ocean watercolor I have ever seen in my life.
Posted January 2007 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
December 2006 Issue
Hot Curling: Surfing into the past on a redwood plank
By Michael Kew
Photographs by David Pu’u
Central Coast, July: mild, mid-week, late afternoon, a few clouds, roads of tourists, rolling hills of brown grass and black cattle. It could’ve been Orange County seventy years ago, or Los Angeles a hundred.
Here summer surf is sporadic, often junky, with occasional clean south swell rejuvenating rare reefs in Big Sur, San Simeon, Cambria, Cayucos. After a late Mexican-food lunch in downtown San Luis Obispo we drove west, eventually choosing Morro Bay’s Atascadero Beach for its smallish windswell—empty, glassy, peaky, consistent—ideal for my first time riding a Hot Curl, or, more specifically, going “Hot Curling.”
Marc Andreini’s white Ford Econoline was big enough to house an entire quiver of Hot Curls. We brought one, the 9’4” he’d shaped in 2002, from San Luis Obispo water-tower redwood. He rode a self-shaped 
foam/fiberglass 9’2” Owl-replica spoon which he eventually sold to me.
Getting into my damp wetsuit on the cold, hard sand, dusk approaching, the windless air cooling rapidly, Marc offered a quick tutorial while standing over the board I would ride, pointing at its tail:
“It works best if you stand back there on it—it plants the tail into the face of the wave. Therefore the nose goes faster than the back of the board, and so when you get it on an angle, the nose is going faster than the tail, and you’re going to slide across at an angle rather than the back end trying to overtake the front end.
“You have to figure out how to make the board go where you need it to go, and the more time the wave gives you, the better. You’re not going to be fighting to make sure it goes the right way—you have to let it flow.”
Woodsmoke from a nearby campground filled the air, stirring memories of sleeping in tents and cars along this rugged coast. Seagulls cackled and jostled; somewhere in the distance, a sea lion barked.
With the board I waded into the surf. The board was fairly light for a Hot Curl (fifty-one pounds) and dropped straight onto the water with a loud, flat crack, like dropping a coffee table into a swimming pool.
I started paddling: buoyancy was easy, stability was not. The finless tail wagged as I punched through whitewater, appreciating the board’s speed and fluidity but struggling to restrain its rear pivot. Yet a momentum ensued and I earned stride, sluicing the water, head down, smelling the brine and smoke. Once outside I was able to admire the setting sun and its pastels cast onto the crags of Morro Rock—ancient, yes, and appropriate for a trip back through time atop a modern Hot Curl, because Hot Curls are timepieces, their science and design precursors to the modern big-wave gun and, ultimately, tow-in surfboards.
What did Fran Heath and John Kelly and Wally Froiseth feel their first time Hot Curling in 1937? Firmer purchase in the pocket? Increased speed? A line-drive of effortless speed and flow? Surely a sense of oneness with the furling reef waves of Brown’s and Makaha, opposed to the soft contours of Waikiki. Their scene was tropical, but their wood came from temperate rain forests in the Pacific Northwest. Old-growth redwoods are the world’s biggest trees, today reduced to a fraction of their pre-logging existence. Of course, redwood used for Hot Curls were inconsequential, and the one I straddled was shaped from recycled lumber.
I caught my first wave easily and squatted in the whitewater straight to shore, feeling the plank’s firm grip on the water surface. It was fast and sketchy, but the instant my feet hit the deck, I was Hot Curling. Marc caught the next wave and rode it beautifully. Back outside, I asked him how he first fared on this rockerless, finless plank.
“I succeeded in riding a handful of waves on it at Pismo,” he said, squinting into the low sun. “I had to really stay back on the board. The first thing I did was I got up on it and it spun around so fast, I was facing out to sea instantly and I scared the hell out of myself.”
That was in wintry, overhead beachbreak—ideal size and steepness for the Hot Curl, but generally closed-out. Morro Bay’s summer sandbars were tapered, and once I balanced my weight and began mind-surfing the board between sets, waves became ridden from the outside to the sand. Recounting Marc’s advice (Plant the tail into the face of the wave—), I stood with an arc to my back, a slight bend to my knees, mimicking footage I’d seen of Blackie Makaena surfing toward Diamond Head at Canoes in Bud Browne’s Hawaiian Surfing Movies, circa 1950.
Morro Rock could be Diamond Head. Looking south from Atascadero Beach, the curve of the coast down to the Rock resembled the view south from Waikiki. Sitting in the cold water, I could almost sense Blackie at Canoes, or Wally Froiseth out on a big day at Queen’s. The water and air were warmer there, and the men surfed over coral instead of sand, but Atascadero’s early-evening idyll—the backdrop hills, the lack of surfers, the campfires, the sun dropping through clouds into the gray sea—evoked a sublime immunity to the woes of modern surfing. There, with Marc’s guidance, I could Hot-Curl undisturbed, sliding finless into the past, well before my time.
“It’s a really beautiful experience to ride a Hot Curl in any clean wave that’s not a top-to-bottom closeout thumper,” he said.
Sixty years ago, closeouts were rarely ridden. Frequented surf spots were of quality, usually pointbreaks and reefs like Waikiki, Malibu, and San Onofre. Beachbreaks like Morro Bay would have been ridden on smallish, clean, perfect days, like today, and the Hot Curl would have been the perfect board.
World War II, the draft, no wetsuits, no Internet, no cell phones, no crowds, no ocean pollution—life was different for the 1940s-era twentysomething male surfer. Futures were uncertain, many fateful. It was possible that a young enlisted man from southern California, summoned to O’ahu after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, found the Hot Curl: Waikiki, Makaha, and Brown’s were not far.
After Pearl Harbor, John Kelly was ordered to boat around and retrieve dead bodies—the adage “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” comes to mind:
“We would pick up dozens and dozens, lay them out for identification, then put them in boxes for storage. Every once in a while we’d bring a dead Japanese pilot in. We were using those double-size boxes, so you’d put two bodies in instead of one, and I remember laying an American sailor face-to-face with a Japanese pilot, and thinking: who the hell made the decision that these kids had to kill one another? These two boys had no grievances…the outrageousness of the whole thing, the waste—it just about took me over.”
Later, Kelly and Fran Heath served aboard the USS Calcedony ; the captain let them bring Hot Curls. Exotic surf was imminent: the Phoenix Islands, Christmas Island, Palmyra, Midway Atoll—places still far removed from today’s surf-travel map. Yet they are out there, suspended in time, mid-Pacific, soiled with rusty military leftovers, weedy airstrips, and the souls from untold casualties of war. Sixty years on, visitors remain rare, tourism unknown.
Surfing on a Hot Curl—a floating wooden timepiece—withdrew me to that era, years described to me by my grandfather, an army colonel who earned a purple heart in Germany. The frozen screams of Alcatraz were a world distant from Hawai’i and the tropical Pacific, yet the horror and challenge of warfare remained the same for Kelly and Heath, both assigned to Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) duty, an early version of today’s Navy SEALs.
“We considered using surfboards for reconnaissance missions,” Heath said. “That was Kelly’s idea. But, boards are too easily spotted from low-flying aircraft and there’s no protection if you’re spotted, so that idea was scrapped.”
Around the same time back at Morro Bay, the U.S. Navy was staging mock invasions with amphibious landing crafts at the exact beach where I Hot-Curled with Marc. Morro Rock was being quarried for landfill and port improvements, notably harbor entrance’s two 1,800-foot-long jetties, built, at the Navy’s request, for better wartime defense purposes.
Angling shore ward atop the Hot Curl, balanced methodically, learning its rail and tail-suction nuances—I needed no defense. But what if I did? What if I was in my twenties just before the Pe