Pipeline

"The passage of time does not diminish the mind's astonishment at how one place can be both so overwhelmingly beautiful and so completely terrifying, all at the same time."

Gerry Lopez, "Surf Is Where You Find It"

It is the most famous, most revered and most photographed wave in the world.
It is also pound for pound the deadliest.  Every year in early December the World Championship Tour comes to a dramatic conclusion over this small but perfectly formed patch of reef in the middle of the North Shore of Oahu's seven mile miracle, and it's about the only time that you'll see just two people at a time sharing the peak at Pipeline.   I mean, there are surf contests, and then there is the Pipe Masters contest.  This year, as is often the case, the title race has come down to the wire:  If the current tour ratings leader (and former 2x world champion) Mick Fanning comes in lower than third place then eleven times former world champion Kelly Slater can snatch the world title away from under his nose with a win in this contest.  Kelly hasn't secured a world title in the final contest of the year since the 1990's (before his retirement and subsequent return to competition) so the stage is set for a dramatic conclusion to the year.  The Pipe Masters is on right now (Sunday evening GMT) and you can watch the action live here.  Even though Joe Turpell somehow still has a job commentating on surf contests it'll definitely worth tuning into over the next couple of days.

Images, top to bottom:

• Splitting the peak; one surfer goes right at Backdoor whilst another takes on the left of Pipeline.
• Winter in Hawaii:  Bring a bigger board and make sure that it has a pointy tail.
• 2000 ASP Men's World Champion Sunny Garcia making the most of a blip of swell one windy afternoon in October 2007.
• The price of Pipe.  Right before you step onto the sand from the Ehukai Beach parking lot, on the left hand side nearest Pipeline, the wire fence hosts a memorial to surfers who have paid the ultimate price surfing Pipe.  Many of them were professional surfers and it stands as a stark reminder of just how dangerous this wave is - just in case you thought you might paddle out and have a crack.

Jump And The Net Will Come

New Years Eve eh?  I enjoy the opportunity that it provides to catch up with friends and make an occasion out of something, but actually I'm much more into New Years Day; starting off a fresh new lap of the sun by doing something fun.  I try to aim to start as I mean to go on, rather than rolling over the start line of January 1st feeling rotten.  

And resolutions...  why now, why midnight tonight?  Why not just decide to do something and get on with it, or making a change when you it occurs to you that you want or need to, rather than waiting for the same day as everybody else.  But resolutions are useful things.  Timely reminders to set the wheels in motion, or a good deadline to take a leap.  
Recently, I found myself juggling so many half-baked, hare-brained projects and silly ideas that I had to sit down and write SMART targets for all of them.  I really needed to prioritise them and set deadlines to give me even a half a chance of achieving just a couple of them, elsewise they'd all be left wallowing  on to-do lists covered in doodles and the brown circles of countless cups of tea.  I needed to check that each project was "Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound" to stop me from going off on tangents or focusing all of my energies on things that really aren't of very much use at all, whilst neglecting more important or achievable projects.  But perhaps the most important thing is just to get on and DO things, rather than just thinking about them (check out this great short picture-book by David Hieatt if you need a bit of help getting started doing).  And that is what New Years Eve is good for.  Tonight, you're standing with your toes curled over the edge.  When the clock strikes midnight, resolve yourself to achieve something this year then lean forward and push off.  In the words of my over-achieving friend Tom, "Jump and the net will come".

Have a great New Years, and a really happy and productive 2013.  I hope you've enjoyed another 52 weeks of gumpf and will stick with An Tor Orth An Mor for the next lap of the sun.  See you out there.  Mat

Image above:  25' down, 4' deep, by Mat Arney.
  

"Not Much Of A Surf Story": Bev Morgan

Bev Morgan is the Forrest Gump of surfing; I'd bet that even readers with an affinity for surf history and culture have only seen his name pop up here and there in books, articles and stories.  But the funny thing about Bev is that, if you dig deep enough, he appears to be the nuts and bolts in many of the major developments in surfing throughout California and Hawaii from the late 40's through to the mid-60's.  He was that guy in the background, involved in what was going on but never standing front and centre.  If you google his name, you'll get a whole lot of stuff come up about the Dive Helmet business that he started in the mid-60's which is one of the world's leaders in dive helmet technology.  But a few images from his days in the midst of surfing will pop up...
  

How entrenched in early Californian surf culture you ask?  This guy has pedigree and a ridiculous number of the sort of incredible stories that you wouldn't have thought could all be attributed to a single man.  Growing up as a teenage friend of Greg Noll and the Manhatten Beach Pier guys, he rode boards shaped by Joe Quigg and Bob Simmons (who shaped him a 6' x 24" wide board in the early 50's which was absolutely unheard of and has since spawned the mini-simmons trend) and glassed surfboards for Dale Velzy and Hap Jacobs.  He was a helicopter rescue diver in the early 50's, jumping out of helicopters to rescue post-war fighter jet test pilots in Los Angeles Bay, opened one of the first wetsuit shops and got big into the fledgling diving scene.  His stories about the impact of domestic detergents replacing soap in American households and it's effect on breaking up sewage effluent and it's subsequent impact on marine life, particularly the molluscs and crustaceans that he dove for, provide a harrowing illustration of overpopulation's impact on the oceans. 

In 1957 Bev sold his share in Dive N' Surf and, along with a group of friends, bought a 61' wooden ketch and spent two years exploring the South Pacific.  On a mission to collect fish samples for Scripps oceanography institute from the Cococs Islands, they discovered that the reason why nobody had done it before was because of the ferocious and inquisitive sharks, so they dove as a team with shark billys to bash the teethy fish on the nose and scare them off whilst they collected samples.  On Easter Island they were formally requested by the island elders to "contribute to the gene pool", then retrieved artifacts from the  HMS Bounty on Pitcairn Island.  Upon his return he did a stint as a photographer at Surfer magazine then got into wetsuits and started the company that would eventually turn into Bodyglove.  He hung with Pat Curren in Hawaii surfing and spear fishing, trading half their catch for gas for their car.  He  smuggled lobster into the USA from mexico by plane with a load of friends and then took a freighter and two bulldozers down to try to bring back a mile long load of pearl shell to sell to the button business (the shells were delaminated and the whole scam failed).  When he finally settled back in LA he spent a significant amount of time bodysurfing the Newport Wedge with Mickey Munoz and Phil Edwards, where Joe Quigg and Carter Pyle developed swim fins by getting a dead frozen porpoise from Marineland, cutting off the tail and used the forms to make fins on tennis shoes.  Bev then developed his diving helmet business, using all of his experience in both diving and in advanced composites from the surf industry to make the first significant advances in diving helmets in 150 years.  He now lives in Santa Barbara and, when approached by The Surfer's Journal, claimed that he "didn't really have much of a surf story to tell"...  I would disagree Bev.

Bev Morgan's story is absolutely amazing.  The closest he's got to any sort of biography is an article in The Surfer's Journal where he tells the stories behind a load of photos from his extensive personal collection, called "More Than My Share".  You can buy it as a downloadable pdf from The Surfer's Journal here.

Wish I Was There...

It's the middle of December. Hand's up who'd quite like to be in Hawaii right now?

The (fully functional) mosaic tile ukelele was made by an artist friend of my housemate. It's for sale so drop me a line if you're interested and I'll put you in touch. Print by Hawaiian artist Heather Brown.