Harry, the head coach at Surf Simply, had his birthday last week which always calls for some type of enthusiastically comical beach based shennanigans. Even with an afternoon rain storm creeping in, all the Surf Simply team piled down to the beach with costumes, props and blow up sharks for the Harry Nite comedy invitational.
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Someone once asked me if I’d ever heard of a famous Hawaiian surfer by the name of Eddie Woodgo. If that’s doesn’t make you crack a small smile then here’s a brief explanation of what this Eddie business is all about and why you may have to put everything on hold tomorrow to watch one of surfing greatest events.
Eddie Aikau (below) was a lifeguard on The North Shore (of Oahu) back in the seventies. He charged massive Wiamea Bay without hesitation, hence the popular bumper sticker “Eddie Would Go”. Here at Surf Simply, when we teach etiquette lessons, we discuss the issue of respect and how many surfers believe that respect should only be given to the best surfers or the locals. We believe respect should be given to everyone and Eddie was the embodiment of this. He saved many lives in the water and arguable a few out of it when he stepped in to settle the tensions caused by the influx of Aussie surfers onto Oahu during the birth of professional surfing (’74). There’s an great movie about this called “Bustin’ Down The Door” which every surfer should see.
Eddie sadly died in ’78 when he paddled to get help from a stranded boat 12 miles off the coast of Molokai. He was part of a team trying to recreate the ancient Polynesian migration from Tahiti to Hawaii but the canoe he was in developed a leak and capsized.
In 1987 Quiksilver ran the first ever Eddie Aikua Big Wave Memorial Contest At Wiamea Bay. Each 26 of the world’s best big wave surfers are invited. There is a two month waiting period and the contest will only run if the waves are over 20ft (that’s a Hawaiian 20ft which means more like 30ft on the face). The contest has only been run 8 times in the last 24 years so when the Eddie is on it’s ‘down tools’ for the duration of the event. The big news is that it looks like tomorrow may be the day! Log onto The Eddie contest website to find out the latest news and watch the event live.
The last time the event was run was in December 2009. Everything stopped here at the Surf Simply Resort as we watched the madness unfold on the big TV by the pool. (Check out the highlights below.)
Wiamea Bay has a history all of it’s own which is beautifully outlined in the film Riding Giants (below, which you also have to see if you haven’t already).
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We’re very excited about the upcoming Rip Curl Search event in Puerto Rico. It’s the penultimate of the ten stops on this year’s newly renamed ASP World Title Race (it used to be called the World Championship Tour). The event begins in three days with a waiting period which runs from Oct 30th to Nov 10th. As with most contests they will run the heats over the best 2 or 3 days of surf during the waiting period.
It’s always great when we have an event in a civilized time zone as the action tends to frustratingly culminate at 3 o’clock in the morning during the European leg. More importantly though this is the contest where we are likely to see Kelly Slater become (in our opinion) the greatest athlete of all time by winning a tenth world title. The only other guy left in the race at this stage is South African super star Jordy Smith. Here are the scenarios which will lead to a 10th title for the big man…
- If Slater finishes Equal 3rd or better, he clinches the 2010 ASP World Title.
- If Slater finishes Equal 5th or Equal 9th, Smith must win the event to send the ASP World Title Race to Hawaii.
- If Slater finishes Equal 13th or Equal 25th, Smith must finish Equal 3rd or better to send the ASP World Title Race to Hawaii.
- Essentially, if Smith fails to finish higher than Equal 5th, Slater claims the 2010 ASP World Title.
As if all that wasn’t thrilling enough we may also see Stephanie Gilmore make surfing history by winning her forth world title on the trot. We often use women’s surfing, more than men’s, for demonstrative video coaching here at Surf Simply. The lines drawn by the pro girls are closer to what 99% of experienced male surfers should be trying to achieve. You simply can’t attempt the airs and fin wafts executed by the top guys until you’ve mastered the turns more typical of women’s contest surfing. So if you’re surfing a short board, even if you’re the manliest man in the water, you could do a lot worse than emulating the heavy shredding of Steph Gilmore.
- If Gilmore finishes Equal 3rd or better, she clinches the 2010 ASP Women’s World Title.
- If Gilmore finishes Equal 5th, Fitzgibbons needs to win the event to send the 2010 ASP Women’s World Title Race to Hawaii.
- If Gilmore finishes Equal 9th or Equal 17th, Fitzgibbons needs to finish Runner-Up or better and/or Moore needs to win to send the 2010 ASP Women’s World Title Race to Hawaii.
- Essentially, if Fitzgibbons fails to finish higher than Equal 3rd and/or Moore fails to win the event, Gilmore will clinch the 2010 ASP Women’s World Title.
You can join the Surf Simply family (in a virtual kinda way) watching all the action live at www.live.ripcurl.com.
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The surf has been so fun here in Nosara over the last few days that we’ve all been getting pretty frothed up. Especially because in between sessions we’ve been watching the US Open live webcast. Check out Dane Reynold’s insane ariel that got him a 9.87 (below).
Gem (above), Luke and Sam (below) have all had the photographers snapping away at them in the water too, although the line up in Nosara is certainly a bit more mellow than the 100,000 or so people on the beach at in Huntington this week end.
Don’t miss the webcast as the chance to watch amazing surfers in real time is so invaluable to your own surfing. Much more useful than watching highlight clips pieced together retrospectively. You get to see how much they paddle, how they position themselves and how much they fall. Not to mention the commentators this year (namely Barton Lynch and Rabbit Bartholomew) are among some of the most experienced and articulate surfers on the planet and they provide some real insight into what’s going on. Here’s the link to the US Open webcast, enjoy…
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