Surftime Magazine

Strength grows in the moments when you think you can’t go on but you keep going anyway. Remember this, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Pete De Vries facing a moment of cold truth somewhere in the wilds of Tofino, Canada. Photography by Marcus Paladino

Despite the dreamy wave, it’s not all sunshine and unicorns for the visiting Bules at the Desert Point interchange. More often than not they find themselves jockeying for the inside rail in moments as hairy as the Kentucky derby. Still, surfers like Zeke Szekely, stuck in the middle here, know that success is just a matter of hanging on after others have let go. Photography by Pete Frieden

World Champion Marco Luciano Occhilupo, Big Wave World Champion Shane Dorian, World Champion CJ Hobgood, Eddie Aikau Champion Bruce Irons, Three time World Champion Andy Irons. Digging on the Mentawai vibe during the OP Pro Boat Trip Challenge, 2001. Has there ever been a more talented and accomplished group of close friends in the history of surfing? Who would be the five man equivalent of today? And who of those new five will be going on to unquestioned legendary status in their careers? History changing surfers don’t come along that often. But at this moment in time, five of them gathered on the bow of a boat a long way from home and smiled for the camera. A simple moment in the complicated lives of five unforgettable surfing greats. Photography by Tom Servais.

After witnessing the phenomenal performances at the Rip Curl Cup this year, we thought it might be time to remind everybody of just how far surfboard design has evolved. Tom Blake, circa 1929 on the left and 1924 on the right, with his cutting edge blades that he built himself. Now imagine yourself riding any one of these things at Padang Padang and you’ll get the idea of what we are trying to say here. Still, these were innovative and cutting edge boards then and the lineage of all surfboard design can be traced through the ages directly to the high-performance boards under your feet right now. This might be a good time to go see your shaper with a case of beer and thank him for your magic modern machines.

What a time it was. And what an artist to capture it. By 1970 the shortboard revolution had taken us to places on waves we could never have imagined. And, due to the prevalent drug culture of the times, to places in our minds as well. And it took a surfer/artist like Rick Griffin to manifest the cosmic vision. Famous for his flying eyeball Jimi Hendrix posters and putting the Grateful Dead on the map with his electro skulls, when Griffin turned his mind to his first love of surfing, it became ours. Let us never forget the “Murphy: cartoons of Surfer Magazine either. All said, Rick Griffin captured an era in ink. An era that still resonates today in Bali, especially in Canggu. Take good look at these pieces. One a spectacular naivety in comic cold water form and the other a reflection of the mother ocean (Which was also the poster for a seminal surf movie by John Severson). All told, an inner vision of the times from an surfer who was deeply connected to the sublime beyond the edg...

Now listen, I have two development projects on two islands, two ex wives, chewing on me, I got two savage pre-teen daughter pullin’ the plug on my bank account, I got a Covid lockdown, my business is in shambles, and now I have been invited on this hell trip to Mentawai with my surf star friends and I am in Sumbawa and I have to be at the Bali airport by dawn and because the Bima airport is shuttered I am going to have to drive to Bali with precious little time to spare for the whole goddamned thing. So I did what any self-respecting surfer would. I bet the farm. So now, my clock is ticking. I leave my kids here at Lakey Peak with their Indonesian. Grandma, you know, it takes a village and all that, I load up and start driving across Indonesia again to get back to my place on Bali. By myself, three islands, 24 hours straight, of hairy roads and sketchy ferries and I am all alone. Driving at night, which is suicide in some parts of Lombok, with bandits and downed power lines and cra...

My Khe Beach in Vietnam is not all that far from Kuta Beach. But in history it’s more than a world away. Especially in the early 70’s, right around the time our great surf in Bali was being discovered by the outside world. Surf was being discovered at My Khe too. But under completely different circumstances. The Vietnam war was in full swing. And it’s blood ran right into the line-up at My Khe. A beach that the western servicemen called China Beach. Think about the following the next time you paddle out. From the Encyclopedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw: You’d be surprised how perfect China Beach would get,” US Serviceman Larry Martin recalls. “The monsoon season was unreal, with huge waves up to 12 feet′”. For Martin, China Beach was a serviceman’s dream. “A guy’s been in the jungle for six weeks, tensed up the whole time, shot at, then he comes in and finds a surfboard. He paddles out and forgets about Vietnam. It makes him remember the old days in California. It didn’t look l...

SPEAKING OF PRO SURFER’S PERSONAL FILMERS, IT’S LIKE AN S&M RELATIONSHIP. It’s a life of purgatory and submissivness for the filmer. I mean, here we are in the Mentawai, on the boat for lunch in the A/C, and this poor filmer guy is on the beach just getting irradiated by the sun. Like a roasting 8-hour X-ray. These Filmer guys are just tortured all day long. Guys like Jacob, Griffin’s filmer, they get dropped off on the beach and it's hotter than hell. I mean, we’re one degree below the equator and they have to sit there, on the edge of a bug-infested jungle and take it like a nanny on the playground, trying to keep an eye on the kid, for absolutely every second. Literally every second of the day, these filmers have to watch their little men. Frame by frame. Capturing every move their little man makes. Imagine having to do a ten-hour selfie. Now imagine doing it for someone else? A thankless job. Dawn to dusk, waiting and watching for your little man to have the time of his ...

WIN AN ALL EXPENSE PAID 4 DAYS 3 NIGHTS STAY AT BOBBY’S G-LAND CAMP How to enter: Simply mention @surftime_magazine and @bobbysgland when posting your latest video or photo in your stories and follow@surftime_magazine and @bobbysgland. Our team will be looking through all stories that mention @surftime_magazine and @bobbysgland We will be regularly sharing chosen stories and saving them to our highlights for judging by our panel of judges made up of local pro’s and surf industry leaders. ANYONE can enter. No age limit. Enter as many times as you want, as often as you want. Entry period from September 1 – November 30, 2022 And don’t worry, there will be Surftime Prize packs for all the runners up, so there is plenty of ways to win. Dream it, live it. A Grajagan dream trip has never been easier to win. Winners will be announced in the next issue of Surftime Magazine. So get on it and we will see you at Bobby’s G-Land Camp!

If you think fate is unpredictable, try tempting it. Koki Hendrawan maintains his line and his composure just inches away from a spinning prop that could spell the end. A few minutes later the guy in the boat was slammed by a set, capsized and dragged across the reef. Cameras and pride were both lost. Padang Padang can be the supreme teacher of the thin red line between confidence and arrogance. Step over it and you are gonna get tapped. Photography by Pete Frieden

We hear the groom was a surfer. Making this day all about the agony and the ecstasy. But which was which? Choices, choices. Still…If you can’t love two things at once, there is something wrong with you.

Yes, it they were supposed to blow minds. Both of these images. The artwork is Rick Griffin’s 1970 masterpiece which was a poster for the seminal surf movie of the time “Pacific Vibrations”. A film that explored the themes of the hallucinogenic movements of the era. A time when imagination ruled surfing. Where “Futuristic” boards and designs reigned our earth. A time that inspired everything from open minds to blown minds, of space boards and being spaced out. A wildly productive time that hurdled the evolution of surfing into the collective conscious stratosphere. An influence that still resonates today. An influence that has led to the unimaginable, no matter how many drugs were taken back then. Foil surfing. Surfing above the waves, flying really, perhaps to achieve the purest connection a surfer has ever had with a wave’s kinetic powers. Jimi Hendrix dreamed of it with his “Axis Bold as love”. Connecting his guitar into the energy that leads to the center of the earth. Billy Ke...