Surftime Magazine

“Christa is probably the person who shoots the most, especially on big days,” says Hawaiian big wave master Mark Healy in the new documentary, First In, Last Out. The documentary details Christa’s story from her beginnings as a competitive swimmer to joining the Coast Guard and her determined rise through the ranks of A-list surf photographers on surfing’s grandest stage, Oahu’s North Shore. With her hair flipped over her helmet, and her head bobbing in the channel as she swims for hours, she makes for a unique site in male-dominated lineup. Nathan Florence says, “We’ll go out for a morning session and surf for a few hours and then go in. “When we come back out, hours later, Christa’s still out there; she’s out from dark till dark.” Here she is discussing the journey of her life and the making of the film. On Beginnings: Christa Funk: Well, I didn’t just hop into the water at Pipe right off the bat. I started with small days at Sandys, then small days in town, small days a...

This spring I got my first taste of surfing in British Colombia, and I haven’t been able to get it off my mind since. The people, the place, the waves, the water, the Canadian surfing experience is something special. It cuts down to the core of why we all started chasing waves in the first place. Adventures into the unknown, abundant wildlife, wild weather and the opportunity to create some deep, core surfing memories. Even if it does take full wetsuit booties and gloves. A few weeks ago Canadian photo ace Marcus Paladino reached out to me and shared that he was holding some nice shots from the last couple months. Indulging my newfound love for Canadian waves, I asked him to send some photos along. His trove of A-plus images didn’t disappoint. In fact, it did quite the opposite. It inspired me to go back. I’m based in San Clemente, California, and summertime in Southern California can be a bit of a drag. Traffic, clogged lineups. And to be honest, the surf this summer has b...

It’s odd that, historically speaking, the tube remained uninhabited territory for so long. The conventional line is that it was the board’s fault, that those big, heavy balsas and longboards were too crude, too ungainly to fit into that hollow space between the lip and the face. I’m of the opinion that it wasn’t a failure of the board, but of the imagination. Case in point: two examples of what would someday become the modern tube ride, filmed in the early 1960s and featured in Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer, the most successful surfing documentary of all time. In the film’s Waikiki sequence, surfer Wayne Miyata is shown doing what Brown describes as “the ultimate thing,” wheeling his big board in from behind the peak at a hollow little wave called “Garbage Hole,” pulling in under the lip, completely disappearing from view, then exiting the curl cleanly; Miyata even gives us the first modern claim. Why Town surfers didn’t start riding Kaisers Bowl in the same manner for another fiv...

It’s six in the morning. Kuta wakes you up slowly. Not with alarms, but with heat. The kind that pushes through thin hotel curtains and stale fan air. The smell of frangipani drifts in from somewhere outside, sweet and unmistakably Balinese, and before long the streets begin calling. A quick Bali coffee. A rushed breakfast. Then the familiar march toward the beach. Jalan Legian is already alive. The coffee leaves that earthy bitterness on your teeth as scooters buzz past and last night’s memories flicker in fragments. Bintangs, neon lights and bad decisions dissolving into the humid dawn. In Kuta, nights blur at the edges. Every few meters someone calls out an offer. “Massage, boss?” “Transport?” “Bintang towel?” The soundtrack never changes. Then, finally, past the imposing stone beach gates, warming in the dawn, and then feet hit sand. Boards get waxed under a rising tropical sun while the first empty waves roll across the inside section at Kuta Beach. The surf isn’t perfect. You...

“Everyone had their own addiction problem. Everyone was hiding it. We all just turned into these closet-case, drug-addict monsters.” For us humans, the truth is often really tough to accept. Especially when that honesty requires a higher level of self-examination: when families have been destroyed or people have died due to reckless lifestyles. Bruce Irons’ quote, above, from the 2018 documentary, Andy Irons: Kissed by God, drips with tragic honesty, as he weaves his family’s story without pretense or bullshit, while interview cuts from surfing royalty corroborate his sordid tale. Remembering that Bruce narrated the documentary with that level of honesty unnerved me. After watching it again I almost wanted to tap out in the middle of it. It’s like a Greek tragedy, supported by a cast of gifted players. Only these players weren’t acting. They lived it in the most painful of ways. There is no blaming others in Bruce Irons’ narrative, as he blatantly states. No asking why there wa...

“Under water, time takes the shape of waves. I listen to the clash and the silence mingling beneath the surface. I end up looking at what the eye cannot see: the states of matter; the hidden folds of the wave; the ever-changing schemes of the sea.” -Ben Thouard- You can purchase Ben Thouard’s fine art book, Aqua Obscura and others at http://benthouard.com Photographer Ben Thouard’s

The world of guiding visiting surfers in Sanur’s line-ups clearly defies surfing’s traditional etiquette, which gives the right of way to the surfer closest to the peak (a time honered system that allows the best surfers to get the best waves as lesser surfers pay their dues as they attempt to climb up the ladder). But on one of the happiest islands in the world, surf guiding, or rather, hiring a local to strong arm waves for you, usually leaves a bad aftertaste with visitors. Is it fair? To the locals, certainly. They are making a living using their local resources. But from the visitor’s point of view, is it exclusive of those with the financial means to pay for waves? Let’s call him Wayan. He was born in Sanur, and he runs his own guiding program now after working for foreign-owned surf camps and hotels his entire life. He and his apprentice, we’ll call him Ketut, met while surf guiding for a camp that catered mostly to German surfers. When Wayan was encouraged by his elders to ...

Kya Heuer got beat up. It happened while she was paddling out into a heavy set at a harrowing Eastside wave that rarely, if ever, sees women in its line-up. But Kya is no ordinary woman. Trained literally since birth in the pounding, below sea level barrels of the Mentawai, (Kandui Lefts is in her front yard), Kya is a fearless surfer with a fine tuned ability in gaping eight foot barrels. But accidents do happen. And when she found herself driven face first into the reef that day on the Eastside, she came up with what could have been a life-changing wound on the side of her face. But, staying calm amid all the blood and the pain and the rescue from her friends, Kya and her cohort made it to the hospital and into a special plastic surgery theatre that, quite frankly, saved her considerable beauty. Immediately following surgery, we found Kya Heuer sitting up in her hospital bed in her normal clothes, with over one hundred stitches on the side of her face, sitting up as if what hap...

By Rio Waida (The following is the entire narration transcript for PERTAMA, the new short film featuring the life of Rio Waida. After a number of popular premieres on the island, Surftime is honored to offer these heartfelt words from Rio in hopes that they will inspire the next generation). “I am Rio Waida. The first Indonesian surfer in history to make it to the world stage of professional competition surfing”. “I knew pro surfing. Would happen to me. My dreams were too powerful for it not to happen”. “I never dreamed that I would carry the Olympic flag for my country on the biggest athletic stage in the world”. “Entering the Olympic stadium. I felt like I was walking on a cloud. But I also felt the weight of Indonesia on my shoulders. And all I could think of was to stand up straight and try not to weep with pride”. “I know that I must carry the spirit of my past into the future. The spirit of my struggles, the spirit of my family, of my dreams, of my island, of my country....

Photography by Pete Frieden • Words by Michael Ciaramella What was the moment in your 2025 championship year where you felt the most doubt? Yago : I think it was at Pipe at the beginning of the year. I had all the preparation. I was feeling ready. And then going into that event, which is one I really like, I love surfing Pipe, the waves were terrible for my first few rounds and I ended up losing in the elimination round. It’s just tough to start like that after preparing so well and feeling so ready to start the season. It was bad, but I think it also set me up for the rest of the year in a weird way. What was the moment where you thought, “This is my year to become the best in the world”? Yago : I felt like that before the year even started. But during this season, I think it was after the Portugal win. I didn’t start the season that well in the past, but I’d have some really big results in the back half of the season. But to start the season with the win and a couple othe...

As told by Tai Buddha Graham • Photography by Harve There’s a particular kind of freedom that only comes from loading up a boat with a pile of boards, a few of your closest mates, and a loose plan built around tides, wind lines, and gut instinct. You step onboard, switch the world off (or try too), look at the horizon, and feel that little spark flick on inside your chest again. This trip was that spark, turned into a fire. THE IDEA WAS SIMPLE Take a hand-selected crew of friends who each know waves and equipment inside-out, take thirty-odd JS surfboards, jump aboard the infamous MV Bintang, and point the bow toward the Mentawai. Not to film a clip. Not to tick off a bucket list. But to ask a single question: What is the ultimate quiver for the Ments? SETTING SAIL The Bintang vessel is a beast. A big monohull sailing sloop with soul, history and enough character to fill a book. When she’s loaded with boards and pointing west, you can feel a sense of score certainty. Day one ...

Photography by Manu Miguelez and Pete Frieden Words by Matt George So far their lives have not been measured by clocks, but by the tides. Our free range youth of the Indonesian surf culture. But the thing is kids think they know better. And they don’t. Think they are in control. And they’re not. And they think they have all the time in the world. And they don’t. In reality, time has them. And the clock is ticking. And if they do not use the brief power of youth wisely, that ticking becomes the sound of a time bomb. It is one of the premiere issues of the free range children conundrum of the surfing scene in Bali. With perfect surf year round, rides to the beach from single mom’s since birth, new boards on tap, club contests every weekend, vague parental supervision and no real thought toward any formal education, paradise becomes a paradox. A situation that appears self-contradictory but may hold a deeper truth. The truth of what reality awaits these young surfers when they...

Photography by Pyzel Archives Jon Pyzel’s pedigree runs much deeper than just being the shaper for the best surfer on the planet. You gotta go back a bit. As a teen surfer kid in Santa Barbara, Jon Pyzel was close witness to the birth of the 80’s Tommy Curren era and Al Merrick’s subsequent global design dominance. A powerful influence that caused Jon to pivot his dreams from a pro surfing career to an underground shaping career. At first mentored by shaper Matt Moore of the famed Rincon Designs surf shop (that was within sight of California’s best point break), Jon upped stakes when he moved to the North Shore in 1992. It was there, now mentored by maestro shaper Jeff Bushman and possessing a keen interest in modernizing the Hawaiian designs that came before his time, that Jon Pyzel developed a reputation as a shaper for the future. As it happened, John John Florence and his family lived right next door. A lifelong friendship with the Florence family grew and soon Jon Pyzel was ...

It’s a rare move within the surfing industry when a sponsor sets out to make a high quality, dramatic short film about one of their team riders. And not just a clip of his latest action in the water, but a very personal profile of what makes a certain surfer click. His very personal story, his motivations, his inner thoughts. But that is exactly what Nusa Cana, Indonesia’s leading rum company, set out to do with Pertama, the Rio Waida movie. Sparing no expense, Nusa Cana, who are also “bringing back the forgotten story of Indonesian rum”, wanted to highlight the rise of Rio Waida as a metaphor for their own company’s rise within its industry. And provide a re-invigorated passion for the beauty of Indonesia and its surfers. And indeed, something very special happened. Shooting between Australia, Bali and Abu Dhabi with four RED cameras and the best shooters behind the lenses, not only is the footage of this film remarkable, but a strong sense of purpose comes through. Never do...