30 Days on the North Shore

Blue Crush is real. Remember it?

“… Nothing gets between Anne Marie and her board. Living in a beach shack with three roommates including her rebellious younger sister, she is up before dawn every morning to conquer the waves and count the days until the Pipe Masters surf competition. Having transplanted herself to Hawaii with no one's blessing but her own, Anne Marie finds all she needs in the adrenaline-charged surf scene ... until pro quarterback Matt Tollman comes along. Like it or not, Anne Marie starts losing her balance - and finding it - as she falls for Matt...” or something like that.

Well check this out. Yesterday, after fighting the war against terror out at rampaging Pipeline and watching Greg Emslie and Dave Weare get a step closer to sealing the deal, we celebrated life with an epic sundowner session.It started at 4PM, and ended at 8PM when myself, Dan Redman, Ricky Basnett and Rudy Palmboom somehow found ourselves walking through the gate of a nondescript looking house at Backyards.

Once inside the gate, I saw that we weren’t at just any house, we were at the Backyards channel marker house, recognisable from the water as the small white spot, with yellow trim and palm trees out front. And if ever there was a quintessential Hawaiian beach house that you have always imagined, this was it. We walked through the back gate and were greeted by a small lawn of soft lush grass, which hosted a barbeque spot, some loungers and stretched to a rocky border fringed with palm trees. Beyond the rocks lay the beach, and a lazy half moon sat in the sky shining silver on the wild surf, a moonshadow path reflecting across the ocean’s surface.

The house itself was wooden, with high ceilings and massive windows facing the shore, and inside on retro cane beach furniture sat Stephanie Gilmore, Karina Petroni and the Gadauskis brothers: Pat, Tanner and Dane.

The brothers are the ultimate California surfers: all blond hair, crazy blue eyes, golden tans and yes, they say dude. A lot.

One of them was fixing a surfboard, another was reading a magazine and the other was pretty interested in us. You are forgiven for not knowing who the Gadauskis brothers are, so here is a brief overview from the Vans Triple Crown media snack from yesterday:

“Californian Patrick Gudauskas took credit for the highest scoring ride of the day - a 9.66 out of 10, and his twin Dane took credit for the perhaps the biggest wave of the day. Both advanced, Pat eliminating his younger brother Tanner in their heat.
Pat is ranked 16th on the Qualifying Series and needs to make it to the semi finals of this event for a berth on the 2009 ASP World Tour. He was thoroughly barreled on the triple overhead wave and claims this to be the biggest surf he's competed in. Neither of his brothers can qualify.”

Stephanie, the 20 year old Australian two times women’s surfing world champion sat on one of the couches, her blond hair loose over her shoulders, quietly strumming a guitar. On another couch sat Karina, number 14 in the world, still in her bikini from the day’s surfing, eating spaghetti.

We drank beer and spoke surfing for a couple of hours. Someone sang a song, someone lit a fire. We were stoked on a killer day of surf, and sharing our experiences.

I was inside the dream lifestyle that is fed to readers of surfing magazines worldwide, that is sold in every Roxy store, and is behind a lot of girl’s first waves. It felt like I had wandered onto the set of Blue Crush, the movie that launched millions of per-pubescent girls onto their first waves.

And it made me think. Corporate surfing has become all about marketing and dream selling, product placement and endorsement, sales and stock prices. But sometimes, like sunbeams through cloud, the real spirit of surfing shines through. And that gives me hope.