For the first time in three years, the Noosa Festival of Surfing got off to a first day flyer with a solid east swell producing excellent waves at First Point for the junior, teams and family heats, although the hard-breaking waves proved a challenge for the surfing dogs.
Since the festival changed management in 2019, it has been plagued with a lack of quality waves on Noosa’s fabled points forcing a move to the West Beach breaks, followed by two years of Covid date changes and competitor cancellations. All of that seemed behind the event this year, with borders reopened and a constant stream of swell since January, and then along came the floods.
While many competitors had to cancel at the last minute because they simply couldn’t get to Noosa, local surfers plugged some of the holes and opening weekend was mainly fine with good to very good waves. And the good vibes in the crowded Beach Bar after surfing had finished attested to that.
In recent years the quality of surfing in the junior events has gone from good to great to outstanding, and much of the heavy lifting has been done by our local groms. Last weekend, in challenging conditions, two locals who have learnt their chops at the Noosa Malibu Club took out the doubles with some incredible surfing. Mia Waite won the under 15 girls and then repeated against older opposition, taking out the under 18 girls. Landen Smales did the same thing in the boys. And the standard of surfing throughout these events was excellent.
In the family challenge, in which two generations of a family compete as a team, Noosa Malibu Club president Glen Gower and daughter Jade won, but it was wonderful to see an iconic father and son combo from Victoria’s Surf Coast come home third. Dad Maurice Cole is one of Australia’s greatest surfboard shapers and was a champion back in the day, while son Damian is breaking new ground in sustainable surfboards as well as campaigning for the environment. Neither of them really ride longboards, but while here as guest speakers they thought, why not?
The GemLife Seniors, which got underway on Sunday, saw your columnist graduating to the oldest age bracket (over 70s) for the first time and taking a win in the first round. Mind you, a significant number of senior surfers were stuck in the floods across the border, which may have had something to do with it.
Out of the surf, the Solbar Beach Bar proved a huge hit over the weekend, with its tasteful teepees and cool grooves, with off-beach entertainment venues joining in during the week.
I’ll have a full report on the surf festival next week.
Meanwhile, in Portugal
Having surfed and enjoyed the festival all weekend, it was tough for your columnist to go home and watch a surfing event on the other side of the world into the wee hours, but that is what he did.
Partly this was because Sunday produced possibly the best waves ever seen at the Peniche Pro in Portugal, and partly it was because Peniche has been a place of the heart since I first surfed it almost 50 years ago. Back then, the barreling break in front of the sardine factory was a place we walked to only when the waves off the harbour rock wall weren’t breaking, and while we enjoyed surfing it, we weren’t that crazy about the river of sardine blood that flowed into the channel we paddled out through.
Decades later it was discovered by the pro tour and given the name Supertubos, and we’ve seen many wild and crazy deep barrels ridden there over the years, but we’ve never seen anything quite like the perfection of last Sunday. It was a barrel feast, and while there were some stellar performances from the usual suspects, like John Florence, Italo Ferreira and Filipe Toledo, it was the young Californian Griffin Colapinto who really stood out, scoring the year’s first perfect 10 on Sunday and bringing home the bacon with his first tour event victory in much smaller conditions on Monday.
In the women’s, our Steph Gilmore put in a much improved performance to finish equal third, but Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb was the gal to beat throughout and took the final from California’s Lakey Peterson.
