Well, here we are in the rain and the slop at Agnes for the annual longboard shenanigans.
Not exactly the way we like it, but there are waves you can stand up on (more or less) and we came here to get wet anyway, so a little fresh with the salt won’t hurt.
But wait … I started to write this column on freaky Friday with the forecast of a very soggy Saturday and Sunday ahead, perhaps as much as 100mm both days, coming in sideways across the beach, fanned by the dreaded northerlies. And when I arrived at the contest site mid-morning Saturday, that was pretty much what we had, but miraculously, by the time our old-timers heat was about to hit the water, the rain had stopped, the sun poked through patches of blue and the onshore wind backed off just enough to offer some clean drops on the increasing swell at the point. Not exactly Aggie at her best, but it would do.
And that was the way the weekend continued, mostly sunny with contestable surf, dropping somewhat on Sunday but still waist-to-shoulder on the sets.
Your humble columnist got pipped for the win in the over 70s, but by a nice bloke and good surfer called Bill Squires, so no complaints. In the other events – the ones where people actually move around a bit on the board – locals Archie Doble and Josh Close shone, along with good performances from Noosa’s Ryder Worthington and Will De King. The more senior stars to shine included Glen Cunningham, the great Ray Gleave, Fenna De King in the senior women, and Noosa Mal Club president Glen Gower, who looked the goods in most of the 20 or so divisions he entered.
With climbing stairs currently off the agenda for Mrs Brine, we traded our own little hacienda downtown for the hospitality of dog whisperer Chris De Aboitiz’s magnificent “270 Degrees” home above his dog-friendly holiday park The Summit, with views stretching from Springs Beach up to 1770.
And here, between heats, we hung out at the pool-house with snacks and beers and grandson Max and his parents. Not a bad way to spend a weekend as most of Queensland got drenched.
Surf shots from the Agnes comp courtesy of our own Fenna De King (@fenna.deking).
Peniche cops a serve
If you stayed up into the wee hours and watched event number three on the WSL world tour calendar, you’ll know that Supertubos didn’t enjoy one of its stellar years, but I’m not sure that Peniche, Portugal, one of my favourite towns on the Atlantic Coast, deserved the clobbering it got from some writers.
Swellnet’s Steve Shearer is for my money the best reporter of the world tour, no-nonsense, concise and no punches pulled. Steve tells it like he sees it, and this is what he saw: “One of the most unloved and unlamented contests drew to a close last night with a few makeable corners amongst side-shore, brown-water, closeouts in the wake of a North Atlantic storm.”
Okay, fair enough. I didn’t watch it all but a lot of what I saw wasn’t pretty. The place they call Super Tubes now wasn’t called that more than 50 years ago when we used to walk up there when the swell wasn’t getting into the rock wall break at the Peniche harbour. The name we gave it was Sardines, after the processing factory in the dunes behind it, from which a river of blood ran out into the ocean, creating a friendly left and right either side. If the blood attracted sharks, we never saw any in two months of surfing there, and mostly you could catch waves without getting a red rinse.
It wasn’t the intense, pounding barrel that it is now, but it could still give you a whack when it was overhead, but by then the left running up to the rock wall would be back on. Ah Peniche. I’ve been back there many times since 1973, and yes, it’s been loved to death. But I still love the old port, the sardines and the cheap wine.
So lay off, Steve!
FOOTNOTE: Josh Constable took out the Golden Breed Noserider Invitational at the Noosa Festival of Surfing last month, but it wasn’t the first time that the 2006 longboard world champ was honoured for his tip time at the Noosa event. Back in 1996, when it was still the Noosa Malibu Classic, a 16-year-old Josh took out the highly prestigious Noosa Blue Hang Ten O’Hooligan Noseriding Award. It was also his first prize money in a surf comp. As publisher of Noosa Blue magazine, it was my pleasure to present him with Graham Wall’s classic cartoon trophy, along with five hundred smackers! Thanks for digging up this great memory, Josh.
