By PHIL JARRATT
Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing open all divisions
With the opening of all remaining specialty, pro and team events for entries last weekend, the Cricks Noosa Festival of Surfing has been deluged with entries from around the world, including 10 entries in the Deus Body Womp Comp from California’s Del Mar Bodysurfing Club.
This club, from North County, San Diego, hasn’t been around very long, but its members have already posted some incredible results in international bodysurf competition, including 12 finalists in last August’s World Bodysurfing Championships in Oceanside, California. Senior club member Dr Chris Lafferty, who will compete at the Noosa Festival, won his second consecutive age division (55-64) world title at Oceanside, defeating multiple world champion Mark Cunningham of Hawaii, who was patron of the inaugural Noosa womp comp last March.
Sunday morning coming down
An American publication recently asked me to recall the best surfing I had ever witnessed, as opposed to seeing on TV or a surf movie. It was a tough ask, because I’ve been privileged to see many of the greats of our sport in action over half a century, from Bobby Brown to Kelly Slater and beyond. But I kept coming back to a rather unlikely morning in the north of England with the Sunshine Coast’s most famous (and well-loved) surfing boofhead. This is part of what I wrote:
Gary “Kong” Elkerton and I were on our way to a Quiksilver promotion in Cornwall, but we flew into London’s Stansted Airport a couple of days early, rented a car and drove north, not west. We were both on somewhat sketchy ground at the time, me as marketing boss, him as a leading team rider, as the new French management at Quiksilver Europe didn’t seem too much like our irreverent Aussie style. Very few people in the company knew where we were, but we were in fact on a very important mission. Multiple UK champion and big wave charger Gabe Davies was about to marry his sweetheart Lauren, and his bucks’ party was being held that night in his home village near Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Yorkshire.
On arrival, Kong and I checked into a hotel and made straight for a bar on the town’s cobble-stoned main square, where we were soon knocking back pints of beer with many of Europe’s leading surfers. By the wee hours, we were all running half-naked around that same square, chasing a manacled Gabe to perform all sorts of now-forgotten tortures on him.
So it was a good night but not such a good morning, when veteran Cornwall surfer Joe Hargreaves came to pick us up for a surfing rendezvous on the reef at Staithes, the picturesque little North Sea port where James Cook was indentured as a shipwright before sailing off to claim Australia for the Brits. I don’t think anyone really wanted to surf, but hey, we were surfers and there was swell.
Kong sparked up big-time when we parked in the port and looked out over a pretty overhead line-up with only a few surfers in the water, despite the advanced hour. The water was dirty and cold, but Kong seemed not to notice as he streaked past our more sedate paddling, wearing just a wetsuit vest and trunks, befitting his super jock self-image of the time. We were still paddling when he swung around and streaked into a steep left, pulled hard off the bottom and took the full weight of the oncoming section on his large and almost-square head. As he surfaced, a torrent of abuse echoed off the cliffs behind the historic port.
We were all having a shocker, but midway through the session, Kong picked up a smaller reef runner deep inside and milked it down the line. It was a game-changer and he started picking off set waves at will. No one was going to argue. As every journeyman surfer knows, the next best thing to miraculously pulling off such a manoeuvre yourself, is to be in the moment when a true power surfer turns with full force and showers you with spray. Kong smashed the lip harder with every wave, and several times I could have reached out and high-fived him.
Perhaps it was just the up-close and personal perspective, but I was there when Kong won all three of his world Masters titles, and I never saw him surf better than he did that hung-over Sunday morning in Yorkshire, England.
Last Paradise encore
Clive Neeson’s Last Paradise returns to Noosa this weekend, with a screening at Noosa Cinema 5pm at 6.30pm on Saturday, plus some special showings at local schools. If you’ve missed it previously, here’s your chance to catch up with this beautifully photographed grand surfing adventure.
