By Phil Jarratt
It takes about an hour and 20 minutes to fly from Maroochy Airport to Sydney, and in that time last Saturday I had three frothing phone messages from film-maker Tim Bonython.
I listened to them as I walked through the terminal to the car rentals.
“Ma-a-a-ate! It’s the swell of the century … on a flight tonight … gonna be (expletive deleted) epic, ma-a-a-a-ate!”
I called Australia’s best known swell chaser right back, knowing what he was going to tell me.
He was packing his cameras and flying out for Nazare, Portugal that night.
But there was no need to worry. He would be back in time to join filmmaker Greg Huglin at the Shooting Monsters luncheon on Monday, 6 March as part of the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing.
Indeed, he expected to shoot some of the biggest monsters ever ridden and would edit a piece for the lunch on his laptop during the plane-ride home.
I wished him a safe and productive trip and rang off.
Before I’d finished renting a car he’d messaged me the reason for the rushed trip, and for his frothing – a swell map showing the biggest North Atlantic storm cell I’d ever seen.
This is what it’s like when you’re a serious swell chaser.
The planets align, the map goes red and you’re off!
Here in Noosa we get excited about a bit of green out in the Coral Sea.
There we’re talking about a massive storm forming north of Greenland and creating mid-ocean waves of 150 feet or more, tapering down to a mere 80 to 90 feet as they crash into the rugged coast of Portugal between Porto and Lisbon, and finding a deep-water entry point at the picturesque fishing village of Nazare, an hour’s drive north of Portugal’s surfing centre, Peniche.
I know the area well, having spent an entire summer in Peniche in 1973, and it always baffles me that Nazare has lately become famous as home to the biggest rideable waves in the world.
We swam in the calm, chilly water of Praia do Norte (North Beach) but never saw a wave break there.
I suppose that was a bit like tourists who look at Waimea Bay in mid-summer and don’t believe it gets huge in winter.
This time of year it can be cold and miserable in Nazare, but Bonython is used to that.
In January 2016, while other swell chasers were tracking swells across the tropical Pacific, he was holed up at Nazare for a month, waiting for the biggest days for his long-awaited “Big Wave Project” film.
And he was back there in December when Australia’s Jamie Mitchell won the inaugural Nazare Challenge, part of the WSL Big Wave Tour, in incredibly tricky 40-foot waves, narrowly avoiding a potentially fatal two-wave hold-down.
Just two months later, Mitchell is one of the surfers joining Bonython in Portugal in the hope of riding waves twice that big, and so creating history.
I can’t wait to see what footage Tim brings home this time, and hopefully it will form a major part of his presentation, alongside Noosa’s own legendary swell chaser, Greg Huglin, at the luncheon at El Capitano next Monday.
Tickets have been selling fast, but jump onto www.noosafestivalofsurfing.com/shooting-monsters right now and you might still be lucky. But don’t come if you get vertigo!
King of skim takes to wake
About a dozen years ago, when, for my sins, I was working in California, the only saving grace was that the company rented us a little cottage at Laguna Beach with fantastic views of the sun setting over Catalina Island.
There wasn’t much surf at Laguna, but I used to like to walk down from our house to the Victoria Street beach access and watch the skim-boarders perform.
Oh, I’d seen skimboarders in various parts of the world for years, but nothing like this!
Victoria Street, as it turned out, was pretty much the skimboard capital of the world, and the locals ripped.
I was back there a week or two ago, and they’re still ripping!
Around about the time we came home from California, a guy named Austin Keen from Savannah, Georgia, who was raised on the pretty much surf-less waters of Tybee Island, had driven his 1975 BMW across America to join the Laguna skim crew.
Within a couple of years he was the best of the best at Victoria Street, and in 2013 he was crowned world champion of skimboarding.
The following year he was named “most influential athlete in wave sports”, next to Kelly Slater.
Too much is never enough for Austin Keen, and in 2015 he decided to become the best in the world at wake-surfing.
Guess what? He is.
It’s in this latest guise that this incredible wave-rider is coming to the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing, leading the Chaparral Wake-Surf Challenge, which will see champion surfers testing their skills riding top to bottom wake waves created by the Chaparral custom wake-surf boat out in Laguna Bay.
But Austin will be spreading the love, and showcasing his skills throughout the festival.
Finally, don’t forget the Festival’s “soft opening” on Friday afternoon, with Darren Mercer’s Noosa Surf Club ironman legends providing an exhibition, the Nippers strutting their stuff, and world champion body surfer Mark Cunningham from Hawaii leading a legends body bash.
The beach bar will be open and the action starts at 4pm.
