Where’s Steve? I don’t like it. he should be here by now!
Bali Strickland recounting the words of fellow On The Rock team member, Dave Sparkes. After two weeks of hurrying up and waiting for the Maui event to run and losing his mind in the process, Sparkesy had adopted a pet cockroach, which he named Steve. Every night Steve would turn up out on the porch, Sparkesy would pat him and talk to him about his day. On the last day though Steve never showed, and Sparkesy was freaking, thinking Steve had been on the wrong end of a can of bug spray.
GILMORE HAPPY TODAY, WHOLE NORTH SHORE HAPPY TOMORROW
December 1, Da North Shore
SCARED SHAGLESS
The occasional meth head walking into your room at 3am is the price you pay for staying in one of the ritziest beachfront houses on the North Shore, as Rip Curl cameraman Simon “Shagga” Saffigna found out yesterday.
Skyping into the early hours of the morning, Shagga got the shock of his life when he heard a noise outside his ground floor window. Mustering what little courage he could find, Shags walked over and pulled back the curtains. Staring straight back at him was the ghostly face of a girl, wired and gaunt, 25 going on 50, who looked like she’d applied her lipstick post-icepipe. Momentarily they stared, frozen, a foot apart, separated by just a pane of glass. Then they both screamed. For while the girl looked like an extra from Night Of The Living Dead, Shagga at 3am wasn’t exactly at his freshest either.
“What are you doing?” yelled Shagga once his heart started working again.
“I just saw your house and I had to come up and admire it,” said the girl, twitching in explanation.
“At 3am?”
Three shadowy accomplices down on the beach with torches were enough to convince Shags that she may not have been genuinely inspecting the house to admire the paint job at 3am, and may, instead, have been scoping out how many flatscreens, laptops and surfboards the place had. //SEAN DOHERTY
Feature Story
EVEN HAPPIER GILMORE… STEPH WINS HER SECOND WORLD TITLE
“I hope they like surfing 15 feet Sunset, cause if the girls don’t surf today that’s what they’re gonna get tomorrow! If they don’t run the contest today, tell Steph to get the biggest board she’s got and go paddle out at Kammies. She’ll need to find the tail on that thing before tomorrow.”
Hawaiian guru, Pancho Sullivan was jogging down the beach at Backdoor this morning, coaching on the run. The swell had dropped overnight to a measly three foot, the smallest day of the Hawaiian winter so far, the best day of the year anywhere else in the world. It was hardly life threatening today – that comes tomorrow – but the threat of a fresh, brutal swell marching in overnight saw the girls choose discretion over valour and finish the Roxy Pro today. As it turns out Steph Gilmore didn’t have to surf her 7’8” at Kammies today, instead she paddled out on a 6’0” at Sunset Point and won her second world title.
This morning, Steph wrapping up the title at Sunset was a long shot. The toothsome Gold Coaster needed Sofia Mulanovich to lose her first heat, then she still needed to win the contest herself. During breakfast at the Rip Curl girls’ house it was the elephant in the room. Everyone knew the world title could go down today, but no one dared bring it up… not around Steph, anyway. That was until the youthful exuberance of Bethany Hamilton yelled out, “She’s off to Sunset to win the world title.” The ice broken, everyone chuckled, Steph included. “Going into today I didn’t think it was going to happen, I really didn’t,” Steph said later in the day. “But in the back of your mind you’re getting these occasional warm fuzzies, a feeling that’s something’s going to go down.”
The signs were there early when Sofia bombed in her quarter. Last year Sofia played spoiler at Sunset for Steph’s first world title, but today she looked tentative. Walking down to the beach for her heat she looked long and hard at her back up board, a little unsure whether it was the one she should be riding. She was equally lost once she hit the water, and couldn’t buy a wave. The first domino had fallen. Layne was next when she went out in the semis. Bigger than women’s surfing itself, an eighth world title in her final year on tour was one fairytale too far, and not even her 20 years of surfing Sunset could find her the waves to get out of her semi.
And so it came down to the final. If Brazilian Silvana Lima placed
higher than Steph, the title showdown went to Maui. If Steph won, the
20-year-old would have two world titles from two attempts. It was
looking a lot like Maui for most of the final, as Silvana – the most
explosive surfer on the girls’ tour – surfed tough and fast in the
peaky three footers up Sunset Point.
Needing a 6.8 to take the lead, Steph surfed smart. She let
Silvana paddle inside her up the point, and then she waited. The wide
set came, Silvana was too deep, and Steph nailed the wave of the final.
It was all rail, it was all confidence, and it was all she needed. “I
knew I’d won as soon as I took off on that thing.”
The next 10 minutes were a blur of friends, kisses, cameras,
teeth, hugs, trophies and soundbites. The latter have become as
instinctive to Steph over the past two years as winning. The beach was
a tornado of good vibes with Steph in the eye of it. Standing next to
the stage she found herself suddenly alone.
I instructed her to breathe.
While her first title was ridden home on pure, god given talent,
this one was tougher going. Her four event wins this year were peppered
amongst some bizarre early round capitulations. She won her first world
title as a kid, but you get the feeling her second involved a lot of
growing up. “This year was more about pushing myself in the water, and
learning about being the world champ.”
“Last year I was so focused on competing I wouldn’t even go out
with my friends. I stayed at home and it was all about my surfing. This
year I’ve taken the time out and I’ve travelled with my friends and
I’ve gone out and seen some amazing places like Machu Picchu, the
statue in Rio, and I think having that balance has kept me refreshed.
When I go surfing again afterwards I feel like it’s all new.”
“You know, it’s good that all that hard work has come to
something,” says Steph, pausing as she looks out to the lineup at
Kammies. Fishing for something beyond the bleeding obvious, I ask her
what that might be.
“A world title… and a cold beer on the beach at Sunset.” //SEAN DOHERTY
The Blog
DEC 1: THE RIP CURL TEAM HOUSE VERANDA, OFF THE WALL
Owen Wright’s breakfast plate from yesterday sits on the edge of the railing, the ants taking care of the scrambled eggs Owen missed. Assorted footwear sits scattered by the door, most of it in pairs. A single surf mag that’s been pawed through by every housemate lies dog-eared on the table, its best days over. Drink bottles, snapped legropes, a giant foam novelty hand. Domestic order hasn’t exactly been top of the list here over the past two weeks, and with good reason. It’s been, as Pancho said, “The winter we should have had for the past six years.”
The team house has got Occy living on one side, an extraordinarily hot chick who sunbakes on her back lawn on the other side, and the best view of Off The Wall of any house on the North Shore. As such it’s become a second home for a whole menagerie of hangers on, like ourselves, whose digs look out over a chicken farm. Pipe, Backdoor, and Off The Wall have all had their moments so far this season, culminating in the events of last Friday, November 28. Pipe was – as they can only label in Hawaii – “four-to-12 feet”, and about as good as it gets this early in the season.
From the balcony we looked straight into the guts of the beast, and it was quite a show that afternoon. Big Queenslander Dean Brady caught what Andy Irons called, “the wave of the season” around lunchtime, only for another eight “waves of the season” to supersede it later that afternoon. The show was epic, and the best part about it is that it’s not likely to be the last one we get.
The house itself is huge, three storeys and more bedrooms than I’ve got fingers. The team guys sort them out via the pecking order. In the presidential suite is Mick Fanning. Taylor Knox also sniffs the rarified air on the top level. Taylor flew home to California for Thanksgiving and flew back minus his trademark handlebar moustache. “Don’t worry,” he says reassuringly, “that thing can grow back overnight. It grows back in that shape too, I don’t even have to shave around it.”
Downstairs are the rest of the team guys – Ben Dunn, Ricky Basnett, Stu Kennedy, Owen Wright, Davey Cathels. Down in the dank, dark basement are the photographers – Shagga, Jon Frank and Lord Ted Grambeau – living down amongst the cumulative stench of each other’s wet boardies.
Then there’s the cameos from Pancho Sullivan. He pulled up out the front the other day in his utility with his ride-on lawnmower, bigger than our hire car, in the back. He was on the way to the mechanics, and had stopped in for a surf check and to offer some learned ponderings on the state of the surf. When Panch talks surf, everyone stops and listens.
A quick inspection of the fridge reveals an interesting mix of athlete fodder. The usual fare of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream resides in the freezer, while next door in the fridge an eight-litre bucket of powdered muscle builder sits next to a dozen oysters that have been sitting there for two weeks. We’re hoping Mick’s not saving them for the night before his Pipe heat.
Walking onto the veranda this morning and looking out over the Off The Wall-Backdoor-Pipe stretch, it looked like South Stradbroke breaking over reef. Perfect, offshore-brushed peaks popped up randomly, much to the joy of the whole Curl team house who were amongst it at sparrows fart, 6.30am.
It may be the last time their shortboards see the light of day for a while, because we’re looking at some serious swell, arriving tonight. Depending on who you speak to over here, it ranges from an Eddie swell at Waimea to perfect Third Reef Pipe to the best day at Honolua in 10 years. The whole North Pacific has lit up apeshit over the past week, and this swell hits big and clean tonight, and will hang in there for four days with good conditions. This one’s gonna be sick.
Log on tomorrow and see who got the call right. //SEAN DOHERTY
