Today saw 35-year-old Pancho Sullivan’s Dream Tour come to an end.

For most 35-year-old Dream Tourists it would be a moment of hollowing emotion, a decade-and-a-half in the making. Most pro surfers retire not having known any other way of life, the thought of moving on reducing them to tears.

Pancho is not most pro surfers.

The hulking Hawaiian only qualified for the Dream Tour three years ago as a 32-year-old, the oldest rookie the tour had ever seen. At that stage he was regarded as a career freesurfer, already carrying a surfing rep far heavier than anything the scales were saying. But how he’d go against Kelly, Andy, Mick, and Joel? Well, the jury was out. He scraped back on to the tour in his first year by the skin of his thick hide, finishing 27th, the last qualifying spot… and he had to surf his ass off at Pipe to do so. In ’07 he blazed, the world’s best freesurfer going close to becoming the world’s best surfer… he finished seventh. Ironically – for a brutish power surfer – that year he made his only tour final in two foot mush at Trestles.

But this year was different. You began to get the feeling he may have been a square peg in a round hole. He got the feeling. The guy had simply had it too good.

“I’ve been really spoilt,” says Panch. “I’ve been on the Rip Curl Search program where I’ve gone to these exotic destinations with three or four other guys, and it’s just been us, and we’ve been getting every wave we want. We’re not confined to a 30-minute period when the waves are on fire. You can surf all day or you can wait for the best part of the tide. You’re not going to be subject to, ‘Oh sorry, the winds were good an hour ago and you couldn’t surf and now we’re going to send you out in your heat and now you’ve just got to deal with it…’”

“I think that’s part of the promotional package that they’ve tried to sell, but when you’re actually on tour and you’re in that situation that wherever you’re going there’s 45 guys you’re travelling with, plus all kinds of guys who are there to surf and watch the event, there’s the contest organisers, people who work for the companies… who all surf. Pretty soon you realise that the only time you really get in the groove is when you’re in a heat, but that’s only 30 minutes long. You are basically part of a travelling circus.”

“In competition you can push your level of performance, but realistically in 30 minutes you’re trying to condense your surfing and just get scores. How many waves can you catch in 30 minutes? Probably an average of four or five waves… then in the freesurfs there’s 45 frothers in the lineup paddling around each other. Everybody is so competitive.

“So if I’ve been really fortunate to experience it [the Dream Tour] because in the back of my mind I didn’t know until I experienced it first hand. You see the photos in the magazines or you see video clips, but you realise that those were just that isolated hour or two when the tide turned on or the one day when the waves really fired. You don’t see that day when it was three feet and onshore and you had to squeeze through the heat.

“In this day and age the Dream Tour is such the focus of the sport – it’s the pinnacle, or whatever. There’s an opportunity to actually make really good money if you’re doing well, if you’re consistently doing well, but ultimately whether you’re competing or freesurfing… well, I’ve sort of weighed up what is more gratifying or rewarding.

“Next year I want to do a few trips. I feel like I’m surfing at my peak at the moment. I feel like I’m surfing better than I ever have in my life. I still feel fit. I still want to compete in a few events, but I don’t want that to be dictating my entire schedule, which it has been. I want to have the freedom to pick and choose the kind of events I want to do and then have the freedom to also go on a few surf trips. That’s what I dreamt about growing up. It wasn’t to travel around and be stuck at contests all day. It was more of a means to go surfing.

“There’s definitely harder ways to make a living, that’s for sure, but for me at the expense of being gone for 200 days of the year – and that’s not including commitments I have with Rip Curl, – for me the financial reward is not worth the reward of being away from my children. I think if I had done this when I was younger I might have had more drive to be on tour a bit longer, but when you get into your 30s you start to evaluate, you realise that life is short, you don’t have time for bullshit, your kids grow up quick.

“You realise life is really important to do what you want to do in life. You want to make the most of every day, and for me I realised that being on tour, for me, isn’t making the most of every single day of my life. It’s more of a job. It sucks the fun out of it a little bit.”

The islands offshore from Maui's northwest coast, Lanai and Molokai, create a stunning vista when viewed from the Lahaina to Kapalua coast. Ironically though, this panorama is paid for with hard waves, as swell must pinball its way through the narrow gate to reach that most iconic of Hawaiian pointbreaks, the prized Honolua Bay, located just to the east of Kapalua.

This beautiful bay is also the setting for the Maui Pro, last event on this year's Women’s Championship Tour, which kicked off today in quite nice 3-5ft waves at the Bowl, deep down inside the bay. Apart from a couple of shortish lulls, sets were fairly consistent, continuing a pretty impressive run of luck for the chicks since the event's inception 10 years ago.

You would really think it was tempting fate to hold an annual event at wave that is about as consistent as Jon Frank's moods, yet somehow those sneaky fillies get waves every year. I probably shouldn't speak too soon however, as the forecast is a touch dire from here on in and it could end up a war of attrition; must I be doomed here for another nine days of waiting period, drinking mai-tais and perving on beautiful girls who rip? Oh, the drudgery.

The thing is though, these girls really do blow up. You constantly find yourself re-examining old modes of consciousness as sweet, innocent young things scorch off the bottom and smack the lip with nothing short of stylish power. Steph Gilmore is a perfect example; outside of heats she will flop around like a stuffed toy, then hit the water for a heat and just explode. Her first one-two combo in the third round today was astounding, as she came off the bottom with stunning speed and cracked a vertical re-entry that had me in shock, and the crowd in awe. Other standout performers were Carissa Moore and Mel Bartels, the latter comboing a very unlucky Jessie Miley-Dyer, who looked to have their third Round encounter under control early on.

With round three done and dusted, it's in the hands of Huey now, and in these parts Huey can be very sleepy, so we'll have to just wait and see.

"Waiter! I think you know what I want… make it a double, please." //DAVE SPARKES