Around lunchtime today at Hookipa, on Maui's east side, Stephanie "Happy" Gilmore put the most emphatic exclamation mark possible on her already wrapped second World Title. She added the Women's Triple Crown and the Maui Pro to her other four wins for the year, and did it with such ease, and with so much distance between her and the rest of the girls, it was almost embarrassing.

Steph used her usual contest strategy of having a kooky pre-heat surf first thing this morning, sitting on the shoulder and flailing like a greenhorn Mid-Westerner. Then she put on her contest rashie and proceeded to go out and blow her opponents out of the water, increasing momentum at a clockwork like pace and peaking in the final with a couple of scorching slashes and sleek roundhouses. Hawaiian Mel Bartels, her hapless fellow finalist, laid down some nice moves, including one sick high speed lip punch which threw a huge spray, but really she was as outclassed by Steph as everyone else today, including seven-time champ Layne Beachley in her swansong semi -inal with the current Queen.

The only way Steph was going to lose today was if she had been attacked by one of the huge green turtles hanging on the inside section of the fun right rip bowls,  rippable and perfect contest fodder at 3-4ft and very consistent. After the two-week debacle of a flat Honolua, the back up venue at Hookipa was a great canvas and gave everyone a fair go; the waves simply did not stop all day.

The sun blazed, there was a copious amount of aloha from the cool Hookipa locals, and there was even a plethora of beautiful girls on the beach. It was an amazingly sound finish to a gruelling waiting period that must have had contest director, Dino Andino, sweating bullets this last few days. Luckily for Steph, she had the title sewn up before this event, because the wait would have sent her and the other contenders mad by this time. Instead she did it at a canter, loping off with another win and the lion's share of this year's Tour spoils, and if you thought that goofy grin couldn't get any bigger, you ain't seen nothin'! //DAVE SPARKES

Mick Fanning and Barney Miller make an unlikely pair of good mates.

The future world surfing champion and the wheelchair-bound crusader met over here in Hawaii in 2004. Mick was recovering from his near career ending hamstring injury at the time and was shuffling around like an 80-year-old. Barney, from Sawtell on the NSW north coast, was over here checking out the North Shore for the first time. “I think we drank a few beers that night at a party at Waimea,” remembers Barney. “We both don’t mind a few drinks apparently.”

Barney was involved in a car crash in 1999, and the injuries he suffered have seen him confined to a wheelchair since. Soon after the accident his friends rallied and organised a surfing weekend to raise money for their mate – the inaugural Barney Miller Classic. The event’s 10th anniversary edition ran back in Sawtell a few weeks before Barney flew over to the North Shore with his girl, Kate, and a group of his mates from back home. “Yeah, Mick came down for this year’s contest,” laughs Barney. “That Friday night Sawtell didn’t know what hit it.” Barney often turns up to Mick’s events too, most famously when Mick won the Quiksilver Pro in 2007. Barney was last seen that night crowd surfing in his wheelchair across the packed front bar of the Coolangatta Sands Hotel.

The Barney Miller Classic originally raised money for Barney himself, but after five years Barney figured the money should be spread around to people more needy than him. The Disabled Surfers Association have been the beneficiary over the past few years, the money going helping give some people who’ve had a rough trot a taste of saltwater. This year, proceeds from the weekend went toward the rehab of Darren Longbottom, brother of big-wave surfer Dylan Longbottom, who landed head first on the deck of his surfboard while surfing in the Mentawai Islands earlier this year and broke his neck.

But while Barney isn’t walking at present, he is surfing, and that’s where we find him today. We’re standing under the pine trees at Chuns reef, a long, loping righthand pointbreak just around the corner from Waimea Bay. It’s not Pipe, but if there was a wave made for Barney, then this is it. “Mate, I’ve had to sit there and watch Mick and the boys surf perfect Pipe for two weeks, I’m that frothing to get a wave myself!”

We’re at Chuns with Bryan Surratt – “Uncle Bryan”. On the North Shore, the Surratt’s are surfing royalty, and Uncle Bryan is today taking Barney surfing. “I never think of the people I take surfing as ‘students’, I take them as friends. I like to feel what they’re feeling out there.” Earlier this year Uncle Bryan took a group of Iraq war veterans, guys who’d all suffered shocking injuries. Some were blind, others had lost limbs, but few had lost a sense of fun. Uncle Bryan readily admitted to shedding tears that day. “A day like that is the kind of thing that changes your life.”

Today we’re taking Barney surfing.

“You better put this on mate,” Mick says to Barney, handing him a lifevest. “If you fall off out there you probably want to float.”
“I won’t be falling off,” Barney replies, grinning already.

It’s all hands on deck to get Barney out there. A lifeguard quadbike ferries him across the sand and down to the waterline, where Uncle Bryan and his offsider, Aka, alongside Mick and Barney’s entourage from back home are all there to help paddle him out.

Ten minutes later and Barns busts his first wave. “He’s on!” his mate yells as Barney slides across one on his belly, perched up on his elbows. “And look, he’s fully burned someone! He might be getting sent in!” The laughter is contagious. Barney milks it to the shorey and rolls off onto his back in dead water. The boys all race in to the inside, flip him back onto the board, and they’re off out the back again.

It got better. Every wave he caught over the next hour was bigger, more critical, and longer than the last. He was reading sections, fading, racing. For most of them Mick would ride the same wave alongside him, the two laughing as they went.

On Barney’s final wave he got to the inside section and saw the thing closing out in front of him. “Bullshit,” yelled Shagga who was filming, “he’s gonna hit it!” Sure enough Barney charges the board straight at the section and smacks it.

A minute later he’s being carried in through the shorebreak and the grin is ear to ear. It will remain there for the next few days.

“Are you kidding me!” says Uncle Bryan. “That’s why we do this stuff! I want to get him out at Sunset. Oh, he’s ready for it.”
Mick is equally stoked. “That’s the highlight of my Hawaii season, for sure.”

Drying off in the car park, and I ask Barney about his tattoos. On his right arm he has “Live”, on his left, “Life”. And today he’s done a little bit of that. //SEAN DOHERTY