Good Vibe - Issue 13 - August 30th 2019

Product News

Surf Meal released their newest range of surf food products this month. The revamped ‘Supply Boxes’, provide you with your surfing essentials direct to your door at a fraction of the retail cost. With five to select from including a ‘Mystery Box’ there is a Surf Meal ‘Supply Box for everyone. We take a look at one of our favourites here. 

Supply Box B 

Frequency: Monthly

Cost: $59.95 per Month

Contains:

-       10 Surf Bars

-       4 Single Serve Green Room Super Greens

-       4 Single Serve Berry Beetroot Hydration and Recovery 

-       1 Block of Surf Wax

-       1 Surf Meal Tee (After 3 months)

-       Either:

o   4 White Horses Magazines (Over 12 Months as Released)

o   5 Surfing Life Magazines (Over 12 Months as Released)

WSL Thoughts

Teahupo’o did not disappoint and upped our excitement on many levels. The arrival of classic Tahiti conditions for the last two days of competition were exactly what we needed. For me, the WSL is at its most entertaining when the world’s best take on waves of consequence. Thick pristine tubes offering glory to those that want it. How refreshing to strip the hype back to pure surfing, pulling in and getting tubed with commitment and style.

Kelly Slater’s 17th place finish was not part of the ‘Return of The King’ script with GOAT himself admitting that result probably ends his world title aspirations.  I had him pegged for a deep final finish and my fantasy league team suffered for it. At least I had Owen Wright in there. Complete with helmet, Owen, with clearly the toughest road to the final, dismantled everyone in his way and has done what no Australian has done this year and that is win an event. The epic raw beauty of Tahiti contrasts perfectly with the next stop, The Freshwater Pro, Kelly Slater’s man-made wave will be give us a completely different proposition to what we just witnessed. 

With that it mind, Nic Quinn, our guest writer gives us piece of his regarding Wave Pool competitions. 

Wave pools. Not the same as the ocean, but enticing to say the least.

A perfectly made wave that has literally machine-made regularity, shape, height, hollow-ness, glassiness, etc. Even the thought of this have most surfers frothing at the thought. 

Man-made wave pools were relatively unheard of until the past decade, and wave pools with epic surf weren’t really around until the past couple of years with the advent of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch. 

Now things have changed. 

 In fact, most of your reading this probably witnessed last years WSL surf competition at this very spot. Top surfers, top performances and perfect waves. What more would you want as a surfer or spectator? 

As exciting as it was to watch top athletes on perfect waves, there was an element of it being “too perfect.” In my perspective I felt like watching such perfection almost got repetitive after a while. As I watched the 2018 event, which WSL consisted of a little different competitive format, I had some inner conflict going on as to how I felt about competitions held at a man- made wave park. 

I couldn’t decide if it was fact that the waves were literally straight out of a painting, or if it was because the backdrop didn’t change at all, but I started to feel like I wasn’t appreciating the (incredible) surfing itself. 

Maybe you feel the opposite, and couldn’t get enough of the excitement, but I know other seasoned surfers who felt similarly to me-that Wave Pool surfing and competitions held in this arena, take away from the nuances of ocean surfing.

Some might argue that it’s the same as surfing a perfect wave like Macaronis in Indo or Restaurants in Fiji. . .what do you think? 

Did you feel similarly to me, like you almost got jaded towards the end of the competition when the top surfers in the world were ripping their hardest, but you almost expected there every move?  Do you feel it is the best judge of a surfers ability to see them on such a perfect wave or is it taking away from the guesswork?

Food for thought. As technologies progress, in any arena, we are left with amazing and mind-blowing results. But sometimes we are left reminiscing the days when competitions were held in less than perfect conditions, and more ocean knowledge needed from each surfer.