Come for the naked multi-sex saunas, stay for the epic points!

In episode two of the just re-launched Weird Waves series, Puerto Rican shredder Dylan Graves reveals the surprising breadth of surfing’s hold in Sweden and provides proof, archival admittedly, the joint really does get world-class waves.

Graves, forty or so and who holds the world record for most turns on a wave, forty, if you’re wondering, flies to Sweden to visit his pal and local pro surfer Freddie Meadows and, if the weather forecasts proof correct, plans to surf in the brackish and formidably cold waters of the Baltic Sea.

There’s something wildly appealing about Dylan Graves.

He is man filled with generous gestures who never lets the tide of bitterness rise too high. He strikes spontaneous friendships wherever he goes, wait for his praise of a local gal’s set wave at a Swedish point he describes as “world class” that you know she’ll relive for the rest of her life, and, crucially, he never tires of hoisting himself into cold and stormy seas.

Every day for Graves, y’see, is a spring carnival and a mood of gaiety.

Essential even for those with fast-dimming attention.

Come see Harry Bryant's full array of tricks, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety!

If you didn’t know, Harry Bryant is an almost thirty-year-old Australian with juvenile dimples and an albino choir boy’s haircut.

He is, also, an interesting combination of sartorial elegance and the smell of fish.

When he talks he is so gentle and faraway he often gives the impression of being half asleep.

Together with his filmer guy-pal Dave Fox, Harry Bryant has enjoyed a deserved reputation as a man who can take a surf movie theme, say Motel Hell, and carry it to dazzling fruition.

In the pair’s latest short, Mucho Gringo, Harry Bryant shows all his usual ocean-spray zest for living on the wind as he chokes on a series of long lefthand points in, you might imagine, that land of the long, cold lefthander, Chile.

The surfing of Harry Bryant comprises many elements of contrasting excitement, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety to unquenchable survivable power in the difficult waves.

Essential.

“Built like a duck and surfing like a big cat.”

God bless the great Mark Occhilupo, and I mean that sincerely. Surfers come and go, light up an epoch and then disappear, usually without glory. 

Occhilupo, however, turns sixty in two years, is daddy to nine children and young adults, and still lives the surfer’s dream.

He has a “little nook” at Rainbow Bay and is up at three-thirty every morning, and never with a hangover for he quit drinking almost a decade ago (“It was my nemesis”), chasing the four am Gold Coast sunrise and those precious few uncrowded runners.

Warshaw’s EOS describes Occ as being “built like a duck” and surfing “like a big cat.” He also wrote that Occ is “warm, childlike, giggly, easily upset by violent movies.”

Mark Occhilupo has been largely ignored by the ravages of ageing and is a finely balanced combination of enthusiasm and confidence. 

He is a world champion and a runner-up to the world title, is still regarded by most as the best surfer ever at Bells, and possibly Jeffreys Bay, and has a spirit that bristles with a scorching flame. 

In this short clip, we see Occ during the recent exhibition contest there riding the famous righthander as if he were the sheriff riding past in a golden coach.

Essential.

"Every paddle out, every wipeout and every glorious ride."

It was ironic, last January, when the “best day in surfing history,” as big-wave world champ Billy Kemper described it, had nothing to do with the WSL, surf brands or even, as the winner was announced on the beach by Clyde Aikau, a professional surfer.

In building twenty-to-thirty-foot surf, Luke Shepardson, twenty-seven, who started the morning by clocking in to his gig as a North Shore lifeguard, took a few hours off work and by day’s end had beaten the most stacked field in the event’s history.

Apart from defending champ John John Florence, who finished second, Shepardson outsurfed big-wave world champs Makua Rothman and Billy Kemper, both surprise competitors after suffering injuries at the Backdoor Shootout, Kai Lenny, Zeke Lau, Grant Baker, Ross Clarke-Jones and so on.

In Nathan Florence’s telling of the event, middle bro does what he does best: a quick intro, in this case walking along the Kam Highway in the pre-dawn darkness, then has his filmers capture every moment from a truly epic day, and, in the edit, the action is allowed to breathe, so to speak.

Watch on a big screen, sound up so you can hear the thunder of the ocean and the gasps of the crowd as closeout sets hammer the best surfers in the world and the jet-ski teams roar shoreward.

Yeah, it’s old but, also, ageless.

“Everyone was telling me, that wave is so crowded, 100 guys out, but swear to god, it was draining and no one out."

It’s impossible to be even lightly critical of Koa Rothman, the middle son of North Shore enforcer Fast Eddie Rothman and brother to big-wave world champion Makua.

Despite being a fierce critic of BeachGrit, his courage, vigour and pugnacity count him as a man of sound ethics. You’ll remember four years ago when he sent a message to the world just prior to the opening of the Hawaiian season politely letting visitors know he’d be enjoying any wave he damn well wanted at Pipe and, therefore, not to take any drop-ins personally.

“This year, this winter here in Hawaii, 2020, 2021, I will be going on whatever wave I want at Pipeline,” he said. “No hard feelings. I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just letting you know now that is what is going to be happening. So have a great day and watch out.”

Six days back, we saw Koa Rothman on the island of Sumbawa rediscovering Super Suck, one of those vintage Indonesian surf spots just coming back into the limelight, with the same insouciance and style he demonstrates at Pipeline.

Koa said it was the “craziest wave” he’d ever surfed and his sessions there comprised “one of the best days of surfing of my entire life.”

Could his Indonesian voyage get any better?

Well, yes!

After travelling from Sumbawa to the Mentawai Island chain many nautical miles to the west, Koa Rothman checks into the noted Kandui Villas where he scores one of the best waves in the entire chain…empty!

“What a day! Some of the sickest surf. That was crazy,” says Koa, hair healthy and unruly, sea-spray eyes shaped like pecans. “Pumping Kandui with no-one out. Everyone was telling me, that wave is so crowded, one hundred guys out, but swear to god, it was eight feet and draining and no one out. Boats weren’t even showing up.”

Koa says the wave at Kandui is special because, “it’s not only a perfect lefthand barrel but it’s a barrel that’s super round, square hollow, you’re never stalling, just pumping the whole way.”

In a voice that is precise, Koa wrapping his vowels around his tongue like a bacon around a fork, he tells the viewer,

“The best feeling ever is pumping through a big barrel.”

So true and so essential.

And watch to the end for a late-night horror story about sea snakes!