White Horses

The city was awash in paint. Everywhere you looked, huge swathes of colour were being thrown down – on buildings, across walls, even up 28 metre-high towers. No surface was safe. Fifteen national and international artists had converged on the doorste

As I scrambled to keep up with Peter hopping over the minefield of slippery rocks en route to the beach, I glanced towards the horizon just in time to catch the remnants of a whale’s breath hanging in the autumn air. A moment later, an eagle soared o

Once, the only way you could experience the view from inside the barrel was to actually get barrelled. It was surfing’s mystical, transcendent, peak moment. A bit like losing one’s virginity, it was a club you joined after much fumbling and clumsy fo

The sound of wood being shaped is like a symphony. When you peel the wood off with your hand tools, you can hear a good cut, you can feel its character. As you slowly peel down the board, each millimetre changes and with it, the board changes a littl

I grew up on my father’s tribal lands, south of Gisborne on the coast. Our village consists of only 50 houses with our tribal Marae (the sacred meeting house and grounds). The beach is a 10-minute walk from home and is sheltered from onshore winds by

It all began when I left my fins at home one day. I’d planned to ride my single-fin log at Mullaz, but when I got to the carpark, I reaslied I hadn’t packed the skeg. I live quite far from the beach and the waves were too good to go back, so I just r

Joli Dachi is the founder of Villa Warna Warni, a non-profit orphanage serving destitute and abandoned children on his island of Nias, Sumatra Utara, Indonesia. Joli’s brother, Anton, is operational manager and undisputedly one of the world’s best ba

You’ll recall back in September 2017, the World Surf League put on a trial event at Kelly’s Pool in Lemoore, California. It was called the Future Classic, and it remains to my knowledge the only professional surfing event in history to which the medi

My five brothers and I grew up on the beach bodysurfing with our cousins in the shorebreak, playing in tin canoes and watching our uncles surf for hours. When they came in we would jump on their boards and try catch waves. There was no real introduct

When I first started surfing there was one message in the surf media to women and one message only: if you weren’t a size 8 girl in a high-cut bikini paddling through tropical water and shredding on a tiny thruster, then you weren’t doing it right. I

I’ve always been fascinated by the forces that shape waves. I grew up in Sydney and started surfing on the Northern Beaches when I was 14. I joined North Narrabeen Boardriders club in 1966, the year after it was founded. Being a surfer before I went

I started building a house at Angourie in northern New South Wales in late 1972. That was the year between my two degrees in architecture – a year when, in theory, we were meant to gain ‘professional practice’ by doing the filing and making coffee in

The latter months of 2017 hadn’t been kind to the Cornish surfer. A cyclical purgatory of rampant onshore northwest winds and indifferent weather was interspersed by frequent updates via social media of pumping waves in every other corner of the UK b

I moved to New York to get away from surfing. I’d grown up in Southern California, surfed on the pro tour for five years, worked as Executive Editor of Surfing magazine. I was saltwaterlogged to the point of disgust. I wanted new experiences. If ther

“Misheeeeeeee!” boomed Cecilia, almost crushing Michi’s large frame with a huge hug as we both walked in the door. It was 2016 and the 28th time Michi (pronounced Mickey) Mohr had come to Madeira Island. Even though he was based in Munich, he knew th

I originally came out to the Telos to be a surf guide at Telo Island Lodge. I’d worked on the tools since I’d left school and needed a break from it. I guided for about a year, and then the idea to build a new lodge over at Pinnacles came up. The own