Hello darkness

For years there have been rumors running around about how the surf industry had squashed releasing Sea of Darkness, Michael Oblowitz’s documentary on the founding of G-Land—the story of Mike Boyum, and the radical drug smuggling culture that more or less built the surf industry, and perpetuated countless discovery missions throughout Indonesia in the ’70s and ’80s, and launched the career of Captain Martin Daly of the famous Indies Trader.

Sea of Darkness won awards at pretty much every festival it was submitted, earned a Surfer Poll Best Documentary, and then swiftly vanished from public view, early screeners left to circulate on the parking lot black market. Many thought major players in the surf industry—some of the major brand’s founders and CEOs, who were involved in the film’s narrative to varying degrees of incrimination—had shut the film down, bought up the whole project and buried it.

The good, the bald and the ugly

In 2005 Kelly Slater was on his way to his seventh world title at the QuikSilver pro France 2005.
I usually despise anything coming from this crappy business but, it happened that day that the surf was too stormy for average Joe and contestable enough for the pros. So I went to this contest to have a look.
I remember an epic heat against Jeremy Flores, seventeen years old at that time, and Andy Irons charging unpredictable big lefts.

Interesting story about behind the scenes from Slater’s perspective:
http://beachgrit.com/2015/09/long-read-kelly-slater-in-france/

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Abroad

These days, we are fortunate to have millions of hip and trendy websites that release us from the latest surf news on a daily basis. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that so far, most of them, let’s call them trendy websites, all focus simply on relaying videos and more precisely the same recently-released corporate videos full of pro surfers and perfect waves in exotic locations with the episodic thong bikinis. All these folks set the standard for a quite limited image and creativity always showing the same facet of the sport over and over again.

Fortunately, there are a few exceptions and sometimes, searching a bit further on the web makes it possible to find good stuff among this crap. This is the case of this original “anti-commercial” video edit from John Lynch that brings a vision much closer to the reality of a surf trip experience in remote locations.

Visit Lynch at http://lynchfilm.com/

Hurricane 2012

Ex-tropical storm Christine in med
Say hello to ex tropical storm Christine, which almost turned into a TMS (Tropical like Mediterranean Storm) in the Mediterranean on september 3rd. Christine generated heavy rain and caused flash flooding in Malta, but unfortunately no swell for us.

Coming next: Leslie, Michael… and Nadine!
Is 2012 the next hurricane record after 2005 and 2006?
Are we all going to die in 2012?
To find out, stay tuned to Free-Surf Photo.