Table of contents for No. 568 in Tracks

I know what you want to say. Another mag trip to the Mentawais. Another bunch of pro surfers in a boat re-visiting waves that have graced the pages of Tracks many times before. Maybe it’s all just an excuse for the editor to score an annual junket and get barrelled? While it’s undeniable that the Mentawai* have been a frequently visited surf media hunting ground for over two decades, it is with good reason. The cluster of islands off the coast of West Sumatra is surfing’s Garden of Eden; a place of wonder and mystique, a dream factory where surfing fantasies are made real every day. Every season surfers eschew other expenditures so that they can scrape together the funds to ride a few glorious waves in the Mentawais. Before…

From The Vault. Joe Engel, Nias – 1981. Photo: Dick Hoole This issue features Nias in a brutal and frightening mood. However back in 1981, when this shot was taken, the almond eye barrels of Nias represented the ultimate in surfing fantasy. The recent seismic renovations have made the wave shallower and slabbier. This image shows Joe Engel bottom-turning into palm-fringed, shimmering bliss on the famed Lagundri Bay right. Dick Hoole was there to shoot footage for Storm Riders. A year later the Hoole/McCoy production was released at the Sydney Opera House and Nias instantly became surfing’s new Shangri-La. Follow. @greenroomtimes Surf satire done right Watch –The Vietnam War By Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Sifting through Netflix in search of something worth watching can be tedious. This ten part…

What were the dimensions of the board you rode in the Nias swell? On the two biggest days I was riding a 5’9 x 19 x 2 1/2 and a 5’8 x 18 1/2 x 2 3/8. Was anyone else on a board that small? Yeah, Lee Wilson was on a 5’8 or 5’9 Chilli shapes. He said he was inspired by what I was doing on such a short board, but to tell you the truth, I thought he was a standout so he gave me confidence by telling me that. I was doubting myself, but what I didn’t take into consideration was other guys on big boards weren’t doing so well. I got back to Australia and drove straight into Wizstix (before going home) and started trying to…

How did it all start? We were surfing the day before, and the swell was supposed to start showing signs, and I just went out for an evening surf on my smaller board. It was still small, there weren’t really any barrels coming through and everyone was a bit disappointed. Just before dark it all changed. I have never seen the waves change so drastically within half an hour. The waves were all doubled up and messed up. The energy all came at once. You couldn’t even paddle into the waves. The next day it was booming. The next day sounded like a tsunami. Everyone was up in the dark, and there was so much water moving. It was coming into the restaurants and into the side alleys and into…

The past few months in Indonesia have offered up beauty and terror in equal measure. From the eruption of Mount Agung in June, followed by the magnificent swells of July, to the Lombok earthquakes – it has been a season of highs and lows. At the time of writing, the 6.9 magnitude earthquake has left 350 000 people displaced on Lombok, and over 430 dead. The majority of the damage occurred in the rural communities to the north, closest to the epicentre of the quake, but the damage has been felt across the tourist island. Many surfers were worried for their safety during the quake itself, and later, as tsunami warnings sounded. Most at Desert Point jumped on motorbikes and made their way to higher ground, spending the night in…

The Nias Show It was during July this year when Indo put on a show for the ages. The Southern Ocean had just finished throwing a mid-winter temper tantrum in which it screamed itself black and purple; the result was two mammoth back-to-back swells fired directly at the Indonesian archipelago. Those with a kink for the heavy stuff scurried to wrangle boards and make travel arrangements in order to rendezvous with the waves. The destination of choice for those who were game was Lagundri Bay, and it didn’t disappoint. A swell of epic proportions, many say unprecedented, slammed the area. Big wave surfers from all over the planet, both professional and underground, took to the fray. Meanwhile regular surfers who were already in town and wanted no part of it,…

Winter Wonderland The Southern Hemisphere Winter Season (May – September) sees a seemingly never-ending barrage of powerful, long period swell smashing the South African coastline. The accompanying west – southwest winds that blow through these surf-generating cold fronts groom the swell lines into the ruler edge, J Bay perfection we all dream about. Look Beyond Supertubes Everyone knows about Supertubes, but what most people don’t realise is that a trip to the famed right point does not only consist of sessions screaming down the line at Supers. The point alone has several, distinct sections (you will have a favourite by the time you leave!). Starting at Boneyards, long period swells marching up from the roaring 40s thunder through Supertubes (the holy grail – watch where the locals paddle out at…

Like most trips to the Mentawai Islands ours begins in Padang with a journey from the airport to the marina. At a glance the city serves as an unlikely gateway to surfing’s Nirvana. As you pass the open drains, the scattered rubbish and the fetid water, it’s impossible to miss the giant red lettering on the headland, which reads ‘Padang’. If the urban infrastructure is not exactly first rate then certainly no money has been spared on the gargantuan sign. While we move through honking traffic, where pimped out, audio-thumping mini-vans are the most prized vehicles for locals, world Junior champion, Finn McGill, and aerial savant, Matt Meola, keep us entertained with Hawaiian hunting stories. Finn explains that when he shot his first feral pig with a crossbow, on the…

The uncomfortably small canoe was barely wider than my hips. We’d been hunched over for several hours now with our knees almost up around our ears. Every lurch from a tug on the rudder or shove from a passing log threatened to knock us into the drink and my stomach muscles were tired from constantly shifting my weight around in an attempt to find some balance. I’d forgotten my waterproof bag in my hurried packing so I was having a hard time peeling my nervous retinas away from the camera bags that were precariously perched up in the bow. When I managed to relax enough to divert my gaze though, the grin would quickly come back. I couldn’t believe the scenery around me. In parts, the dense jungle overhung the…

The image of a heavily pregnant Lyndie sprinkling the ashes of Andy Irons out into the water at Hanalei Bay is not one I’ll forget in a hurry and one can only imagine the burden she must have carried since. But, prompted along by the creators of Andy’s documentary, Kissed By God, I persisted and so did she. “I’m so sorry I’ve been hard to get to, it’s not usually like that,” Lyndie began before settling in for a wonderful 30-minute chat. I can’t but imagine how many offers you’d had over the years to tell Andy’s story, so why now? The idea came a few years ago. My son is now seven years old and honestly I knew I had to make a movie because there was talk in…

Since it stole the show in Asian Dreams and Storm Riders, Lagundri Bay has lived large in the minds of roaming surfers. The early 80s imagery was tantalising - the first perfect right in a land of perfect lefts. And, unlike G-land and Outside Corner, it looked easy. After a sweet take off the wave folds into seven seconds of almond barrel before running into a deep-water channel. You could paddle out and ride the wave of your life with your hair still dry. The backdrop of swaying palms told you the water was warm and the living cheap. The word spread like wild fire and surfers were soon bumping down the track to southern Nias, hungry for a hit of Shangri-La. “The search was over, the dream for real,”…

In the early to mid 90s I was lucky enough to score a job as the captain of a surf charter boat in a nascent surfing region called the Mentawai islands. The boat was owned by Dave and Jan Hallet and it was linked to the Surf Travel Co, which was run, in those days, by the intrepid surfer, Paul King. This was a new area, when the Mentawai were still only a whispered Nirvana amongst a select few. Many of the waves were still undiscovered and there were only a few dedicated surf charters in the archipelago, and a couple of those were around for just part of the season. It was an amazing time of discovery where everyone was tight lipped about the waves, nobody dared tell anyone…

It was bound to happen. You can only push a people so far and damage a place so bad before there’s blow-back. The Tolak Rekalamasi movement – a Balinese grass roots environmentalist and anti-development campaign – appears to be it. “A lot of people think Balinese just sit back, relax and be lazy … but after this it’s actually creating a movement and solidarity ‘cos we love the island and we don’t wanna let it get ruined,” explains Mega Semadhi, the Hindu priest from Bali’s Bukit Peninsula and two-time winner of the Rip Curl Cup Padang. What began in 2014 in response to plans to develop the sacred Hindu site at Benoa Harbour on the island’s east coast, has today become a catch-all for Balinese angry at the greed, corruption…