Anyone truly into the art of surfboards already knows about the expo and has probably attended every single one of them. But for those of us who buy our boards off the rack and only think about them when something goes horribly wrong, having the Sacred Craft as the fourth horseman of this fall’s ASR Trade Show apocalypse was the perfect chance for us to see something we’ve so far missed entirely. And we don’t think we were alone
Surfer Nicholas Edwards, 31, a mine worker and father of two children from Busselton died after being attacked by a shark at 8:15 AM on August 17, 2010 near Gracetown in the Margaret River area of Western Australia, according to a story in Western Australia Today.
Police and the RAC rescue helicopter were dispatched to a beach south of Cowaramup Bay near Gracetown this morning. . . The man was retrieved from the water and rushed to hospital, but police have confirmed he has died from his injuries. They could not say how old he was or confirm his identity. . . The man is believed to have been attacked while surfing on his own, at a beach only accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles.
According to a story on ABC.net.au a man watching the surf saw Edwards go down.
Rob Alder says he saw Mr Edwards lose his board and not come back up again. . . He rushed down to the beach with his friends and alerted a rescue crew. . . He says they found Mr Edwards washed up on rocks near South Point, lying unconscious with a huge gash to his leg. . . Mr Alder and his friends created a tourniquet using a surfboard leg rope and tried to resuscitate Mr Edwards for 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived. . . Eddie Kilgallon was one of the rescuers who tried, unsuccessfully, to resuscitate the man. . . Mr Kilgallon says Mr Edwards’s injuries were horrific. . . “[The] back half of his leg was totally chomped. It looked like one bite. It looked like a big shark bite,” he said.
The beach reportedly remains closed. Our thoughts are with Edwards family and friends.
Saturday August 14, 2010, while watching shaper Larry Mabile shaping away inside a plexiglass box in what we thought was one of strangest parts of the surfboard fetish show Sacred Craft, we realized that Lost’s Matt Biolos was standing right next to us.
“Wouldn’t that be kind of weird to be working in a clear plastic box with all these people watching?” we asked.
“I’m going to be in there tomorrow,” Matt said. Then he explained the contest to us. Shapers were given an hour in a half to copy some one else’s shape. In this contest it was the thruster that Simon Anderson’s surfed to victory at Bell Beach in 1981.
Not only did Matt show up, he showed the rest of the field who was boss by winning the event and a $1,000 check signed by Scott Bass, according to a story on Global Surf News.
“This is a bit of redemption for me, as I am sometimes pegged as a guy who is only known for his marketing expertise, and maybe I don’t get credit for my shaping ability,” said Biolos in front of a large crowd on Sunday at Sacred Craft. “It is real honor to win this event, as Simon Anderson is a true legend.”
A gracious Biolos reportedly offered the prize money to a local charity. Kind of bummed we didn’t get to see it all go down live. Follow the jump for video of the entire contest.
For a while 87-year-old O’Neill brand founder Jack O’Neill was worried that a new seawall being built by the County of Santa Cruz, California would cause the land in front of his Pleasure Point home to erode away even more that it has, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. So he was asking for the County to extend their wall past the front of his home.
I was satisfied with my house the way it was,” O’Neill said Wednesday, looking out at the emerging seawall that runs up against his property. “But the wall creates a little hurricane when the sand and sea get washed down, and it eats out what’s at the end.” . . O’Neill’s seawall plans call for expansion of the county’s concrete seawall around his property. The work, which he says will cost him at least $1 million, involves removing the rock and riprap that now offers him protection from the waves and replacing them with a sturdier wall contoured around his home.
Last week, the California Coastal Commission approved O’Neill’s plans for the wall as long as he didn’t develop the property next to him. Looks like Jack will be on the point for a few more years.
Lifeguards at Southern California surf spot La Jolla Shores are warning the public of a 15-20 foot long Great White shark that was spotted in the area on Sunday August 15. 2010, according to a story on NBC San Diego.
Lifeguards at La Jolla Shores said they saw a large dorsal fin coming straight to shore, just off the surf line at La Jolla Shores. . . “We put lifeguards out on our Jet Ski skis and we warned people,” Lerum said. “We brought a rescue boat from Mission Bay and we warned people all the way from La Jolla Cove to Scripps Pier, about two miles of area.” . . Lerum says there is no closure in effect, since there was no aggressive behavior by the shark. He says there isn’t an eminent threat of danger, however, most people made the decision to get out of the water.
This, coupled with the San Onofre Great White footage shot by Chuck Patterson last week, just might be keeping surfers out of the water for a while.
Great Britain’s The Independenttalks to Britain’s top pro surfer Gwen Spurlock about brain injuries that nearly left her dead after slamming numerous times during the 2008 launch of a “standing wave boardrider” machine at Swansea’s The LC, her hometown’s waterpark. After weeks of headache Spurlock went in for a CT scan.
The scan revealed a major bleed on the brain that doctors believed had been caused by something akin to shaken- baby syndrome from all her falls. Within days she was being operated on and having two holes the size of 10p pieces drilled into her skull to drain off the fluid. Despite the seriousness of the operation, Gwen seemed to be recovering well, but this turned out to be only the beginning of her worries. . . The headaches had not gone and fluid was seeping from the original cyst and building up on the edge of her brain. It needed an urgent and highly risky operation to redirect it. When the operation was over, Gwen awoke from the anaesthetic only for a moment before falling unconscious.
Thankfully, Gwen survived, but we all came much closer to losing her than we ever imagined. Click the link for the rest of the story. . .
With his business partner Eric Goode, surfer Sean MacPherson, 45, has built some of New York’s hippest hotels including The Jane, The Bowery, and The Maritme.
The New York Times gets a few answers from MacPherson on all the surfy details on what he rides and how he got started, including the story about his mother being a New Zealand surf champion and his father being one of the first surf filmmakers in New Zealand. The guy has some roots.
While we sort out our thoughts on the fall ASR/ Class/ Crossroads/ Sacred Craft aggregation of trade showshere are some photos from Friday, August 13, 2010.
Every year Volcom chooses a theme and sticks to it for the entire trade show season. They’ve done hippies, hillbillies, and this year they raved it up with Volcom Techno Beach.
This clip is only one minute long. By the time the 2010 Fall Action Sports Retailer Show closes on Sunday, August 15, 2010 Volcom employees will have relived this minute 1,380 times. And then they will get to do it all again at Surf Expo next month, and at SIA in Janaury 2011. How’s that for dedication to the brand?
