Uncertain Horizons – Jordy Liackman

The inaugural NBR Memorial Surfing Competition goes off

On the weekend of the 7/8 October, Newquay Boardriders held its first ever combined Memorial Surfing Competition.

The committee had discussed bringing all of the individual Memorial Competitions under one umbrella to celebrate the lives of the young souls of our close knit surfing community that have been lost over the years. After consulting with all of the bereaved families, it soon became apparent that everybody was 100% behind the idea. So the Newquay Boardriders Memorial Weekend was born.

We were surfing for and remembering 8 lives lost tragically over the last 34 years and decided each category be designated to an appropriate age group where possible. These were as follows.

TOBY SORE U16’s
RYAN VEALE U18’s
AVA PERRY U18 Girls
ANTON HAWKINS U21’s
RANDALL DAVIES Open men
JOHNNY “BOY” HOLMES. Open women.
ADAM “SPIKE” GOOD. Over 40’s.
DAVE GENT. NBR event choice award.

With so many catagories and an overwhelming entry list it was set to be a busy, packed weekend of surfing from first light till sunset on both days.

We were set to go, contest green lighted for Saturday 7th October 8am check in and first heat in the water at 8-30am.

The eight souls we were remembering had definitely got together somehow and decided to make this weekend beyond special. On arrival Saturday morning the sun shone like a perfect summers day 24 degrees wall to wall sunshine and the most incredible 4-5ft perfect surf.
This weekend had attracted an unprecedented amount of entrants with over 80 top level competitors and the standard of surfing on display was phenomenal throughout the event.

Current English and British women’s open champion Lauren “Lolly” Sandland dominated the female categories and ended up taking first place in both the women’s open (Johnny “Boy” Holmes) category and the under 18 girls (Ava Perry) category proving to be one of NBRs greatest talents.

In the under 21s (Anton Hawkins) category, local boys, Levi Lancefield and Sol Hawkins put on an excellent display of precision surfing, but couldn’t quite find the excellent scores required to take down Jowan Pegg and the eventual winner of this category, Max Hudson in a closely fought final.

The largest amount of entrants for this event was in the over 40’s Adam “Spike” Good category with one surfer coming from as far away as Australia to compete, as well as some Brighton boys, surfing for their lost friend Spike. Huge scores were posted from some of our older elite surfers and the whole beach at North Fistral was cheering at some of the moves these older bodies were throwing down. Chris Owen struggled to find his rhythm in the final on the peaky North Fistral banks and took fourth place in a closely fought battle. Brad Rochefort walked away with third place and crowd favourite Joe “Morag” Moran took second, which left an absolutely in form Gareth “Gadge” Llewellyn taking the win in front of a huge crowd.

However, the standout performance of the weekend went to England Junior Team member 16 year old Fynn Gillespie surfing, and progressing through round after round in multiple categories showcasing his explosive surfing style and eventually walking away with three titles, Toby Sore under 16s, Ryan Veale under 18s, and the Randall Davies Open Men’s category with a combined total of 18 points out of a possible 20 in the open final.

As the action on the beach began to wind down, and the sun began to set everybody’s attention, was turning to the presentation, which was to be held at the Oceanside hotel on Headland Road. The excitement among the competitors was growing as they eagerly awaited the final results.

As the function room at the Ocean Side began to fill once again it became apparent that nobody that attended the event was about to miss the most memorable of evenings. Billy Hatfield from the Oceanside had kindly put on a complementary chilli and rice meal for everyone attending to enjoy and judging by the amount of clean plates, enjoy they did.
Once everyone had eaten and grabbed some refreshments from the bar it was time for the evening’s formal proceedings to begin.

Gary “GAZZER” Collins (club vice chairman) was first to take to the stage to individually thank each and every helper that had made this event the best ever that Newquay Boardriders had put together in the club’s history.

Gazzer then handed over to club chairman, Eddie Wilson to announce the winners. Before The announcements were made Eddie called for everybody present to cheer and make some noise so the lost souls could hear us from above, the room exploded with a cacophony of noise that went on it seems for ever.

4111_U16_ Boys (Toby Sale)

Left to Right : Jensen Martin 4th, Harvey Waters 3rd, Heath Gillespie 2nd, Fynn Gillespie 1st.

4116_U18_Girls (Ava Perry)

Left to Right : Lilly Isseberner 4th, Willow Smith 3rd, Eva Blackford 2nd, Lauren Sandland 1st. (Presented by Isla Coombes & Bella Llewellyn – far left).

4122_U18_Boys (Ryan Veale)

Left to Right : Heath Gillespie 4th, Gabe Llewellyn 3rd, Malakie Hagley 2nd (not shown), Fynn Gillespie 1st.

4127_U21_Mens (Anton Hawkins) – Presented by Sharna Hawkins (Anton’s father)

Left to Right : Levi Lancefield 4th, Sol Hawkins 3rd, Jowan Pegg 2nd, Max Hudson 1st.

4136_Womens_Open (Johnny ‘Boy’ Holmes)

Left to Right : Flora Morgan 4th, Eva Blackford 3rd, Willow Smith 2nd, Lauren Sanford 1st.

4137_NBR_Choice (standout wave of the weekend)

Bella Llewellyn

4140_NBR_Choice_Rescue (abandoned his heat in order to assist the rescue of a fellow competitor)

Ruan McKune

4146_Water_Safety_Rescue (Dave Gent Water Safety Award – presented by Caroline Gent-Ansell)

Finn Collins

4154_Luke_Hart_Award – U18 Expression Session. (A custom shaped surfboard from 4th Surfboards)

Ruan McKune

4164_Mens_Open (Randall Davies – presented by Jaydene Davies)

Left to Right : Sam Harwood 2nd, Jowan Pegg 3rd, Fynn Gillespie 1st, Tom Butler 4th.

4217_Over_40s (Adam Good ’Spike’ – presented by Tom Good, far left)

Left to Right : Gareth Llewellyn 1st, Brad Rochfort 3rd, Chris Owen 4th, Joe Moran 2nd.

Once everybody had settled it was time for the raffle which had very kindly been organised by club members Jess and Joe Bearman. As the evening then continued and many of the relatives who had lost family members began to socialise and find common ground it was clear to all that everybody who helped, entered or attended this event was a winner. Newquay Boardriders would like to give a massive shout out to all that got behind and sponsored this event. Just like the souls we were surfing for this weekend will never be forgotten.

Finally, Newquay Boardriders would like to thank the following sponsors, Rip Curl, Fourth Surfboards, Flavour Skate Shop, Skindog Surfboards, Volcom, Monster Energy, Hurley, Carve, SurfGirl, Sunbum, Globe, Yallah Coffee, Northshore, Surfing Life, Kooks, Women And Waves and Stance.

Through The Doggy Door

Through the Doggy Door featuring Mason Ho and Sheldon Paishon follows a surfer’s dream to trade extreme poverty in paradise for the life of a pro surfer and a world of perfect waves. Ahead of the European Premiere of this award winning, must-see documentary at London Surf / Film Festival Saturday 25th November, Chris Nelson spoke with Director Joe Alani about the reality of being Mason Ho’s filmer, fabled breaks and the reality of getting a feature film made.

“Being the filmer on the beach with the top pros – a lot of people think it’s a dream job… it’s like if you put four kids in a candy store, but you tell one kid you can just watch your friends eat the candy. It would drive me crazy, honestly…”

That’s how Through the Doggy Door director Joe Alani describes the first gig he accidentally graduated into after his days as a ‘local ripper’ sponsored rider evolved into a more stable job working with …Lost. And one of the pros he was filming with was one Mason Ho.

“I got to go to Hawaii and film with Mason and then a bunch of other video stuff with him over the years,” explains Joe. “He would come stay at my house when he was in California and vice versa, we have a pretty tight relationship”

One of those trips was to Desert Point, Lombok’s fabled left-hander. Accompanying Mason on this particular trip was with his long-time friend Sheldon Paishon. Hailing from the West Side of Oahu, Sheldon was a super talented, unsponsored, young rider who had grown up the hard way. At the age of 12, Sheldon’s family lost their home and lived in a beachside tent for the remainder of his adolescence close to the legendary surf spot Makaha. Checking through the footage from Desert Point, Joe and Mason were struck by a section of Sheldon deep in the barrel, light refracting through the curtain.

“This water shot of Sheldon throwing up like the West Side sign in the sunset, it just looked cinematic,” explains Joe. “We just looked at each other like, wow… And that’s when we’ve just started discussing the idea of what to do with Sheldon and his story.”

“Our initial idea wasn’t this deep dive into his past and homelessness,” says Joe. “It was about becoming a pro, because he’s this pro level surfer… but he had been so isolated on the West Side and had never been out of Hawaii. Never had a passport. So when Mason did this trip to Indonesia with him, everything was just a mind blowing new thing for Sheldon. Most surf videos, the pros have been the Indonesia 30 times already, but Sheldon was generally surprised about everything – like the plane. So we’re like, ‘Oh my God, how funny would it be to get him sponsored and document this 20-something year old guy becoming a pro surfer’.

But once Joe started filming with Sheldon for the project, he quickly realised the story was much bigger. Sheldon opened up about his life and the obstacles he’d overcome. His candour gave access to an issue few understood – the fine line many families tread between survival and homelessness. This is a problem right across the US, but on the Islands, the tented villages that line the beach are hidden in plain sight, lashed by the rainy season downpours, pounded by the wind. How do you survive in a system with no safety net? Joe knew that was the real story. “There’s a really emotional scene… we came home and were looking at the footage, tears in our eyes, we’re like this, this is something much deeper than a funny surf video.”

There’s a cliché thrown around about young guns, “growing up hungry”… hungry for success. But for Sheldon, he was often just plain, stomach-grumbling hungry. And this lit a fire. Joe and Mason had a plan to get the film made. “We made a 20 minute edit went back to Hawaii during the North Shore season. We showed it at the Rip Curl house with Mick Fanning, Owen Wright, Conner Coffin, all the Rip Curl executives. They were expecting this… ‘Oh here’s a couple of clips of him ripping,’…everyone in the room had tears in their eyes. When it ended Mick Fanning, Owen Wright… they all got in a line and started shaking Sheldon’s hand. And I think that was the moment we were like, ‘This is special’.”

Mason and Sheldon’s friendship goes back to when they were young groms. Joe first shot them together around 2008 and the story follows the evolution of this young, brash kid to the man he is today. But more than that – this is a documentary with many layers, exploring how the oppressive colonial past impacted the native Hawaiian’s lives and how the West Side of the island became more and more impoverished – bypassed by investment and tourism.

The West Side of today is an intimidating place to visit – let alone film. “If it wasn’t for Mason and Sheldon I wouldn’t have had that access…Cameras are pretty frowned upon in certain places, certain beaches over there.” But the West Side and especially the beach was the safety net for Sheldon. “The village literally raised him, all those lifeguards and legendary surfers out of Makaha,” explains Joe. “He’s really lucky, because he’s really talented, and I think in general, people don’t want to see talent wasted… I’m sure there’s a lot of kids that aren’t as outgoing and have less talent that definitely slipped through the cracks.”

That Through The Doggy Door has taken so long to produce and bring to the big screen is a testament to the passion and drive that Joe Alani and Mason Ho have had for this project, for Sheldon’s story and for the wider issues associated with the unhoused epidemic the US.

“I hope this story can resonate and inspire both surfers and non-surfers,” says Joe. “It just happens that surfing is the catalyst that Sheldon was around, that’s what saved him. But the story is really about overcoming poverty… and about heart.”

Through the Doggy Door is premiering at the 12th Edition London Surf / Film Festival presented by Finisterre. Bringing to the capital three nights of the very best in surf cinema with premieres, Q&A’s, workshops, good times and more at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, you don’t want to miss this.

Full details HERE:

Tickets >>> HERE: 

SAS’s Shocking New Report on UK Water Quality

EDITORIAL USE ONLY
Carla Magee (left) and Aine McAuley at the shore of Lough Neagh for Surfers Against Sewage, Northern Ireland. Pictured date: Saturday October 28 2023. PA Photo. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Surfers Against Sewage finds popular sites for bathing in England fail to meet minimum safety requirements

60% of inland bathing spots monitored by SAS over the 2023 bathing season would be classified as ‘poor’ based on Environment Agency methods

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) supported 20 communities to ‘bridge the gap’ left by inadequate and inefficient official testing regime.

SAS’s annual water quality report brings together citizen science data, EDM data, and figures from SAS’s Safer Seas and Rivers Service to paint a picture of water quality
across the UK.

The report highlights a severe lack of monitoring in Scotland and Northern Ireland and unearths a shocking reliance on emergency sewage discharges in Wales.

A new report released today reveals that multiple popular inland swimming sites in England are unsafe for water users. 40 locations were sampled weekly by volunteer citizen scientists throughout the 2023 bathing season. 20 were popular sites for bathing, and 20 were upstream of a nearby sewage overflow associated with the swimming spots.

Of the 40 locations, SAS found that 24 would be deemed ‘poor’ quality were they designated bathing waters, as per Environment Agency methodology. Four out of 20 bathing sites showed a clear decrease in water quality from locations upstream to downstream of a sewage overflow. The data is released just weeks after the Government announced its intention to diverge from the EU’s standards for monitoring water quality in England.

Surfers Against Sewage’s (SAS) annual water quality report explores the shocking state of UK bathing waters in a year when untreated sewage was discharged over 399,864 times into UK waterways – the equivalent of more than 1,000 discharge events every day. The report notes that the majority of overflows in Scotland and Northern Ireland go unreported, meaning this figure is likely a significant underestimate of the true frequency of sewage discharges into the UK’s rivers and seas. In Scotland only 4% of sewage overflows are monitored whilst Northern Ireland Water admits it lacks the ability to record or measure when sewage discharges occur.

Meanwhile, SAS have unearthed documents that indicate that Welsh Water have used emergency overflows – permitted only in the case of catastrophic events – to release sewage into a designated bathing water multiple times over the last two years. The Gwbert Emergency Overflow, which impacts the designated bathing water of Poppit Sands, discharged 24 times in the same number of months, indicating a clear breach of permit.

Giles Bristow, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said:
“Yet again, our annual water quality report reveals the complacency and disregard of governments, water companies and regulators towards the health of rivers and coastlines in the UK – and by extension people’s health. How much do our blue spaces need to
suffocate in sewage before those we elect to keep us safe and protect our environment wake up and smell the shit?

“We are seeing failure at every level – from governments and regulators failing to enforce the law, to water company fat cats pocketing dirty money and refusing to clean up their act – with the general
public ending up the biggest loser every time. How many times can we say ‘enough is enough’? Our leaders need to prioritise transparency, ensure laws and regulations are properly enforced, and prevent water companies profiting from pollution.”

Sicknesses in the UK due to sewage pollution reported to SAS reached 1,924 cases in the last year – nearly triple the number of cases reported a year prior. These cases resulted in 1,987 days taken off sick, which translates to 5 years of work lost to ill health caused by polluted waters. Many of these sicknesses have led to hospitalisation, events cancelled, earnings lost, and businesses closed. As this data just relates to cases reported to SAS, these numbers are likely only the tip of the iceberg.

This year Reuben Santer, a physics teacher at a secondary school in Exeter, was forced to stop working after contracting labyrinthitis (an inner ear infection) following a surf at Saunton Beach in Devon. Doctors confirmed the infection was due to a virus or bacteria entering Santer’s ear during his surf. The infection later developed into an incurable condition called Ménierè’s disease.

Reuben Santer said:
“I have never been anxious about anything in my life, but this experience has definitely made me worried that symptoms will come back when driving, surfing, at work, or in any situation where vertigo could be dangerous.”

The report also highlights the impact that sewage is having on independent businesses, and the livelihoods of those who run them.

Steve Crawford, who until recently ran a surf shop in Scarborough’s South Bay, said:
“My shop has been closed all summer. From the 6th May the RNLI put the red flags up as the beach was at a poor quality here in Scarborough. A week later the council took all the flags down and put warning signs up. I decided at that point that I can’t take people surfing.”

“I couldn’t carry out any lessons on the beach when the lifeguards themselves think it’s unfit to go in. My income stopped dead on the 6th May .It’s only because my dad died last year that I’m surviving now because I was left some money. If it wasn’t for that I would be out on the street.”

This year’s water quality report is designed to empower communities across the UK to put pressure on their local representatives in the lead-up to a general election in 2024. In the last year, thousands
have joined the protest for safer rivers and seas, with over 45,000 emails sent via SAS’s free Safer Seas and Rivers Service app to MPs and water company CEOs, calling for action to protect the UK’s waterways from further pollution.

This year SAS developed the End Sewage Pollution Manifesto, which sets out the policies needed to clean up our rivers and seas. Created in collaboration with environmental charities, sports governing bodies and community groups around the UK, the manifesto suggests a five-point plan to make the UK’s waters healthy and safe to enjoy again:

Enforce the law and regulations

Stop pollution for profit

Prioritise high-risk pollution events

Empower a nature-led approach to tackling sewage pollution

Reveal the truth by ensuring UK-wide transparency on sewage pollution.