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Surf naked?

Surfing naked used to be a thing in the 80’s. Like undercuts on boat trips it was almost mandatory that there there’d be one guy who’d jump overboard surfing with his crown jewels out. Never really caught on with women though. Until now…

Jovan Gonzalez, Taujma Hall, Kristin Lee and Morgan Sliff went surfing Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and El Segundo, California, near Los Angeles wearing nothing but nipple tags and strapless thongs, which while sounding like a stag night in Prague, actually is art…I think…

The four women appeared to be wearing wetsuits but it was all just body paint, part of a clever production by renowned body paint artist and award-winning photographer Paul Roustan.

Paul, who is a master in body painting art and work with models for photo shoots and exhibitions, carefully painted the models said it took him about 90 minutes to paint the wetsuits. (How do you get this job?). He used an alcohol-based makeup that wouldn’t wash off.

Paul has photographed women with everything from spacesuits to Pink Floyd album covers on his models.

What do you think? Maybe painting your penis as sea snake and surfing naked will ward off sharks? Laird, over to you…

Video and photos Caters/Paul Roustan

Wave Pool wars

via GIPHY

It’s wave pool wars as an Occy backed ‘Surf Lakes’ join the race with a machine that can generate 2400 per hour…

The Surf Lakes start up hopes to license the technology around the world with a surf park opening in Queensland by the end of 2017, complete with eight different waves, including Occys Peak; a 2.4 metre barrelling 60 metre left.

“What’s even more exciting is that it provides fun for the entire family and I am looking forward to bringing mine to the Surf Lake and seeing the kids surf different waves at the same time,” said Occ.

The demo facility will be the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools and already has the technology to generate 2400 waves per hour, said Surf Lakes founder Aaron Trevis.

What do you think?

How they stack up

Surf lakes
8 waves for various levels. 2.4 metres high, 60 metres long barrelling Occys Peaks 2,400 waves per hour. Uses a pump or piston type device (I’m guessing!) to push waves out from a central generator to several banks, reefs or points. The beauty is 8 waves breaking simultaneously. Pays your money takes your choice. Only at prototype stage so be interesting to see scaled up.


Slaters Wave
2.1 metre tube 250km away 15 waves per hour. Sled type device pushed down a track similar to Wavegardens Lagoon. Pushing the water produces a ‘wake’ type wave. The barrel comes for the sled angle, speed and bathymetry. Hard to reset this type of tech as it ‘pushes’ water like tsunami and create huge amounts of wash. Hence the oft quoted one wave every 12 minutes (the pool has to settle). They are currently trying out the tech on the left, but they have to nail the wash to go fully commercial, which means bigger test pools. Watch the backwash behind the wave…


Wavegarden Cove
2.4 metres, 1,000 per hour – opening Bristol and WA 2018. Also possibly London and Scotland.
So we saw a video we weren’t supposed to see and it appears that the tech uses modular ‘piston’ type tech to push wave energy down the pool. Owners claim it is hugely efficient, so low running costs which means a great commercial model, attractive investment opps and a fast roll out. They nailed the wash too so they are well ahead in the game. On a bigger scale this has the capability of producing more than one ridable wave per cycle, so it will be interesting to see if they develop it further away from linear wave generation i.e. waves coming down a track rather than the concentric wave idea of Surf Lakes.


Wavegarden Lagoon.
Open commercially in Texas and the UK Surf Snowdonia is a head high 150 metres long, roughly 60 waves per hour both rights and lefts (so effectively 120 ridable waves per hour) Same basic tech as Slaters wave, but without the barrel bathymetry…Unless you know where to look. Everyone missed this but the fact is WG Lagoon does barrel… The waves that run down the side walls are like mini Kirra and mini Mundaka… They are in fact mini Slaters waves, but WG chose a fatter wave in the middle of the pool and greater frequency which equals a commercial model as opposed to Slaters ‘protoype’.

A very big Canarian winter…

Manuel Lezcano, Canary Islands native and Lanzarote resident, has become one of Europe’s leading big-wave and tube-riding surfers over the past few years. From spectacular sessions on his home island of Lanzarote getting barreled at El Quemao to massive swells in secret locations of his archipelago Manuel has been on a roll chasing the best & most challenging surfs through the 2017 European winter.

Day two #CodeRed Are millions of women chumming the oceans?

“But I’m not premenstrual. She was wearing the same dress…”

 

When Laird said, “The biggest most common reason to be bit is a woman with her period.” We were astounded.

Had women been targeted by big Whitey? Had the FBI been hiding the stats? Were ladies with ‘the painters in’ running legs akimbo into the sea waving their lady gardens about releasing large slicks of shark attracting womb lining into bathing and surfing areas? OHMGEE The horrors! It’s a crimson tide of Sharknado proportions!

“Go away I’m a man. See my Powertool!”

Man, I know more than anyone out there that women on their periods can be dangerous. For some reason my man senses are particularly dulled to the pheromonal signals that flag:
‘Danger’
‘Don’t what ever you do say something that could be construed as ‘smug’ and label you as a ‘wanker’
‘Basically just keep your mouth shut…’
‘Just shut the fuck up..’
‘You just wouldn’t listen..’
‘Runaway’
‘Run…’
‘Run goddamit your balls are dust…’

But women on periods targeted by shark attacks… No. Didn’t see that coming.

“What do you mean ‘sanitary wear’?”

Of course if anyone throws large amounts of blood into the ocean for any length of time sharks will come. But sharks aren’t likely to interpret human blood as food. We are not their prey. But in any case women tend to have a handle on, erm ‘feminine hygiene’ in 2017. They have products and stuff. Even I know this. I see the adverts with their catchy tunes with women happily daring to jump out of aeroplanes during their menstrual cycle. The amounts of blood or secretions entering the water are minimal. So minimal chumming of an uninteresting substance is what the science says.

“But the bears..’ they said. I don’t know about fucking bears, I don’t see many in Newquay high street…. All I know is millions of women aren’t being attacked for daring to go into the ocean during Code Red…

Let’s look at stats, and that’s all you can do in situations of mass hysteria. And then we will pick up on some science…

1941-2014 there were 1132 recorded shark attacks in Australia, of which 968 involved men, and only 64 women.

Were women stood next to all those men? Were the fair sex to blame for their attacks too? There is no proof, no evidence, no reason to paddle away from women in the lineup because there may be a 25% chance they are riding the cotton pony.

Nearly every single person ever bitten by a shark, in Australia and around the world, since records began, has been a man. #fact

“No, I am a man in space. No women to see here…”

Between 1940 and 1959, only four women were involved in incidents compared with 139 men (2.8 per cent)

29 of the 283 incidents between 1990 and 2015 involved women (10.2 per cent)

In Australia there are an estimated 100 million beach visits a year. If you give that a rough 50/50 split gender split, 50 million women, and 25% roughly menstruating at any given time… Where are the attacks? Where is the red flag? If the ‘Code Red’ claims were true every tourist bathing area in the world would be a boiling pit of feasting sharks.

Of course if you want to go free diving with sharks while menstruating with an unprotected vagina I am sure you will get a reaction. But the science says the sharks aren’t looking for human blood. They are looking for the amino acids present in their normal prey…marine animals… not our blood, sweat or even pee.

Periods do not cause shark attacks. (More science here)

Chris Lowe, shark researcher at Cal State University of Long Beach, told The Huffington Post in response to Hamilton’s comments. “ …the amount of blood loss during menstruation is probably less than average scrape or cut that a kid or surfer may get while playing in the water.”

Marie Levine, founder and executive director of the Shark Research Institute, told Mother Jones back in 2012. “I’ve been diving for decades and even got my period while underwater with a school of hammerheads. The sharks were not interested and I had to fin like crazy to get close to them.”

So let’s not give credence to an unfounded claim and put women under the microscope even more than they already are. They face enough bullshit from the less confident males in the lineup as it is.

The number one cause of shark attacks the globe is… men doing dumb shit. It’s what we do. Man up and deal with it.

“Not you again”