What do you know about Adam Replogle?

That he’s a former World Tour surfer from Santa Cruz? That he’s probably seen a thing or two given the heavy scene in Santa Cruz down the past couple of decades?

Right. Anything else?

I didn’t know much about the dude myself (other than he once got into a bit of argy-bargy with the Aussie QS crew in Portugal in the 90’s after Lee Winkler shot him with a tazer or air gun or something…) until I did the Azores QS10000 event commentary with him two years ago, and discovered he’s a legend. Softly spoken, funny, naughty. Not what was expecting at all.

Check out Kyle Buthman’s 12min docco on Adam, featuring him buying 40 Whoppers to feed to homeless folk around Santa Cruz (Adam own brother sleeps rough, we learn), and obsessing over collecting pennies for luck before paddling out at sharkier breaks north of town, and in general displaying an admirably high level of contagious froth for chest-high runners. In fact, showing such a deep and intense froth it actually made me froth-envious, made me froth to be more frothing.

“The hardest thing for me to do is get my wetsuit on. If it’s 1ft, I’m psyching. If it’s really good, like 3 or 4 feet, sometimes I get anxiety… I gotta calm down.”

A thoroughly enjoyable film about a classic surf cat.