I’m on my way back from the Secret Search trip in (shhhhhh!) somewhere in the Ocean Pacifico.
We were aboard the Indies Trader with Tom Curren, Steph Gilmore, a funny as fock Captain called Doris and a bunch of loser journalists such as myself. It was a great trip, read all about it in a forthcoming Surf Europe issue, and stay tuned to the site for my very amateur movie which should be going up in a few days.

Got to Hawaii late at nite a few days ago and stayed the night in Waikiki. Then rented a motor (upgraded to a SUV for the same size as a mid-size, great) and drove directly to da north shore. Tom’s French kids Lee Ann and Nathan are staying at Pete Hodgson’s place at OTW and we stayed in a little cabin in the backyard, sweet. The surf was pretty small but we had some fun sessions at OTW, V-land lefts and even a cheeky one at Sunset yesterday when there was a little pulse of swell. Apparently last thursay was the day of the season, slammin Banzai Pipeline and even a wave that broke all the way across the Bay, must have been pretty solid, stoked I wasn’t there for that and would have had to make up an excuse like, I’ve pulled a heart muscle. Apparently Pipe was mega heavy, people getting smashed. Mike Ho got held under, worked and had to be rescued on the jetski apparently.

We went to dinner at Tom’s lifeguard mate Pat’s place in Kailua. Pat’s the supervisor lifeguard on the North Shore where he’s guarded for 30 years, and as you might imagine, has got some pretty mental stories (he told us about last Thursday’s antics). He also reckons last week a guy tried to top himself by jumping off a cliff on the East side. Apparently the rozzers got there and the guy wasn’t dead, just floating about all mashed up on the surface. Then they saw a Tiger shark approaching. So they took out their pieces and started firing down the cliff, they shot up and killed the shark. Guess what? Two bigger Tigers then swam in, ate the shot shark and then ate the guy. Nasty. Another woman jumped off the same cliff and went missing, then they found her body minus one arm, one leg, and a chewed up head. Yuck. As if that weren’t bad enough, a Puertan Rican guy went surfing at night at Pipe and never came back. They found his board and the authorities are presuming he also got eaten. Nasty.

As luck would have it Llantwit’s Nathan Phillips and Colm Garret were also on the north shore, the Weapon staying at the very same house. Tidy. I sampled some of their finest Welsh banter, had a couple of splashes with the Weapon (troll’s got an ear infection and videoed) and we had a bar-b-q this afternoon before I left. I had corn on the cob and veggie patties which although tasty did funny things to my guts (I’ve cleared the internet area here in the airport). I was actually supposed to leave yesterday, our plane got to the runway but then came back to the gate with engine trouble. Eventually they unloaded the plane and sent us to hotels. I ended up getting another day in Hawaii though, so won’t complain. Off to LAX shortly. I’ve actually got 9 hours transit in LAX so hopefully will hook up with the bro they call Ro who lives in Laguna and go for a wet burrito.