Today's victory by 2004 women's world surfing champion SOFIA MULANOVICH's (Peru) at the ROXY PRO at Sunset Beach in Hawaii has projected her to no.2 on the world rankings behind front-runner Stephanie Gilmore (Kingscliff, NSW) heading into the deciding world title event on Maui in December.



In booming three metre waves, the 24 year-old Peruvian convincingly defeated all three of her Australian opponents with a heat total of 13.72.



NSW, Central Coast surfer Amee Donohoe (McMasters Beach)  posted the best result of her career by finishing second on 10.83, NSW Crescent Head's SAM CORNISH third on 7.64 and Bronte's Jessi Miley-Dyer fourth on 6.40.



The earlier elimination of Gilmore (Aus) from the quarter finals has put the pressure on the 19 year-old tour rookie in her bid to seal the 2007 ASP world title.



Hawaiian surfer Megan Abubo has been raced to hospital with suspected broken ribs after a radical wipeout in the challenging conditions.

For the first time ever, the Opening Ceremonies of the Quiksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau will be webcasted live from Waimea  Bay. Today,  Aust  east coast  daylight  savings  time  - at  12 NOON



This event, one of the most spiritual and soulful happenings in surfing, is a gathering of the tribe of Men Who Ride Mountains. See it all - the traditional Hawaiian blessing and tribute to fallen hero Eddie Aikau, the paddle out in his honour, interviews with the world’s best big wave surfers and highlights from years past when the Bay Called the Day.



Watch the opening ceremonies live on quiksilver.com

Current ASP ratings leader Stephanie Gilmore (AUS) needed a second chance to show the world why shes No. 1 on Day 1 of the Roxy Pro Hawaii, but she did so in her Round 2 heat at Sunset Beach today.



Gilmore, who could potentially win her maiden world title when the Roxy Pro runs next, will be the only athlete in the history of professional surfing to win an ASP World Title as a rookie. The mounting pressure of such a huge achievement got to 19-year-old in her Round 1 heat when she finished 3rd to Wildcard Coco Ho (HAW) and Claire Bevilacqua (AUS) respectively. She was forced to surf Round 2, the first elimination round, for only the second time this year.



"Its all just a whirlwind in my head," Gilmore said. "There are so many things Im thinking about and so many things that I shouldn't be thinking about. I think I was just a little bit rattled in my first heat, I couldnt find any waves.



"My Round 2 heat was good, I felt like it was just another chance to get some more practice with my boards, Sunset can be pretty challenging."



Gilmore posted the highest heat total of the day, 18.10 (out of 20.00) and the highest single wave score when she earned a 9.60 in her Round 2 heat against Rochelle Ballard (HAW) and Jacqueline Silva (BRA).



"The second wave of the set had a little bit of froth on the take off," Gilmore said of her highest scoring wave. "I didnt really think I was going to make it, I felt like I was going to eat it pretty hard. Luckily I managed to make it down the face, pull myself together and get a few really good turns in. I didn't really think I'd score that high, but I'm stoked."



World No. 2 Silvana Lima (BRA), Gilmores closest competition for the World Title, won her Round 1 heat today. Lima needs to finish within one place ahead of Gilmore in the Roxy Pro to keep her title dreams alive heading into final event of the year in Maui.



"I feel great, no pressure, nothing different," Lima said. "I need to do really well and there are a lot of different ways the World Title race will be determined. Im trying not to think about it much and just stay calm and concentrate on my surfing."



Hawaiians Coco Ho, Melanie Bartels and Megan Abubo reveled in Round 1 today. Ho, who had to first win the Roxy Pro Trials to earn a place in the main event, was elated when she finished 1st in her heat against Gilmore and Bevilacqua.



"Stephanie Gilmore is my ultimate hero," Ho said. "It was the best experience to be able to surf with her, but I was so bummed that she wasn't able to get a few good ones and put on a show for us and get me kicking. I wished her the best in Round 2 and I'm rooting for her for the World Title Race for sure all the way."



Current Vans Triple Crown of Surfing forerunner Abubo beat co-Sunset specialists Layne Beachley (AUS) and Rochelle Ballard (HAW) in the six foot (two metre)surf on offer to keep her Hawaiian winning streak alive. Abubo won the first event of the Triple Crown in Haleiwa, a 6-Star ASP World Qualifying Series (WQS) event, last week.



"To win the Triple Crown is a dream for anyone, but for a Hawaiian it just means that much more," Abubo said. "We've just been blessed this year with such good waves here at Sunset and at Haleiwa. I surf here all the time and its just to great to paddle out and have two of my great friends out there with me in the lineup. I'm hoping the rest of the event will go this well too."



Reigning Roxy Pro champion Bartels beat Australians Samantha Cornish and Amee Donohoe to advance straight to Round 3 in front of her hometown crowd at Sunset Beach today.



"I'm Hawaiian so I feel great about surfing here at Sunset with my family and friends around," Bartels said. "It's great to be surfing in big waves, it's more challenging. The girls who usually do well in small waves just aren't making their heats so it's just good, it shows that you have to be versatile. I'm stoked the heat was good, I love these conditions and getting barreled."



Only seven heats of surfing remain for the Roxy Pro Hawaii, and the World Title could quite likely be decided the next time competition resumes, which may be tomorrow.



The ASP Womens World Title clinching scenario for the Roxy Pro Hawaii is as follows:



Mathematically, World No. 2 Silvana Lima (BRA), former ASP Womens World Champions Layne Beachley (AUS), Chelsea Hedges (AUS) and Sofia Mulanovich (PER), as well as current world No. 6 Samantha Cornish (AUS) are capable of overtaking ratings leader Stephanie Gilmore (AUS) with two wins if Gilmore doesnt post better than a combination of 9th or 17th place results in the last two events of the season.



Should Gilmore earn a 5th at Sunset Beach, Hedges, Beachley and Cornish will be out of contention leaving only Lima and Mulanovich in the race.



If Mulanovich bows out early with a 17th at Sunset Beach, Gilmore needs a 9th to knock her out of contention. If Mulanovich earns a 9th at Sunset Beach, Gilmore needs a 5th. If Gilmore finishes 4th or better, Mulanovich cant win.



Gilmore can clinch the title at the Roxy Pro at Sunset Beach if she posts a 3rd place result and Lima finishes 17th or 9th. If Lima finishes 5th or 4th Gilmore must finish 2nd to win the title there. If Lima posts a 3rd place result, Gilmore must win the event or the race will continue to Maui.



Essentially, if Gilmore wins the event and Lima finishes 3rd or lower, the 2007 ASP Womens World Title belongs to Gilmore.

In the world of surf, Hawaii's Sunset Beach is a break held in high regard, reserved for hefty, seasoned surfers with decades of experience and a steely resolve. Fifteen year-old John John Florence might have defied the theory by advancing through two rounds of the O'Neill World Cup of Surfing today, but could well see his life flash before his eyes if forecasts for wave face heights in excess of 20 feet in the coming days hold true.



The youngest competitor in the event, Florence stands roughly five feet tall and weighs in at less than 100 pounds. His miniature form made today's excellent six- to 10-foot surf appear mountainous as he etched a trail of white water across smooth, liquid walls. It was a sight to behold for the crowd of tourists on the beach, many of whom were getting their first look at Hawaii's famous winter waves. For them, the vision of Florence tearing the scene apart was nothing short of breath-taking. Florence's rivals weren't as impressed as, one-by-one, they fell victim to his finely honed, home-grown repertoire. Florence eliminated seasoned World Qualifying Series competitors Gavin Beschen (HI), Chaz Chidester (HI), Joan Duru (France), and Ola Eleogram (HI) today, overcoming a snapped surfboard in his second round heat to scratch through. On order, he posted a last ride of 2.73 points to finish end a day's work.



"It was stressful in the end," said Florence of his broken surfboard ordeal. "I knew I only needed a (two point score) and there was 50 seconds to go. "I was riding a 6'0" (surfboard), but I broke it, so now I'm riding a 5'8". The swim to the channel was pretty hectic and tiring."



Lucky for John John, he had his trusty caddy on standby with a back-up surfboard in the channel: his four-foot tall little brother. Locals dominated the early heats of competition, as is the usual scenario for this event. Local pair Marcus Hickman and Gavin Gillette topped the day's two-wave heat scores with respective totals of 14.83 and 14.0 points. Others to progress today included Adam Robertson (Australia), Dane Gudauskas (San Clemente, CA), Nic Muscroft (Australia), and Flynn Novak (HI), who all won their second round heats. In addition to the $125,000 prize purse for this event, O'Neill has partnered with American Racing Equipment, Inc. to offer additional awards for the "Best Barrel" and "Breakout Performance". Recipients of these awards will win a set of American Racing rims out of the ATX Series of all-terrain wheels. There will be plenty of tube-riding potential over the coming days, with Surfline.com's official Vans Triple Crown forecast calling for wave face heights of 12- to 18-feet tomorrow and Thursday, six- to eight-feet Friday, and in excess of 20 feet Saturday.

Tamaroa McComb, the teenage Tahitian ripper and reigning ‘King of the Groms’, has moved to Australia and signed to the Billabong surf team to lay the platform for a future tilt at the ASP Men's World Tour.



The 15-year-old Tamaroa, a gentle soul with an explosive repertoire, has been lighting up the junior contest scene around the world. In August he earned a place in the trials for the Quiksilver Pro world tour event in France after claiming the ‘King of the Groms’ title at Capbreton, was runner up in the Rusty Gromfest under-16s in Australia in July (after winning the under-14s in 2006) and runner up in the world under-16 titles in Portugal in May. He has also earned a place in the trials for the first event of the 2008 ASP world tour at Snapper Rocks on Australia’s Gold Coast, a location that will be his temporary home following his move to Billabong. Tamaroa has moved into a new pad at Coolangatta, just down the road from the Superbank and Kirra, with shaper and Billabong Adventure Division pioneer Dylan Longbottom. He now plans to live between the Gold Coast and his home on the French Polynesian island of Huahine, in between an extensive international competition schedule.



His first trip with Billabong is to Hawaii in December, where he will start his preparation for the Billabong World Junior Championships in January where he has been awarded a main event wildcard. Tamaroa will then focus on the 2008 ASP’s Australian men’s junior circuit ahead of a planned tilt at the 2009 World Qualifying Series as an entrée to the Men's World Tour. He described his move to the Billabong team as ‘a real pleasure’ and was looking forward to competing in Australia.



"I really enjoy competition. It’s like a game that I want to win and keep winning and I have fun playing it,” said Tamaroa. “I’m so stoked to come to Billabong and I’m feeling like I never want to leave the Gold Coast. There’s so many good waves, so many different kinds of waves, and I really love Snapper. “I’ve had a few perfect surfs out there and it’s good to see so many top surfers in the water.”



Luke Egan, Billabong Australia men’s marketing manager, said the signing of Tamaroa was a coup for Billabong. “Tamaroa is one of the world’s most exciting junior surfers and one of the hottest prospects ever to come out of Tahiti. He adds further depth to the Billabong team and we look forward to nurturing him over coming years to ensure he gets the best opportunity to realise his amazing potential.”



Tamaroa’s addition to the elite Billabong team strengthens an already super-impressive junior line up that includes Dean Bowen, Heath Joske, Laurie Towner, Nick Vasicek and Creed McTaggart.

To date, no one has ever documented a cleanly landed kickflip on a surfboard. Volcom is giving away $10,000 to the first person that can land a “proper” kickflip while surfing! By proper we mean an “above the lip” kickflip where first you launch an air, use your front foot to flip the board, and then land on it and ride out cleanly. No backwash, no fingerflips, no grabs, no laybacks. Just a proper kickflip. We’re going to be strict on these following guidelines. The rules are all listed here, so get out there and put this trick in the history books. Good luck!



Rules:

1.     Your entry must be on video from the start of the trick through the ride out. No photos allowed.

2.     This contest is open to everyone. The contest begins today November 21st, 2007, and will run until there's a winner.

3.     The kickflip must be a real air “above the lip” – No backwash, No chop hops, or anything in the flats or below the lip of the wave.

4.     All waves must be self caught – You must paddle into the wave. This means NO tow-ats, step-offs, jetskis, boats, dinghys, winches, canoes, oars, helicopters, dolphins or assistance of any kind.

5.     No grabs of any kind. Not before, not after, not during.

6.     You must completely “ride out” of the kickflip. That means if you land on the back of the wave and fail to continue surfing the wave – it’s not a make!

7.     No heelflips. Or else we’d have called it the Heelflip-Off.

8.     No shoes. Who surfs in shoes anyway? Regular “made for surfing” booties are acceptable.

9.     You must be riding a surfboard with at least one fin. No boogie boards, wakeboards, wakeskates, skimboards, kiteboards, trays etc.



How to Enter: Click this link to download your entry form Entry form must be printed out and sent with footage to:



Volcom's Kickflip-Off

1740 Monrovia Ave

Costa Mesa, CA 92627



 ***Check out some footage of Ozzie Wright's near-makes by clicking over to Youtube.com/kickflipoff



Make sure to send in your own footage of your attempts and close calls. We will post the attempts on the youtube kickflip-off page so all can see.



*All kickflip entries are subject to verification and review by Volcom. No video tampering please. Let's make this legit!

Slop on Style Then Slop on Stickers

Nothing feels quite as nice as flashing the stickers on a big air. Adam Wickwire beams the logos and grabs the ladies' attention.

Okay, you’re connecting your turns, your roundhouse is smooth, and you’ve punted a few airs. You’ve done some local contests and come away with the hardware. Maybe you’re a bit sick of looking at all that empty space on the top of your board. Maybe you’re over paying for your own clothes. Maybe you even think it will help you get some chicks. Whatever your reason, you want to get sponsored. Well then, my unsponsored friend, you’ve come to the right place. After talking with some of surfing’s premiere team managers as well as the sponsor monsters themselves, we’ve got the goods to get you on your way.

Here are a few tips that will transform your board from au naturale to sticker-smothered significance:

1. Get born right now. Considering surf companies are on the verge of slapping stickers on babies’ bare asses, there has never been a better time to be a grom. “If a kid can do a cut back they’ll sponsor him," says NSSA ripper, Oliver Kurtz. "I’ve seen kids at like seven or eight get sponsored.” Youth is powerful weapon in the surf industry. So if you've got it flaunt it, and the companies will flock.

2. Utilize the support staff. Bring your girlfriend (OR boyfriend - okay, mom will work too) down to the beach with the video camera and rack some serious time on film. “The best thing for them to do is send in a video portfolio,” says O’Neill team manager Micah Pitts. “Video is the best portfolio. It’s easy to watch and you can see if the rider has potential.”

3. Come legit. Make sure you have a good product before you go advertising your merchandise. “It’s better to be the dark horse or underdog and wait until you’re surfing better so that you can pick who you want to ride for,” advises Pitts. Self-promotion is only acceptable if you have the goods to support it. Roxy Surf Team Manager Torri Alexander concurs, “We don’t just hand out stuff; it’s a two way street. Show us why we need you.”

4. Don’t be an ass. “Attitude has cost a lot of riders publicity perks,” says Alexander. A good attitude will always take you farther than a good aerial. We all know you have skills, being a punk doesn’t get that across any more clearly.

5. Go to school. Nobody wants to give money to an idiot.

6. Pump iron. Do some squats, some biceps curls, maybe go on a vigorous daily rollerblade to build your endurance. “When it’s flat, train so that when there’s a swell you stand out,” Pitts suggests. Playing videogames and watching Fuel won’t help your surfing nearly as much as a good, long sweat session.

More surfing videos on SurferMag.com

With an open budget, an assembled crew of signed talent, and a blank calendar, the Young Guns 3 project set out with the entire world on their radar, making tactical strikes as the waves permitted. Quiksilver wunderkind Dane Reynolds, living up to the hype.

"Bruce Raymond and I drove down to Mexico in 1974 with Dan Merkel for a month in his big Ford F-350. Before we left, we looked around and asked him what we were going to eat. He pointed in the back and there were 50 loaves of bread and the biggest jar of peanut butter you've ever seen. You could have lived in it when it was empty. And that was about it. When we got down there we were sleeping in the back of his truck, and we got really, really sick after running out of food and being forced to eat dog tacos. We asked what was in them, and the guy replied, 'Perro.' But we didn't care; we woofed into what I think were Chihuahua tacos. The only good thing we had was a jar of honey, and it spilled open and stuck to everything. We were swapping old Penthouses and Playboys with the local fishermen for mangoes and fish and whatever we could get our hands on. We all got the worst case of the squirts you ever had, but Merkel was powering on and we couldn't work out why he was so healthy. We then found out he had this secret stash of nuts and berries he was hiding from us. We almost killed him. We demolished what he had left. In the end we were so sick we could barely surf, but we got great waves and were just drained every night. Thankfully the surf finally dropped and we came home."—Mark Warren

"Do they deserve it?" asked John Shimooka with a questioning inflection.

"Do we deserve it?" replied Jake Paterson before pausing, then bursting into a rhetorical seizure. "Of course we bloody deserve it, Shmoo! This is how we roll! Trailer parks aren't our style; six-star is our style! And we're gonna live it up. I think I'm gonna trash the place. One thing's for sure," he said, pausing for dramatic effect. "It'd never happen in our day!"

It wouldn't be the first time this line would be uttered on this trip. The two former pro surfers had just walked through the reception area of a $1,000-a-night resort in Seminyak, Bali, lamenting the fact that they were born 20 years too early. Paterson and Shmoo were chaperoning Quiksilver's Young Guns team—Dane Reynolds, Julian Wilson, Ry Craike, Clay Marzo, and 15-year-old "mini-gun" Garrett Parkes—during the three-week filming window for the latest installment of the Young Guns franchise, and it soon became pretty obvious that nothing was going to be done by half. "A chaperone? Back in my day it was every man for himself!" barked Snake. "They've got me and Shmoo, entourages, people to drive them, people to shoot them. Mind you," he moonwalked, "I can't punt, so I'd be no good if I was 18 today anyway."

If you could surf anywhere in the world, right now, where would it be? Where do you go when the decimal point on your budget can jump to the right at will, and where you can surf is limited only by the prevailing swell and your imagination? This was the dilemma facing the Young Guns 3 project—and it was not a bad dilemma to be confronted with. With five surfers, four videographers, two photographers, two chaperones, a surf forecaster, a partridge in a pear tree—and the full clout of a surf-industry giant, the scope of this thing was frightening.

"It had a 6,000-kilometer radius," mused Quiksilver's Mark Warren, the man pulling the strings on the project. "We were keeping an eye on the Tuamotus, the Carolines, Hawaii, New Zealand, the whole of Australia, and Indo." Scarred by the experience recounted above, Warren left Scorpion Bay off the map. "The idea was to stay light and be able to jump on a plane at five minutes' notice," he explained. Nothing would be left to chance. Camp bookings were paid in surfing outposts just in case a swell should materialize in the region, only for these camps to remain ghost towns. "It was a case of just pressing the trigger in that window and going where the waves took us," remarked Warren. This wasn't fishing with a pole; it was drift-netting for surf. At the conclusion of the trip, when asked how Young Guns 4 could top the sheer scale of this venture, Garrett Parkes replied, "Does the moon have surf?"

They had a lot to live up to. Last year's Young Guns installment was filmed aboard the Indies Trader 4 in the Mentawais and featured enough hardware to invade a small sovereign nation. The other big difference this year was no Kelly. Having provided the star power for the first two Young Guns chapters, this year Kelly Slater was busy being Kelly, leaving behind a power vacuum—and five guys trying to kill each other to get the best section in the movie. Reynolds, Marzo, Craike, Wilson, and Parkes were the pretenders to Slater's celluloid throne.

So with the world their surfing oyster, and forecasters scouting most of the Southern Hemisphere, the group did the only logical thing: They stayed put. The first week of the project was shot on the east coast of Australia, tapping into an endless run of small, but clean, summer swell. Palm tree backdrops were conspicuous by their absence, but the crew was never going to break the golden rule of surf travel: Never leave home if the surf's good.

WATCH THE YG3 TRAILER!

And so, after a week, this costly and omnipotent surf trip found itself holed up in a trailer park at Yamba. "There were six of us in a mobile home," recounted photographer Chris "Zaz" Carey."[Photographer Jeff] Hornbaker slept on the floor of the bathroom with toilet paper in his ears—he couldn't handle my snoring."

It was an entertaining but far from auspicious start to a project of such scale. Within 24 hours, however, the crew would upgrade from two-and-a-half stars to six, move from Australia to Asia, and put themselves in the path of an out-of-season but nonetheless welcome Indian Ocean swell.

"My nightmare trip was definitely Natividad in '85. The only way we could get there was on a milk-run flight in this old WWII era dual-prop airplane—the full death trap. We took off in Tijuana somewhere, and I remember getting on this giant scale with my boardbag, and the pilot standing there nervously checking this other guy's math as he scribbled down numbers. Then this old, homeless looking man pulls a red wagon up next to the plane, pulls out some Duct tape, and starts wrapping it around the propeller. When we got on board everyone had chickens and dogs with them, and the crew was pounding beers. Here I am, this 16-year-old kid, going, 'Where the f--k am I?' The plane takes off, and it's just rattling like you wouldn't believe. We stop on four or five different islands, all of them with these sketchy dirt runways. Finally we get there and we end up staying in this place that was like an outhouse in the middle of nowhere. It was way worse than a tent, and there's scorpions and snakes and dust. Not a single tree on the whole island. The only entertainment I had was Walkman and a cassette tape of Bryan Adams. (This was 1985.) I was bored s--tless. We were there for six days and got one day of average surf."—John Shimooka

The boys had just walked through the reception area of the Balinese resort. The trip's token snowy haired grommet, Parkesy, promptly dropped his bags and threw himself into the pool, fully clothed. "All his mates are sitting behind desks at school," laughed Julian Wilson, "and have a look where he is. He's high-rolling in the King Kong palace." Finally the grommets were in the salubrious surroundings to which their fantasies were more accustomed. "The place was so big I got lost in there a couple of times," chuckled Craikey.

"It was 18-star," cackled photographer Carey, who was put into a room so big, his snoring no longer posed a threat to anyone's well being. "Everyone was losing the plot. Everything from eight-course meals, a swimming pool for each room, massages on request—you name it." Broadband toilets were the only thing missing.

The resort became base camp for a week of lapping Bali, the boys surfing everything from the reefs of Ulu to the nameless black-sand barrels on the island's east coast. "We tried to surf two sessions in the morning when it was clean, and then another one in the afternoon. We got so crispy fried," said Marzo, whose first overseas trip had been to Bali four years ago at age 13. Typical of the fast-tracking of today's über-grom, the young Hawaiian's probably surfed more of the planet at 17 than the average surfer will by 70. "Yeah, after Bali I went to J-Bay when I was 14, and I got it all-time."

While the boys had encountered plenty of surf, the bulk of the footage so far had been shot above the lip, and three-foot Keramas does not a movie make. They were missing juice. They were missing a story…but it was only a day away.

"I was 16 and on my first major trip overseas, heading to France on my own. It was a disaster. I missed my connecting flight from Singapore to London, and from then on I'm just grovelling. I finally got on another flight and made it into Biarritz at about 9 p.m. but there was nobody there to pick me up. So I got a map of Biarritz and got a taxi driver to take me to the beach and find me a hotel. He took me to the most expensive hotel in all of France and, me being on a budget of 10 francs a day, I spent a month's budget in a single night. The next morning I found a surf shop, but it didn't open 'til 11 a.m., so I had to wait three hours for someone to show up. Eventually someone came down and got me. With the little money I had left I chipped in with Shane Herring and Todd Prestage and bought a car—which was where I slept for the next six weeks."—Jake Paterson

"It was kind of spooky, actually." This is how Clay Marzo described the experience of surfing perfect G-Land with just four other guys out. "It was kind of strange with no one out there. There was so much space. You'd see your friends as you flew past and that was about the only time you saw anyone. We had the whole reef to ourselves."

Turning G-Land into a boat trip, the view the Young Guns crew had steaming into Plengkung wouldn't have been too different from the one Bob Laverty and Mike Boyum had in '72: lurching 6 to 8-foot lines marching into the bay without a soul in sight. Here it was, a modern-day surf trip powered by satellites, re-enacting a surf trip 35 years ago powered by a 15-horsepower outboard motor.

"Boating over to G-Land in the off-season was a real long shot," quipped Warren. "Forecasting 10 days out is a lifetime, but Ben Matson saw it coming and told us to keep it on the boil. We're glad we did."

"Empty G-Land" is a term that last appeared in the surfing vernacular sometime in mid-'70s, but this is exactly what the boys encountered. Scoring epic G-Land in February is about as likely as walking into the camp to find a Sumatran tiger playing Texas Hold 'Em with a Javanese rhino. In February the camps are still two months away from opening and the wet-season onshores are blowing straight into the bay. The camp is looked after by a couple of caretakers who keep an eye on the place The Shining style, with just the monkeys and rhinos and tigers and ghosts of the jungle for company.

"It's me new favourite wave!" barked Craikey with his trademark Kalbarri drawl. Surprisingly, considering his love affair with all things left, Craike was surfing G-Land for the first time. He and Marzo, the two goofies, had a field day.

"Clay is like one of those Gremlins," says Shimooka. "Add water and he turns into a completely different animal. He's very humble on land, but he's extraordinarily confident in the water. Clay does this thing where he rubs his hands together when he's excited. He paddled up to me after getting a sick one that day and goes, 'I think I'm in heaven!' He did that, like, six times that day."

Jake Paterson, since his retirement from the tour at the end of 2006, has been having trouble letting go of the dream. His debut as a contest director at Quiksilver's Bali contest saw him make it all the way to the semi-finals of his own event. On this day, the chaperone wasn't about to sit in the boat and work on his tan. Snake's done plenty of time in the G-Land lineup, harking all the way back to Quiksilver's inaugural event there back in 1995. "To have the place empty out there, I thought I was back in a heat with [Shane] Beschen," he said. "Those young guys just frothed so hard out there—they caught everything that moved. I figured it was part of my job description to sit out the back and wait and just pick the eyes out of the sets—just to show 'em, ya know."

With mechanical sets and no crowd, there was nothing to curb their natural urge to catch all things moving. "My eyes were roooooted," said cheeky young Aussie Garrett Parkes, whose snowy little frame wilted under six hours of tropical sun. "I couldn't even surf the next day, that's how bad they were." As he was severely dehydrated, serious consideration was given to putting Parkes on a drip when they got back to Bali later that night. "His eyes were just pink and lifeless," recalls Carey.

Despite all the boys scoring more tube time in six hours than they'd had in the previous six months, it was Dane Reynolds who stamped himself as the new top dog of this pack, pig-dogging a ledgey double-up for the wave of the day-and the movie. Defying physics—considering that there was a mile of reef and only six guys in the water this day-Reynolds actually managed to fade a couple of his co-stars. "They were getting too many waves anyway. I had to stop 'em," he laughed with his trademark faux 'tude."I was charging just way too hard; G-Land wasn't ready for that s--t." Reynolds was cutting loose, knowing this would pretty well be his last freesurfing trip in 2007 before buckling down for the gruelling slog to qualify for the Dream Tour.

And so the project had its trophy day. "A couple of Bintangs, a big smile, now back to the real world," as Ry Craike summed it up. By "real world" we weren't quite sure whether Craikey meant the resort life they were quickly becoming accustomed to, or simply a week in the desert in his outback home. Either way, they all would return to the real world happy.

"The cool thing is, these kids appreciate what they have," says Paterson. "We were in the trailer park in Yamba for half a week and none of the boys really gave a s--t. They worked their arses off the whole time, and they were pushing things pretty damn far in the water. It's scary where things are heading. We may have broke the bank trying to pull this off but you watch these guys and you realize they deserve it."

Meet O'Neill's newest addition—Jordy Smith

The surf media can finally stop jabbering about which company South African golden boy Jordy Smith will sign with. As of Monday, October 22, an O’Neill logo will be emblazoned front and center on Smith’s quiver. That’s right folks, the hype is finally over. Smith has joined the O’Neill team with a rumored-to-be contract in the seven-figure range.

It’s been a big 12 months for Smith. After shocking the surfing world with a second-place finish at Sunset last winter during the O’Neill World Cup of Surfing and most recently with a big win at the O’Neill Cold Water classic, Smith is well on his way to becoming a household name. All of the aforementioned accolades coupled with the fact that he is the current 'QS ratings leader and has already qualified for next year’s World Tour, it’s safe to say that 2007 belongs to Jordy Smith.

“We’re just really excited to have Jordy join the team and we’re really looking forward to the future,” said O’Neill Marketing Manager Marc Prefontaine. ”When Jordy got a chance to come up to Santa Cruz for the Cold Water, I think he got a really good vibe from our brand. In Santa Cruz, he got to see our heritage and how dedicated we are to surfing.” With this in mind, here’s a little personal insight into surfing’s latest superstar.

You've been in California for a while now, do you prefer the girls in Nor Cal or So Cal?

Southern Cali girls for sure!

While you're on the road for most of the year, what are the things you miss the most about South Africa?

Friends, family, and the waves.

What's the best meal you've have in the U.S.?

Burger King…hahaha...just kidding – SONNY'S pasta...amazing!!!

What do you do for fun when you're not surfing?

I play tennis, soccer, and just hang out on Facebook or Myspace.

If you had to pick a celebrity (model, actress, musician, etc.) to date, who would it be?

Too many to choose from!

Favorite Surfer?

Sunny Garcia.

Favorite Band?

U2.

What surf spot would you like to surf that you haven't?

Chopes.

Last wetsuit you wore?

O'Neill, custom made.

If someone made a movie about your life, what would you title it?

Lakka Fire Krakka

Shoe size?

11...and growing.

If you had a power animal (a la Fight Club), what would it be?

The Lion

Favorite Movie?

Blood Diamond