🏄‍♀️ Must celebrities surf good?🤞

👋 Happy National Corn Fritters & National Cherry Day! Not a fan of celebrity surf stories? Do not despair. Because that's not really what this week's surfodrama is about. Or it’s not entirely about that.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• Must celebrities surf good? 🤞

• Surfing, but for team players 👭

• Gnarly 1938 🫣

• From Virginia to Japan 🇯🇵

• Surf news roundup 🗞️

^SURFODRAMA

🏄🏻‍♀️ Must celebrities surf good?

We very rarely write about celebrities who surf. It’s not that kind of surf mag.

But we felt compelled to break our own rule after reading that “Lewis Hamilton Probably Surfs Better Than You.”

Whaaat?!

And… bear with us. This story is about a bit more than celebrities surfing. Plus it’s my birthday week, and apparently that means the editorial rules no longer apply.

🌟 Celebrities go surfing
This week, close-up footage circulating on social media showed Lewis Hamilton, who races cars for a living, riding what appeared to be one extraordinarily long wave. He even landed a 360.

Look a little closer, though, and you’ll notice that the board is not shaped like a conventional shortboard. Then, wait until the end and you’ll realize he has been wakesurfing all along.

Lies! 😜

We have also seen Hamilton “getting barreled” at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch. And you already know how we feel about wave pools at The Wipeout Weekly.

Now contrast that with Amy Schumer, a celebrity beginner carrying a very different kind of surfing baggage.

Thirty years ago, Schumer was surfing alone at Rockaway Beach when she injured herself badly enough to need 40 stitches in three layers. She recently returned for a lesson with her son, partly so he could discover surfing and partly so she could overcome her own fear and get back on a board.

No wonder it was an emotional day.

🤔 Why does this even matter?
So why are we talking about either of them?

Obviously, celebrities are allowed to surf. Anyone can surf. And honestly, everyone should. We say so on our homepage.

But celebrity surfing stories are rarely allowed to be ordinary.

Lewis Hamilton cannot simply be very good at wakesurfing. He has to “surf better than you.” Amy Schumer cannot simply take a lesson with her kid. She has to confront a 30-year trauma and complete an “emotional return” to surfing.

Perhaps that is the strange thing about surfing in general. Nobody is ever simply allowed to stand on a board and have a nice time. Or not stand up at all.

Surfing is repeatedly sold as identity. Both masculinity and femininity, figure that one out. Also: bravery, spirituality, rebellion, healing and proof of authenticity.

Lest we forget: therapy.

It promises to cure anxious children, traumatized veterans, burned-out workers, disconnected teenagers, insecure men and women who have reached the apparently astonishing age of 40 without getting crushed by a flying house.

Surfing can absolutely make people feel better.

It can also make people feel cold, frustrated, frightened, excluded, embarrassed, physically demolished and irrationally furious with another human being for stealing a two-foot wave.

Sometimes, instead of making you calm and serene, it drives you completely mad.

To be clear, this is not an argument against the value of surfing. It’s wonderful! But it’s a call for that value to remain personal, inconsistent and sometimes completely unremarkable.

🌊 Why we surf
The mythology attracts people to surfing, but it can also make the experience feel strangely demanding.

You cannot simply enjoy yourself badly. You are expected to be good, and you are expected to be changed. Even when you’re famous.

Men are often allowed to take up surfing because it looks fun. Women, especially older women, are more often expected to prove something by doing it.

Perhaps this is not only a surfing problem.

We increasingly struggle to let fun remain fun.

Even when an activity is not expected to transform us, it is expected to optimize us. Running, cycling and even walking become discipline. Did you get your 10,000 steps today?

You can measure anything. So we obsessively start measuring our wave count, distance and time surfed.

And where is the fun in that?

🧳 Transformation sells the trouble
I understand why we tell these stories.

Surfing is stupidly inconvenient, absurdly difficult and damn intimidating. People need a reason to try it.

In marketing, transformation sells the trouble. Come surfing and you will find yourself!

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps you will spend 30 minutes fighting your way through the whitewater and getting absolutely nowhere.

Surfing is hard enough without packing all the additional baggage of being something more. We don’t have to carry all of that every time we paddle out.

Sometimes a surf is just a surf. And sometimes you do not even manage that.

^{WORD OF THE WEEK}

🚣‍♀️ Surfing, but for team players

Surf boating is a sport where four rowers take a boat out through the surf, turn around, and try to catch a wave back in. That's the whole thing, kinda.

It’s a surprisingly old, sorry, established sport. It started in Australia in the late 1800s, when the Surf Life Saving Association adapted fishermen's dory boats for ocean rescues. Once jet skis and RIBs (that’s rigid inflatable boats for you and me) took over the rescue work, surf boating stuck around as a competitive sport.

It’s still huge in Australia and New Zealand, where clubs race 22-foot fiberglass boats through overhead surf. Oars were once made from a single piece of wood, today like most pars, they are made of carbon fiber.

According to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, it really hasn’t changed since the beginning of time.

You get four rear-facing rowers and an aft-positioned “sweep steer,” meaning the sweep is placed toward the back of the boat, closer to the stern.

Teams launch their boats from the beach, row through the surf to the buoy which is anchored about 300 yards as the surf line, and surf back to the shore picking up waves along the way.

And if you want to see how gnarly it gets, head to our Video of the Week story. We’ve unearthed crazy footage from 1938!

🚣 Save surf boating!
What inspired this week’s Word of the Week was a story on BBC News about surf boating in Cornwall, UK.

The UK Surf Rowers League says the sport is at a critical point. When their chair started rowing in 2006 there were 15 men's crews and 12 women's crews turning up to competitions.

Now the numbers have thinned enough that the sport could die out in the UK entirely if they don't recruit soon. Perranporth Surf Lifesaving Club is running taster sessions to prevent this surfoapocalypse.

The only stated requirement: you must be a competent sea swimmer.

^{VID OF THE WEEK}

🫣 Gnarly 1938

Surf boating is serious business. We call this clip “Sons of the Sea, Come to Mother.”

And in this one, the narrator muses: “Those rollers are coming in with the speed and force of a torpedo, and muscular arms and powerful shoulders are going out to meet them.”

I think I’ll stick to surfing.

^{LATEST FROM GIRLS WHO CAN’T SURF GOOD}

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🇯🇵 Surfing base in Japan for a working-holiday, longboard-friendly with a welcoming lineup? Community top picks: Miyazaki in Kyushu (longboarder-heavy, one member paid 11000 yen for two boards and a bike for two weeks), Hyuga specifically for lots of longboarders, Ichinomiya in Chiba (packed but ridiculously friendly, party waves shared with strangers), Kamakura for the longboard vibe with Tokyo-area work options nearby, and Shimoda if you don't mind shorter rides.

🩱 Wetsuit for pear-shaped surfers, tight on hips and gaping on the torso? Community top picks: O'Neill Hyperfreak (stretchy through the hips and thighs, long arms and legs, solid repair policy) got the most love, Sister Wetsuits for accurate sizing, and Mollusk for a nice fit on the pear silhouette. Or, as more than one member admitted, ditch the wetsuit and wait for water warm enough for a rash guard and shorts.

🏊‍♀️ First-timer at Virginia Beach wave pool (Atlantic Surf Park), how far ahead to book and what level to pick? Community top picks: book in advance because it fills fast in summer, pick a session one level below what you think you are (less buoyancy, real learning curve), take your time between waves rather than forcing every turn, bring a board you're okay with dinging (concrete bottom, expect scrapes), and consider an 8-footer over a bulky longboard.

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Surf goes everywhere: festivals East and West, wave pools in Scotland, art in Cold Hawaii… and more

🎤 Super Girl Surf Festival announces music lineup for its 20th anniversary
The world's largest women's surf event returns to Jacksonville Beach November 7-8 with Switchfoot, Lupe Fiasco, B.o.B and Gym Class Heroes headlining a free concert alongside two days of surfing, skateboarding and the Super Girl 5K.

🎬 Surfalorus Film Festival hits 15 with a Wahine Classic partnership
North Carolina's surf film festival teams up with the East Coast's premier all-female surf comp August 7-9.

🌊 Denmark's "Cold Hawai’i" quietly becomes an art destination
The Guardian profiled the 30-mile stretch of Jutland coastline nicknamed by international surfers in the 90s.

🏰 There is a wave pool 30 minutes from Edinburgh Castle
National Geographic Traveller covered Lost Shore Surf Resort, home to Europe's largest wave pool.

🌍 Time Out picks the world's best places to surf
The list runs from St Ives to Bondi via Mauritius, Bristol's The Wave, Ericeira, Hikkaduwa, Taghazout and Nosara.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
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With stoke,

Zuz & The Wipeout Weekly