🏄‍♀️ This may just save your surfing 🥹

👋 Happy National Corn on the Cob Day! 🌽 I’m not making these up, I swear. Crazy week in Southern California. The biggest south swell of the year turned The Wedge into a spectator sport on Tuesday (see the pic later in this issue), Malibu Pier had to close, and apparently we're not done yet.

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• This may just save your surfing 🥹

• Not your grandma’s skimboarding 👵

• SoCal got hit 🫨

• From SoCal to Nova Scotia 🍁

• For the love of surfing, and books 📚

• Surf news roundup 📰

^{SURFODRAMA (KINDA)}

😱 This may just save your surfing 🥹

We're interrupting our regular surfodrama programming to bring you a story that just may save your surfing.

A few months back, one of our own Girls Who Can't Surf Good posted that she'd developed snow blindness. And yes, it applies to water just the same. Her cornea was literally getting sunburned. She couldn't keep her eyes open. Her description: think sunblock in your eyes, but for the rest of the day.

It was killing her surfing.

Her optometrist suggested swim goggles. Anyone who has ever taken goggles to the lineup knows it's a hit-or-miss situation. I used to be allergic to salt water, and even then, surfing in goggles felt worse than just dealing with the stinging.

Because goggles are fine for laps at the pool, the worst that can happen is some raccoon eyes (guilty). But they do not stay on when you're getting ragdolled by whitewater. Our hero knew this firsthand as she'd lost a pair the day before posting. And here's the kicker: they don't even float, so it can be an expensive hobby.

She'd solved the problem in the mountains with glacier glasses. But water, as she put it, is tricky.

🧠 The hive mind kicks in
The advice poured in, and honestly, the collective ingenuity was a thing of beauty. The suggestions fell into a few camps:

The strap engineers: Floating straps, croakies, pilot fish straps, boater's keychain floats, cords tied to bikini tops and wetsuit zippers. One member braids the strap directly into her hair. Another tucks her ponytail through the back of her hat so nothing escapes.

The sunglasses faithful: SeaSpecs, Ombraz armless sunglasses, Rheos floating frames, Gill sailing glasses with backstraps, and one budget queen's polarized fishing glasses from Walmart with a fluorescent green floating strap, a 'cheap and cheerful' solution.

The hat brigade: Surf hats with chin straps, dark under-brims to cut glare, even a neoprene hood to lock everything in place. As one member put it: 'hat and glasses get you weird looks and nasty comments, but F*** 'em, you're still surfing.'

The schedule changers: Dawn patrol. Best sun protection there is.' Technically correct. Spiritually exhausting.

The wildcard: An actual welder chimed in to say welders get the same condition from arc flash and recommended torch-cutting glasses. We love this group.

💡 The actual fix
Buried in those comments was the suggestion that changed everything: tinted contact lenses. Not transition lenses, not lightly tinted ones. Proper dark, sunglasses-level tint, sitting right on your eyeball. A few members mentioned brands; one pointed toward a company called Altius that makes performance contacts for exactly this problem.

A while later, an update came in a follow-up post, and the photo alone stopped people mid-scroll. Her naturally blue eyes, completely dark with the contacts in. Like sunglasses fused to your eyeballs. 'Spooky,' as one commenter said, 'but so cool.'

Her verdict: it's the only thing that worked. She can look at the sun bouncing off the water without pain. The company worked with her optometrist, who fitted her and wrote the prescription. They come with vision correction or without, just for sun protection.

The practical details, because we know you want them: a box of 10 runs about $33, our surfer girl's fitting was $100. Another member skipped the fitting altogether using an existing prescription. Fair warning: the lenses do alter how you see colours, so they take getting used to.

Bonus: we hear that you may see better in them on the water than in your regular contacts. Turns out elite water polo goalies have been quietly using these for years.

The comments lit up. 'I had no idea this existed and I've had surfer's eye for a while.' 'One of the coolest surf advancements I've ever seen.' 'I've been saying someone should invent this for years.' And our favourite: 'Yay for the help of this amazing community!!!!'

🙌 The moral of the story
Somewhere between the goggle casualties and the welder cameo, this group did what it does best: took one surfer's 'this is killing my surfing' and turned it into a solution none of us knew existed.

Your eyes only get one lifetime of UV. Protect them however works for you, be it a hat, straps, dawn patrol, or sunglasses you wear inside your eyes.

Regular surfodrama programming resumes next issue. Probably.

^{WORD OF THE WEEK}

🌊 Not your grandma’s skimboarding 👵

Skimboarding, it appears, has many flavors. The photo above shows a girl at a Polish music festival enjoying a spot of mud skimboarding.

It doesn't look like much, does it?

But skimboarding is actually a very dynamic boardsport that sometimes looks like reverse surfing.

You probably know skimboarding from the beach. Kids on a foamie, running from the sand, dropping the board, skimming across the wet edge of a shore break, hopping a tiny wave back in. Cute, and totally manageable.

But what you probably don't know is that on the other end of this sport, there are crazy people who ride their finless boards into actual open ocean monsters.

The poster child here is Brad Domke, a Florida skimboarder who has spent years taking flat skimboards into waves you'd expect to see a bunch of tow-in surfers on. In 2014, he was towed into a 30-foot wave at Puerto Escondido on a skimboard, with no fins, no leash, just this thin lacquered plank. Surf media of course collectively lost its mind.

There are, broadly speaking, four flavors of skim.

Wave (beach) skim is the classic: run from the sand, drop the board, catch a shorebreak wave back in.

Flatland skim is the trick discipline, heavily influenced by skate culture, done on wet sand, ponds, puddles, anywhere thin water meets a flat-ish surface (ollies, shove-its, grinds).

Wave (proper) skim means paddling the skimboard out like a surfboard and riding real waves with no fins.

And tow-in skim is the Brad Domke extreme: getting towed by a jetski into big-wave conditions on a finless board.

What makes it different from surfing? Skimboards are flatter, thinner, lighter, and finless. They slide rather than carve, which is why turns look loose and drifty.

The smaller surface area means you sink fast if you stop moving. There's no paddling out, no sitting on it, and you don't get to wait for a set. You're either in motion or you're swimming.

The skim community lives at places like the Wedge in Newport Beach, Aliso Beach in Laguna, Cabo San Lucas, and Sandy Beach in Hawai'i. If you've never tried it, the entry version is cheap and the wipeouts can be fun.

That reverse surfing I mentioned? Blair Conklin is the guy. Watch a clip of him and you'll see.

^{PIC OF THE WEEK}

🫨 SoCal got hit

What is happening?! This pic by Grant Ellis won the surfing internet this week.

According to his Instagram, Grant took the kids to The Wedge to see the surfers Andre Botha and Koa Rothman riding the biggest swell this season in SoCal.

The Wedge is a circus on a regular day, but this week it was absolutely preposterous.

Grant was the photo editor of Surfer magazine for 17 years (2003–2020). He's currently the photo editor at The Surfer's Journal and continues his career as a surf photographer.

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

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🤙 SoCal trip late August/September, looking for the best beginner surf lessons. Community top picks: Malibu Makos and Ventura Makos near LA, Banzai Surf School and Salysol Surf (women + BIPOC owned) in Huntington Beach, Surfin Fire in Oceanside, Surf Diva in La Jolla, Todd at Girl in the Curl in Dana Point. Spots: Pacific Beach, Encinitas (Beacons, Swamis, Cardiff Reef), San Onofre. Plenty of surf schools at Venice Beach.

☀️ What to wear surfing in tropical heat when you don't want a bikini and want to skip reef-toxic sunscreen. Community top picks: long-sleeve rash guard with bikini bottoms or surf leggings, hooded rash guard for serious sun, brimmed surf hat with chin strap, zinc on the face (Surf Mud is the popular brand). Specific brands: Tutublue (full coverage, fast-drying), Kiniki. Universal advice: accept the tan lines.

🍁 Heading back to Canada (Toronto) after three years of surfing daily in Nicaragua, looking for surf options in the backyard, ideally volunteer-for-accom. Community top picks: Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia (the locals will adopt you), Tofino on Vancouver Island (service-industry jobs often include accom, but it's not cheap), Great Lakes surfing in Ontario (Scarborough Bluffs, Lake Erie, Kincardine on Lake Huron, best in fall/winter), river surfing year-round in Montreal, Rockaway Beach NYC for summer. The Lake Surfistas community got the warmest shoutout: "the most welcoming community of surfers I've ever experienced."

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THIS WEEK’S WEE SURF SHOPPE FIND}

📚 For the love of surfing, and books

Summer is coming, which means beach reading. And since we're all about surf surf surf, we're going to nudge you toward the kind of beach reading that is, well, about surf. Three books for the longer days ahead: one to make you the smartest surfer out there, one to discover a new surf culture, and one that is simply required reading for every surfer.

🧠 The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw. Matt Warshaw, a former pro surfer and editor of Surfer magazine, spent five years writing this, and is widely regarded as the person who knows more about surfing than any other human alive. It's packed with 250+ rare photographs, and written with the obsessive depth only a true believer can manage, yet somehow still extremely entertaining. Currently free on Kindle Unlimited, which is its own kind of magic.

🌍 AFROSURF by Mami Wata. The first book to capture and celebrate African surf culture, compiled by Cape Town surf brand Mami Wata. It covers 18 coastal countries from Morocco to Mozambique, with over 50 essays, surfer profiles, poems, photographs, illustrations, and a mini comic. Bonus: 100% of proceeds go to two African surf therapy organizations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children.

🏆 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William (Bill) Finnegan. The Pulitzer winner (2016) and the surf memoir incarnate. Bill, a longtime New Yorker writer and war reporter, started surfing as a kid in California and Hawaii and chased waves to Maui, Fiji, Samoa, and South Africa. It's about waves, but also about friendship, obsession, and being consumed by all things around the ocean. Surfing only looks like a sport.

👉 Or you can scroll the shoppe instead

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Windsurfing legend. Shark bite. Pharrell's surf school. Colorado goes surfing. Ocean City revolts.

🌬️ Windsurfing pioneer remembered
Hoyle Schweitzer, co-creator of the Windsurfer, has died at 93, leaving behind a legacy that helped shape modern windsurfing, foiling, and kiteboarding.

🦈 Hawaiian surfer survives shark attack
Oahu surfer Koa Smith is expected to make a full recovery after an apparent eight-foot Galapagos shark bit both of his legs during a session on the South Shore.

🏄 Pharrell funds free surf lessons
Atlantic Park Surf's Next Wave program is giving more than 100 Virginia Beach kids free access to swimming, surf instruction, and equipment.

🏄‍♂️ Colorado's newest surf spot takes shape
The $3.8 million Surf Shack indoor surf facility is nearing completion in Colorado Springs and will feature a FlowRider, spa, and competition league.

🏖️ Surfers seek more beach access
Ocean City surfers are asking local officials to revisit long-standing regulations after being cleared from the water during one of the better surf days of the season.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

_{The Wipeout Weekly—our home and digital magazine.
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The Wipeout Weekly podcast—daily surf stories and weekly* guests.
All Things Surf Directory—surf retreats, learn to surf, classifieds, surf-side lodging, you name it.
Girls Who Can’t Surf Good—an 86k-member-strong private group on Facebook.}
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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
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