Featured
In this category you will discover our best stories and articles featured and served up in one place. Dive in and soak up some of the best New Zealand surfing content right here on your device or computer.
Dunedin surfer Jimi Crooks remembers the day well. There was a powerful swell at the Black Head quarry break. The waves were hollow and intimidating. Heavy. So heavy a lot of the young gun surfers from the area chose not to go out. It was about nine years ago. Veteran......
Let’s face it: Indonesia is the holy grail of surfing. We’re talking Indian Ocean swells with an unimpeded run up that’s longer than anywhere else in the world. Clean lines, perfect reefs and located right near the equator’s typically light winds. This is as close to nirvana as any surfer......
Decomposing whale carcasses have been described as being like “crack cocaine” to great white sharks. So when a young humpback whale washed up in close proximity to some of Dunedin’s best waves, the alarm bells started ringing. According to shark expert Riley Elliott, that’s for good reason. “Whale blubber is......
Taranaki’s next rising star, Natasha Gouldsbury, hit her straps in the early part of 2022. Not only did she qualify for three finals at the 2022 Nationals held at Westport, but she started to wind in Christchurch phenom Ava Henderson. At 17 she’s surfing with renewed energy and a hunger......
It’s not every day you get to share eight-foot caverns with your mates with less than 10 people out, but given the right circumstances and location, it’s still achievable here in New Zealand. Luckily this was us recently at a fickle beachbreak deep in the Catlins. Ollie Charlesworth had just......
At the Nationals this year in Westport one surfer stood tall among so many. It wasn’t just because of the seamless lines he’d take on his waves, or his ability to surf a variety of craft, but for his consistency in his heats, and as a great human. At 15,......
Team Taranaki earned a lineup to themselves in pumping conditions at Meatworks during the South Island Grom Series Kaikoura Grom comp earlier this month. The team paddled out to pay their respects to Jeremy Grainger who passed away earlier in the week. They soon had the peaks to themselves as......
The concept is simple: take a bunch of Backdoor’s best team surfers and put them into the best waves we can find in the south. Covid has other ideas. The lineup is impeccable: newly crowned national champion Daniel Farr, Under 18 national champion Ava Henderson, inaugural Super 16 champion Taylor......
The DHL Super Rugby Pacific competition is a pressure cooker. Especially with Covid running rampant – an axe that could neutralise any team at a moment’s notice. For Crusaders’ coach Scott “Razor” Robertson that pressure is best wrangled with a pre-game surf. It is the morning before the Moana Pasifika......
After more than 10 years of swimming around lineups with this housing we decide to give the DC-5 housing from Aquatech a thorough review. The DC-5 is designed for the Canon EOS 5D range of cameras and we ran in ours a 5D MkII, 5D MkIII, 5D MkIV and the......