remember when Andy Irons rode Arakawa boards under HIC (I remember when he had an undercut, too, the poor guy). The appearance of his now-familiar, scripted Billabong label circa 2005 was a bit confusing, since Billabong made hats and fleeces – but not surfboards. And they still don’t make surfboards, per se, but as Stab explains on its website, clothing companies like Billabong have entered the board market by contracting with independent shapers and distributing their wares among surfers both pro and public. The idea is that Mick Fanning, riding for “Rip Curl Surfboards,†can source his quiver from Rip Curl’s team of private foamsmen: Darren Handley and Wade Tokoro, for instance. Rip Curl gets to grab some more of Mick’s deck space for its name or logo, and the shapers get paid handsomely as their RC crafts jet off to a thousand global retailers. It sounds like a nice little equation… More info
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Tamarindo, Costa Rica — José Ureña, President of the Federacion de Surf de Costa Rica (FSC), announced today that the fourth date of the Circuito Nacional de Surf DAYSTAR 2008-2009 presented by Coca-Cola Zero (CNS) will take place this weekend, February 7 and 8, in Playa Guiones in Nosara.
Called Copa Balance Natural, the 5-star tournament will begin Saturday and Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m. in front of Playa Guiones,      with winners in all categories receiving 2,000 points.
With a sizable lead in the rankings, Jaco’s Jason Torres moves into the Copa Balance Natural date of the CNS with the possibility of taking the National title. However, with this high-point contest at a premium wave beach, along with the opportunities afforded at the next tournaments of Santa Teresa … More info
The 4th annual Manila Surfers Association (MSA) Fun Competition in cooperation with Stoked Inc., the Philippines’ premier boardsports company, fired on all cylinders under consistent 2-3 foot surf in La Union, the island nation’s surfing capital. The 2-day event saw the fast-growing Manila surfer scene gun in out in shortboard and longboard fun competitions at the Mona Lisa Point — a softly-peeling reef-bottomed pointbreak in the South China Sea — to crown the finest surfers of the Philippine capital…Â More info
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GOLD Coast surf legend Wayne `Rabbit’ Bartholomew is looking backwards and forwards at the same time.
The former world champion stars in a new surfing documentary called Bustin’ Down The Door, which charts the sport’s explosion in the early 1970s, and will sit down for a Q&A at a screening tomorrow at Birch, Carroll & Coyle Coolangatta at 6.30pm…. More info