Brazilian professional surfer Pedro “Scooby” Vianna takes an epic spill from his board during a storm in Nazaré, Portugal. By February 28, Scooby was tearing down the tide at 45 miles an hour on his rattling surfboard. There was a 70-foot mountain of water avalanching behind him.
The seething spume nipped him from behind and sent him bombing into the fray in a violent back flop.
Scooby’s friend and fellow Brazilian, Lucas “Chumbo” Chianca, rode in on a jet ski to pick him up before the next monster set rolled in. Scooby grabbed ahold of a rear tow board latched to the jet ski, and they sped away in an attempt to outrun the next wave. Chumbo soon lost control in the choppy whitewater, and the jet ski capsized near some dangerous rocks.
Another massive wave was right behind them.
Two people now needed a rescue.
How did Scooby and Chumbo finally escape the chaos? Everaldo “Pato” Teixeira, a veteran big wave surfer from Brazil, tore in on yet another jet ski. In a deft and coolheaded rescue bolstered by years of experience, Teixeira rescued Chumbo and Scooby, both of whom were relatively unscathed.
1,000 new subscribers by end of December or the plug gets pulled
Without 1,000 new subscribers by the end of the month to fund operations, the Encyclopedia of Surfing and its sister sites, History of Surfing and Above the Roar, will be taken offline.
When Matt Warshaw announced his new websites for HOS and ATR in January, joining EOS to form surf history’s royal triumvirate, the orbit of surf media slowed down. More specifically, it went backwards. Back to surfing’s beginnings, to its continental cross-pollinations. To its heroes, pioneers, and martyrs, figures whose lives were an effort to articulate that ineffable high of riding a wave. The life of a website today is a life of addition — what’s being added to the conversation, what’s now and new. HOS, along with EOS and ATR, reminds us that slowing down in the past, be it in an entry or a chapter, adds to our obsessive surf conversations is ways that going 85 and nine edits deep in the fast lane simply can’t, and never will.
Please, take a few minutes out of your day to … More
Another day at Makaha Beach, Hawaii. The surf seemed to have either stayed about the same or slightly smaller than yesterday but fun nonetheless. Surfers Mason Schremmer, Kirra Seale and more.