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BAY BOYS UNITE – MENTAWAI BLOG DAY 7 What do you do?

There’s a fine line between blogging stories and posting images from a Tracks surfing magazine trip overseas (or in Oz for that matter).
There’s a fine line between blogging stories and posting images from a Tracks surfing magazine trip overseas (or in Oz for that matter). How much do you reveal? And how much do you hang onto?


A Greenbush wave goes unridden in honour of his ancestors. Pic: Smithy

There’s a fine line between blogging stories and posting images from a Tracks surfing magazine trip overseas (or in Oz for that matter). How much do you reveal? And how much do you hang onto? Firstly, it’s only been ten or so years since the surfing bible has even been a glossy paged mag, so this futuristic stuff is far out, man (sorry).

The change from paper was shocking enough for many purists and the call to go back to paper still bellows across rooftops every now and then still – but that ship has sailed. And I’m cool with that. You see back in the seventies and eighties Tracks wasn’t just a magazine of escapism, amazing travels and surfing giants in motion – it was a link to the surfing community the world over. If a Spanish one-legged knee boarder dropped in on a well-known Aussie pro in Mundaka, you’d read about it in Tracks two months later. Now days that shit would be posted on Tracksmag.com within 24 hours!

So, it’s with a foot in each era I bring you the latest gem [above] from the Mentawai Islands. You see I could’ve posted a 15 shot sequence of Byron Bay’s Kieren Perrow screaming through a Greenbush barrel so cylindric and dreamy you’d probably lick your computer screen. But that shit deserves page space real estate – it’s too precious a commodity. There’d be some saying, “No, whack that gear up online ASAP!” Not me (and not Kieren I’m sure). Nothing feels or looks better than a crisp surfing magazine fresh of the shelves, or better still, out of your letterbox (three days before on sale date – click here to subscribe).

While it’s not the whole snapper, it’s a nice fillet. Greenbush the wave scares and mesmerizes. This wave talks an ancient tongue unheard for thousands of years – until it was discovered sometime in the last 20 years that is. So, it’s with a thought for all the waves that rose out of the deep, jacked up in front of two trees, and funnelled off down the line all those years ago without a solitary surfer in sight I post this blog. Imagine the military might of the sets of waves that forced themselves onto the reef and into oblivion – never to be seen again. But not this one, the Byron Bay boys and I saw it, and Nathan Smith photographed it – and now here it is for you to enjoy too. Aloha from the Mentawai’s.

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