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Imagine an unbelievably gorgeous Australian beach, encircled by a natural amphitheatre that’s perfect for wave viewing. Picture a lineup of pulsing three meter faces formed by southern hemi swells emanating from the Antarctic shelf. Feel the warmth of a perfect autumn weekend for the opening event of the 2001 professional surfing tour (WCT).

Ah, the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach on the south-eastern coast of Australia-- a big wave location with a thirty year history as an international surfing event. We’re talking deuterium here.

Bells Beach at Easter is such an iconic event in the pantheon of standup surfing that it’s the perfect opportunity to pitch the bodysurfing question. So I’d arranged an interview with Nick Carroll , surf journalist and author, about the perceptions of bodysurfing by the mainstream surfing community.

[BODYSURFING: one person, probably with fins, maybe a handboard and definitely a wave.]

Nick writes for Surfing magazine (USA) and Australian Surfing Life as well as providing features and daily news for the Swell.com website. He has a pretty good handle on the politics of the surf world, being a former competitor and the elder brother (and sometime trainer) of two-time 1980s world surfing champion, Tom Carroll.

ZERMAN: I first asked Nick about his bodysurfing experiences.

CARROLL: Well, I’ve body surfed ever since I was a tiny kid-- it seems almost more of a natural thing to do than to go surfing on a surf board. In the last five or six years I’ve been doing a lot of ocean swimming for training, in bigger surf. After I’d finish my training swim, and the surf’s four or six feet, then I would just hang and body surf for ages-- I’ve really enjoyed getting better at it. It’s such a great skill to have if you are a surfie, something like being a fish. It’s pretty cool.

ZERMAN: Last November tales of bodysurfing under the full moon at Hawaii’s Pipeline were first published online. A month later, with the North Shore competitions in full throttle, you and six times world standup champion, Kelly Slater, bodysurfed Ehukai and Pipeline under the next full moon. What’s the interest (see Moonriding at Pipeline below)?

CARROLL: It’s fun to surf at night but it’s also a bit dangerous-- harder to orient yourself with your board and you can get hurt with the surfboard flying around. So body surfing is the bitchin’ alternative, especially when you dive down and have a look under the water and the moon’s shining brightly.

ZERMAN: Many Australians live near the coast, learn to swim at the beach and can body surf almost naturally. But they never think of themselves as bodysurfers.

CARROLL: This is interesting. I think it’s one reason why Australians are such a sporty race-- we go down to the beach at an early age and end up doing Nippers (the pre-teenage members of Australia’s volunteer lifesaving clubs). This year at Newport, my home beach in Sydney, there was something like 250 nippers enrolled. A few of my mates and I had our kids at the Nippers and we were just flashing, "this is why Australians have such an extraordinary level of sporting achievements". Even when you are a little kid you go down to the beach and you are fricken doing things, and you are doing them in the water and that naturally leads to an easy relationship with the sea. It’s a huge contrast with the European heritage.

ZERMAN: Some Hawaiian and Californian bodysurfers are much more the big wave types, either bodysurfing the reefs at Pipeline in 15 to 20 foot faces or surfing the Wedge and dropping 20 feet into a sandy bottom. Then there are people who choose to bodysurf in four to six foot conditions or smaller.

CARROLL: Well it’s horses for courses really and it’s where you grow up. In Hawaii there’s a whole incredible mythology about Pipeline and that’s going to dominate your life if you grow up bodysurfing on the North Shore. In California I imagine it’s quite difficult to be a bodysurfer because most beaches don’t have waves that are very good for bodysurfing. So you have a specialized place like the Wedge and they get this whole mythology and it’s the big thing. In Oz, most beaches I surf at have pretty consistent waves that are good for bodysurfing-- they’re sharp edged, quick, peaky and hollow. So it can just be a part of your life and it’s probably not quite as mythological.

ZERMAN: When you’re body surfing as part of your ocean training do you have a sense of the body as a rail, a feeling that’s different from being on a stand up board?

CARROLL: The body is like-- it’s a tool you know, the same as a board, and you have to use different parts of your body. I’ve watched Don King on many surf trips and he’s just an excellent bodysurfer. I notice he’s a very long thin man with long arms and long legs and so he’ll use his body length really well. And then me, I’m kind of shorter and stumpier, so I’ve got to use different areas. I’ve used my stomach wall as a planing surface and I’ve used the latissimus [muscle]…

ZERMAN: Carroll points to the side of his torso…

CARROLL: I use that as a short, but gnarly rail line. I am only at the fringes of bodysurfing as a technique, but I imagine it’s different for every bodysurfer-- as dramatically as it is for different kinds of surf boards.

ZERMAN: You’ve been involved with surfing for more than twenty years as a journalist, editor and writer, and you’ve observed the growth of the championship circuit. Does the board surfing world have a perception about bodysurfing?

CARROLL: I don’t think many of the professional surfers really consider bodysurfing to be a sport in the way that they’re involved in a pro tour. But they also know that they aren’t very good at it. When they see guys who are good, like Mike Stewart (multiple world bodyboarding champion and ten times winner of the Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic) or Mark Cunningham (multiple winner of the Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic), they just get baffled.

I mean, I’m baffled.

In Hawaii this season I went for a surf at Rockpile, and Rockpile is a gnarly wave-- it’s thick, breaks quite a way out to sea and it’s really dangerous inside. So I’m paddling out (on my board), it’s an eight foot day and I’m thinking, "this is great, there’s hardly anyone out there". And I noticed this head bobbing around and I thought, "God is there a
photographer out here?" And I paddle closer and it’s Stewart and he’s just out there bodysurfing.

ZERMAN: By himself?

CARROLL: Yes, totally.

So if standup surfers see bodysurfers in any way, it’s like me seeing Mike Stewart. That is, at the peak level they are gnarlier watermen than anyone... really.

Moon riding at Pipeline

In early November 2000, explosive emails started fuelling the inboxes of the thousand strong onliners of the international bodysurfing community.

Chris Robinson, a bodysurfer from the north shore of Hawaii’s Oahu, was delivering remarkable tales via the mojo wire, short vignettes extolling the sheer magic of bodysurfing one of the planet’s hardiest waves under the full moon. A poetry of the oceans.

These lightly edited accounts are published here with the permission of the author...

Da moon session #1, November 2000

There’s something mystical about being out in six feet Pipe by yourself in the moon light. No, no, I wrote mystical not stupid. Strange moods and emotions well up with thoughts like, I bet the moment before death I will regret not being able to say aloha to my loved ones.

Da moon session #2, November 2000

In contrast to last night, tonight was pure fun. No fear factor at all.

Went out after sunset with some friends at Ehuki sandbar and got a weeks worth of surf in the two hours of moonlight. Easy lefts and rights, not one bodyboard out. Two kicks and a stroke and you’re in long silver sparkling tube rides. I can’t do it justice with words. Completely warm and comfortable in my trunks, I could smell b-b-q from the houses in the light trades. Just pure joy, very alive and stoked.

Moon mania #3, December 2000

Hey sports fans...

I’m at Ehukai walking up from a late afternoon session and I see this long fossilized barnacle. As I got closer I realize its Mark Cunningham. Stoked to see him, I explain my plans for after hours bodysurfing. So we rode Pipe till 8 PM and had some three feet fun west bowls. I saw Mark come out of a tube and he was gone for a while. I rode one to the beach past the Lopez house and had to walk back. Mark looks at me and asks "Hey Roby, has my life become boring or is this really completely unreal". "Man this is completely unreal, and tomorrow is going to be awesome."

Moon mania #4, December 2000 - "Kelly gets a guernsey"

Tonight was a mixed plate, had some of that fear thing. Five feet plus, scooping off the reef, cracking Pipe, inconsistent so it was hard to gauge where to line up.

As the last boards went in there was another bodysurfer dropping in to some nice ones. We’re talking and he’s "in the know" and I’m thinking this guy looks like Kelly Slater.

Dark yea, so I ask who I’m talking to and he says, "Kelly".

We continue talking, then he gets one and is gone. Everyone is gone.

Clouds started to hinder the light show and it’s hard to tell where the horizon is. I’m thinking, "It’s going to go black, then white, then this white boy is going to be getting funky on the reef. Yea, I can bust some moves down there, break-dancing and all."

This is punctuated by blue phosphorescent spots that form when I stroke through the water, a potentially dangerous distraction.

Got some good rides.

One I was looking out of the tube at the moon for the longest time-- strange mix of feelings.

I only mention Slater to show he’s got soul.