Surfer

We’ve pulled together a list our top 12 favorite foam / softtop surfboards. Not only are these boards great for beginners, they are a fun go-to choice to maximize your wave count when the waves are small. Softop surfboards are an excellent no rules, no pressure board to have in your quiver, plus they are the safest/best choice for kids and beginners. Needless to say, foam surfboards are fun for all levels of surfer.

Just a few days ago, Albee Layer took to Instagram to announce his departure from one of his long-time sponsors, a move he seemed not-too-stoked about in this economy. Nonetheless, the always outspoken aerial-and-big-wave whiz shook off the loss in time for a XXL swell heading straight for the Hawaiian Islands, producing waves at Jaws yesterday that are Albee’s bread and butter.

At only 20 years old, up-and-coming surf filmmaker Quinn Graham hasn’t produced a massive tome of visual work just yet. But of what he has created in his young career so far is starting to turn heads throughout the surf world. Tomorrow he’s premiering an edit featuring California ripper Frankie Herrer and just yesterday he dropped “As It Is”, a striking edit from his jaunt to Chile alongside friend Noah Hill and to score the epitome of left-breaking perfection.

Kolohe Andino isn’t a churn-and-burn type of content creator (which, depending on your POV, is a weird label to give a surfer these days). Like in the era before one was able to fall into a swipe spiral, Andino likes to put out more high-quality fare featuring his friends–and we applaud him for it.

When the Hawaiian islands are hit with an inordinant amount of rain and weather, the Waimea River reaches its capacity and starts surging into the Pacific Ocean, producing one of the sketchiest-looking river waves known to surferkind.

For the second time in the past week, a major storm (and swell) system has bombarded the West Coast, sending epic waves to some areas and unfortunate structural damage to other areas. The Capitola Pier in Santa Cruz was partially destroyed last week during the #bombcyclone swell and this week, the havoc seemed to hit the Santa Barbara coastline.

The historic big-wave event known as the Eddie Aikau Big-Wave Invitational was green-lit yesterday for Wednesday, January 11th, but in the past few hours was called-off due to non-ideal conditions. Now forecasters are looking at the 22nd for a possibly run date. Having last run in 2016 and crowned John John Florence the deserved winner, the 2022-2023 Eddie will hopefully align with some XXL swell in the coming weeks.

Frankie Harrer is a tube magician. She’s able to disappear behind the curtain of perfect-looking caverns and emerge with style and grace. The CA-grown ripper and bad-ass mother of one has a new profile film coming out, created by Quinn Graham, that is set to premiere this Friday at the Brothers Marshall Store in Malibu. If you’re not in the area or can’t make the event, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the film’s online release on the 15th.

After weeks of fairly lackluster surf, the West Coast just got bombarded with its first epic swell in a really (really) long time. The #bombcyclone caused damage to some structures (see piers up and down the coast of CA) and some egos (see the many wipeouts in the edit above). But it also saw moments of perfection and glory, captured beautifully by the many lensmen featured below.

John John Florence is perhaps one of the best ever to surf Waimea Bay. He won the Eddie Invitational out there in 2016 and has been making maxing Waimea look like his playground ever since. He even feels comfortable enough out there to go switch (see the 4:24 mark above). Recently, the oldest Florence hit up friend and fellow ripper Jack Robinson to tag along with him on a session out at Waimea. The Aussie was down for a lesson from the master and the above edit ensued.