It Costs $20 And A Bit Of Courage To Cry On A Jet-Ski With Mick Fanning

It takes winds of roughly 60 miles per hour to knock down a tired, vulnerable tree.

At it’s peak, Cyclone Alfred has battered Australia’s East Coast with gusts of nearly 100 mph and, from Surfers Paradise to Ballina, over 250,000 households have lost power.

Overnight, areas of the Gold Coast and Northern New South Wales have seen around 300mm of rain, with another 300mm on the way.

It’s been three years since floods pummeled the Northern Rivers, and 20,000 people have once again been evacuated from high-risk areas like Lismore — where the rivers are rapidly rising above safe levels.

On the Gold Coast, several people have been rescued from the beaches, despite them being closed by officials.

“It’s just stupidity, people are trying to get on the beach – trying a cheap thrill … they’re putting themselves in danger,” president of Mermaid Beach Surf Life Saving Club Paul Mann told the ABC.

Just three days before, however, the tone of our jet-ski assisted, step-up equipped heroes of the brine was one of elation.

“This has been a swell that will etch in my mind forever,” said Korbin Hutchings. “How do you talk something like this down? It’s huge. It’s offshore. There’s a lot of no makes, but it’s absolutely cooking. This is the biggest I’ve ever seen Kirra holding.”

You can read our entire piece on the swell here.

Curious what surfers were riding for this historic swell, we reached out to a handful of standouts.

“Any form of energy conservation assists in the overall experience at Kirra,” Asher Pacey told us. “Sometimes on the higher tides you can get away with just a standard size, but a little extra volume or length always helps with the sweep. I mostly rode an Album Moonstone, which is a long fish with a narrow outline for down the line momentum. At the back end of the swell I found the biggest board available to me and found it much easier to be where I needed to be and increase wave count.

“Lots of beatings in between. I definitely like having a solid leash — the last thing you want is to break it so far out to sea with a raging current.”

Jack Robinson, who looked more comfortable at 8-foot Kirra than most people do on their living room couch, spent the swell swapping between a 6’2 Sharpeye Synergy and a 6’6 Arakawa Andy Irons replica.

Local shampoo model Liam O’Brien opted for a similar theory.

“I was riding a 6’3 DHD Sweet Spot,” he told us. “It’s just a standard stepup — volume about 1.5 litres more than my shorty. I just went a bit more length because the waves were solid and it helped to paddle against the sweep.”

Milla Coco Brown opted for a 5’7 CI 2.Pro (with a comp leggie no less), Nav Fox opted for his old faithful 6’6 with 6oz glassing, and Dakoda Walters chose a 6’2 Sharpeye from the Boardlab.

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One of the most touching stories from the swell came when unsponsored Queenslander Saxon McCorquodale unknowingly paddled into the wave of his life atop an ancient Gunther Rohn gun — which he bought for $20 at a Lismore Op Shop.

As the wave exhaled Saxon, Fanning and his crew were losing it in the channel.

“There was one lad that we picked up with the ski after he got the wave of his life. It was seriously the sickest pit, he was just standing tall in this thing, weaving,” Mick said. The 3x champ gunned over, grabbed Saxon, and pulled him onto the sled. “He was bawling his eyes out with tears of joy. It was fucking awesome!”

As Mick lifted him onto the ski, something uncanny happened. Mick took a proper look at the board, the shape, the logos — something looked familiar. He asked Saxon to flip it over, and recognized the board as once belonging to his late brother Ed Fanning — who passed away last year.

Coincidence? Maybe.

It’s been said that coincidence is a word we use only because we can’t see the levers and pulleys.

“Made my day seeing this and picking you up,” wrote Mick later. “Tears of joy.”

You can read the full piece on that story here.