Julian Wilson is back.

Three years in competitive exile, no warm-ups, just a season-wildcard to the CS in his pocket — Jules strolls into Newcastle SURFEST, dusts off his pants, and walks away with the EJE Men’s Pro title. The win comes just days after he was gifted a spot on the 2025 Challenger Series — now, he’s taken the QS 1,000 like a man strolling past his ex in a well-cut suit, whistling.

The men’s final, up against Axel Curotta, a young Australian eager to scalp a former CT star, had all the makings of a classic generational clash. Wilson struck first, Curotta hit back, and for most of the heat, youth looked set to triumph. Then, with minutes to go, Wilson played the old-head card — priority, patience, precision — surgically assembling the 13.70 total he needed to take the win. The timing, the rhythm, the knowing when to pounce — all still appears to be there.

With the win, Jules’ comeback doesn’t look like a sentimental victory lap or a mid-life crisis cosplay. It’s a reminder that Julian Wilson, aged 36, is still Julian Wilson — this isn’t some restless dad’s nostalgia trip. He’s here to win.

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“I never retired,” Jules told Stab last week. “I just needed to step back to prioritise my family. But I still watch so much of the tour and love it. I want to go back to that one thing I did for myself — competing.”

The first murmurs of a comeback surfaced last year, when Wilson hinted at discussions with the WSL. By August, he announced his intentions on Instagram and was met with a surge of support from fans and old rivals alike. “I didn’t realise how many people cared about what I was doing,” he admitted.

That turned into a wildcard for the entire 2025 Challenger Series, starting June 2 at Merewether Beach — the same stretch of sand where he just stamped his return. Jules has admitted to the lurking doubts — “There’s definitely a fear of getting exposed — do I still have it?” — but today, he answered with the best kind of reply: a silent finger pointed at the scoreboard.

A hell of a way to start the comeback.

Place your bets over at Betonline.AG 

How many events does it take for the cream to rise to the top?

After just two events of very different natures, Pipeline and a pool, the rankings are beginning to take shape, with a few anomalies sprinkled in for good measure.

Miggy Pupo is third in the world, Griffin sits at #19, meanwhile Italo Ferreira, already counting a third and a first on his scorecard, is steaming ahead 4765 points clear of 2x Pipe Pro winner Barron Mamiya in second. 

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On the women’s side of things, reigning World Champ Caity Simmers has picked up where she left off, low-key dominating with a first and second in hand, and flawless 6-0 winning record over the woman currently ranked second, Molly Picklum. 

Sure, some cream appears to be rising early, but with just two samples, we’re not calling in the statisticians quite yet.

Next stop? Another ‘P’—Portugal. Supertubos is an event without obvious favorites, courtesy of its famously erratic moods. Picture classic offshore barrels one moment, chaotic wind-blown ramps the next.

Recent men’s winners returning for more glory include Italo Ferreira (2018, 2019), Griffin Colapinto (2022, 2024), and João Chianca (2023). Women’s past champs include Caity Simmers (2023), Caroline Marks (2021), and Johanne Defay (2024)

To help make sense of it all we’ve commissioned the help of local Portuguese tube artist, Fransisco Alves, aka Xicobyxico – a great IG handle, I’ll add, and a previous BOAG punting consultant. 

Fransisco’s picks below

Mens: Yago Dora, Griffin Colapinto, Jack Robinson. Dark Horse: Freddie Morais
Womens: Molly Picklum, Caity Simmers, Tati WW. Dark horse: Johanne Defay

Place your bets over at Betonline.AG 

“I want to apologize to the general public, for putting out surfboards in the late ‘90s that were virtually impossible to ride,” Rob Machado once said to us, with a half grin on his face. 

Since the late ‘90s, Rob’s career has evolved in ways nobody might have predicted.

After being voted off tour in 2001, he began delving into the dubious performance witchcraft of increased volume, flatter rocker, and missing middle fins with Channel Islands Surfboards. 

A catalyst for the “foam is your friend” movement, the original Biscuit (which was shaped for Rob) was much shorter than the standard HPSBs at the time, unlocking Rob’s interest in shapes that were anything but WSL-sanctioned vehicles.

Since then, Rob hasn’t stopped trying to figure out how to make those boards work, and what makes them work. Eventually, he found his way into shaping alternative surfboards — creating most notably the Go Fish and the Seaside.

Now, Rob has returned to his three-fin foundation with the ‘Groove,’ an outline he first rode in 2013 but has recently decided to revisit.

“I modernized it a little bit, a little more foil, a little more flip,” he says. “A little more high-performance, we can call it that. This is still a bit of a hybrid, but it’s the closest thing I’ve shaped to a high-performance surfboard.

“All surfboards have a balance between speed and control, and the Groove is about controlled speed,” he finishes.

And yes, it still has a quad option for the anti-purists.

Oh, and Mikey C just did a Joyride in waves which truly tested the limitation of the Groove on both ends of the wave quality spectrum — that should be out around the end of this month. 

Everything that feels good is bad. You rise, you fall. You hit the high, then crash into the low. No fun for free.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred, according to sir Michael Fanning, brought at least 20 people in his circle the wave of their lives. A beautiful, community-strengthening event, but one with a dirty little aftertaste. 

One life gone, 13 people injured. Trees millennia old ripped from their roots, taking with them the concrete roads we built around them. Hundreds of thousands in the dark, from Surfers Paradise to Ballina. Houses, cars, Instagram accounts not tended to — all suffering critical damage. Floodwaters carrying debris and big fish with band intentions. Severe coastal erosion, obliterating any chance of a decent bank along the Gold Coast.

No matter, though. Leave it to a gigantic international machine to fight back against the force of nature. The Nile River, a sand-dredging behemoth of a nautical vessel, is set to sail into the Gold Coast in 12 days to restore balance to the sand. It’s not her first dance, either. 

“When she came last time, honest to god, it was so fucked up,” says longtime Gold Coast resident and GoPro godfather, Joel Scott. “It was such a trip. You’d be out in the line up, see this thing, and it’d sound an alarm, and you’d have to get out of the way while it spat sand onto the bank. Along a 10km stretch from Broadbeach to The Spit, you’d have Straddie banks everywhere.”

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The Nile River sports neon green skin so bright it’ll fry your retinas, and stretches 150 meters long. She’s a sight, the ol’ girl, and she works like this: Far offshore, she’ll suck up sand from the seabed, gobbling down about 12,000 cubic meters. Before she arrives, she’ll have already mapped out where she’s going to spew her guts to craft the finest topography. Then, she parks herself, and with the elegance of a frog puking up a rainbow, she lets it all go.

“It comes in ridiculously close to the shore, and it’s got a fire hose that spits sand like a rainbow, right onto specific points,” remembers Joel. 

The Nile River’s summoning comes, of course, in response to the wreckage left behind by Cyclone Alfred. Her direct target, however, is the north end of the Gold Coast, which means that it’s arrival is unrelated to the upcoming CT stop at Snapper, or the government’s yearly sand dump at Tweed River, where 240 Olympic swimming pools of sand are pumped into the Superbank. Instead, this is about the city council’s plan to lure in holidaymakers for Easter.

“This has nothing to do with the WSL,” says Joel. “It’s all about the cyclone. The City Council’s plan is to pump as much sand back onto the beaches up north before Easter. They’re trying to convince people not to cancel their holidays. The beaches are coming back. They’ve already got bulldozers out there flattening the drop-offs. It’s beach replenishment, with the added bonus of the fucking rainbow spitter.”

The Nile is expected to arrive in Australian waters in 12 days, though as of now, it doesn’t seem to have made much headway.

“I had a look yesterday. The Nile’s docked in China,” says Joel. “Fuck knows what it’s doing there. But it’s meant to be here in 12 days.”

Best she sets sail at once.

The WSL has just unveiled its latest creation: The GWM Aussie Treble — a three-stop leaderboard across Bells, Snapper, and Margaret River, where the top-performing man and woman get handed the keys to a shiny GWM Tank 300 — a Chinese SUV that looks like it really wants to be a Toyota Land Cruiser when it grows up.

Think of it as the Triple Crown’s twice-removed cousin. Less “conquer Hawaii’s deadliest waves,” more “win a car you may or may not be able to register back home.”

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For those keeping score at home, the now defunct Triple Crown of Surfing was once the ultimate litmus test for CT preparedness, bookending the qualifying series with three events across Haleiwa, Sunset and Pipeline — waves of heft.

The Triple Crown stopped running in its classic live format for several reasons, among them: COVID, WSL’s schedule overhaul, Vans shifting toward a digital, content-focused format, and permitting pressures.

Enter the Aussie Treble, same concept, different accent. Instead of ‘lions and kittens’ battling at Pipe, we now have CT stars and hopefuls chasing boxy SUVs while Sally Fitzgibbons claps politely in the background.

To be fair, a AUD$50,000 car is a step up from a 50L cooler or a giant novelty check that takes three people to hold. But let’s be honest — if a Brazilian or American wins it, what are they supposed to do? Paddle it home?

Shipping that thing to Hawaii would cost more than Elon’s next PR nightmare.

Speaking of Elon — Tesla’s currently losing more value than a third-round exit at Pipe, thanks to his latest attempt to see if you can run a car company entirely on bad tweets and Nazi gesticulations. So, who knows, maybe GWM will actually be the next big thing. Stranger things have happened — like a world tour event in Abu Dhabi.

And WSL APAC President Andrew Stark is, of course, stoked:

“The WSL is extremely excited to welcome back three Championship Tour events to Australia in 2025 and celebrate this with the GWM Aussie Treble,” he said, as GWM execs stood just off-camera.

Look, it’s fine. It’s not a scandal, it’s not even that weird. It’s just… a bit funny. Like when your mate wins a meat raffle and realizes he has to carry a full leg of lamb through a nightclub.

The Triple Crown was about legacy. The Aussie Treble is about getting a car you might have to leave at the airport long-term parking lot.

Still — better than nothing.

And who knows? Maybe in 20 years, surfers will be reminiscing about the glory days of the Treble, while WSL rolls out a VR headset giveaway for the Metaverse Surf League.

Progress, baby.

Born and raised in Vanuatu, George Pittar was naturally a pre-pubescent charger — hurling himself over the ledge at Cloudbreak during Melanesian Cup heats when he was just eight or nine years old.

A couple of years later, he moved to Sydney, only to realize that his shallow reefbreak education didn’t count for much on the wonky inner-city beachies. Still, that didn’t stop him from winning regionals and slapping Rip Curl stickers on his grom sticks — which to this day, remain firmly attached to the high-visibility portion of his surfboards.

As the story goes, George qualified for the CS via the regional QS. “No matter what the results were, I wouldn’t believe that was where I was meant to be.” A mindset that shifted at Newcastle, where he realized he was good enough to take any scalp.

But let’s rewind to Snapper, where his qualification year began. Packing an obscene number of turns into the turquoise walls stretching down to Greenmount for mid scores was a bit of a wake-up call — an indicator to turn it up a notch. Which he did, for a minute, in Ballito, earning a consensual digital golf clap. The world was watching, but the attention didn’t exactly work wonders for the rest of his event.

At the US Open, the kinks got ironed out and a breakthrough performance materialized. The result — a fifth-place finish — spurred a move to the Gold Coast, where he bunked down with former wonder rookie Morgan Cibilic and surrounded himself with the type of surfers he aspired to be.

It was only a matter of time before his main sponsor rang him up and threw him into the trials at the Bells CT. Yeah, he won that. Finished his first CT in 17th. Then headed to Margaret River as a wildcard on a rampage — only to be stopped by John John in the semis. “I was just frothin’, being out there with him.”

The CT carriage quickly reverted to a CS pumpkin, and George was knocked out in Round 1 of the last two events of the season. Luckily — or not really — a string of solid results earlier in the year bumped him into this year’s CT.

Crack one open, take a seat, and get a glimpse into the mind and journey of George Pittar as he reflects on his coming of age with CI/Onboard’s good vibe distributor, Luca Elder.

A slow moving storm, known locally as DANA, has spent the past week drenching the Iberian peninsula in rain — and buffeting it’s surf lineups with wind.

“Unfortunately, this week’s deluge is only the beginning,” reports EuroWeekly. “Another DANA is set to roll in from the northwest on Friday, carrying a cold upper low of polar origin. This shift in the weather pattern will likely stall over western Iberia, feeding in more heavy rainfall and even mountain snow across both Spain and Portugal.”

In our provincial periphery of polyurethane, this weekend also marks the beginning of the waiting period for the third event of the 2025 Championship Tour — the MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal.

Above, you can watch the world’s best warming up in conditions that may well depict what we’ll be seeing through the competition window.

We’ll have a full preview coming Friday, and you can read about all of the wildcard decisions here (and watch a wildcard hype reel here.)

10 years ago, Mini Blanchard and Dane Reynolds released their final edit on Marine Layer Productions — a channel that had gathered thousands of cultlike followers.

On the announcement post we made, commenter Jelly Occy wrote simply, “I’d rather shit in my hand and clap than spend the rest of my life without marinelayer.”

His comment topped the list with countless upvotes, as a tremor of sorrow trembled through the global surf community. 

Marine Layer was proof that we don’t need polished surf movies. Sloppy footage of Dane Reynolds’ everyday sessions are more than enough to cull the appetites of the surf starved masses.

Fortunately, seven years later, Dane’s unfiltered missives returned, with a new name.

Shit waves, good surfers.

Thank you Dane, and thank you Chapter 11 TV.

Click here to watch our mini-documentary on the Ch11 headquarters.