Koa Smith Gets Tangled With Bystander At Maxing Indonesian Reef Pass
"Take off your leash!"
Do you also feel desensitized to the amount of surfing content that Indonesia generates every season?
One could argue that a very good number of the year’s best waves won’t get the attention they deserve due to how crowded and replicable they appear behind our aluminosilicate glass screens.
Koa Smith may have found one way to break the monotony though.
An early and prolific adopter of the vlog format, Koa finds himself in a part of Sumatra that is now far from being a secret, proven by the sheer number of heads sharing one of the area’s best waves when it was on the brink of maxing out.
As bigger sets approached, Koa realised that he could bait and switch some of the crowd into paddling for safety while holding his position further inside, swinging around and going on double-ups.
He was doing just that when another surfer, paddling in his direction, somehow managed to thread his board through Koa’s leash, and the two, for a moment, became umbilically connected under a towering cleanup set.
Unfortunate timing and place, for both.
A tiny floating Koa head comes up on screen to dissect the incident, and the remainder of the session, with the aid of his POV footage.
The format shows potential and could work as a learning aid for surfing in heavier lineups. Just never as a replacement for time in the water.
The New Surf Industry Lives In Garages
As surfing splinters into a thousand independent voices, Maze is betting there's still room for another.
Every generation likes to believe it’s witnessing the end of something.
With the erosion of the legacy surf industry, new brands have been sprouting like artisanal bakeries in gentrified neighbourhoods.
It wasn’t long ago that there were millions of seats and only a handful of stages. Now everyone seems to have climbed onto an upside-down beer crate with something to say, shout, or sell. The audience thins, replaced by a stampede of founders, filmmakers, shapers, and all kinds of entrepreneurs betting on themselves. Maze founder Jake Schoonover is one of them.
“There’s always another way, there’s always another path to choose,” says Jake, a former sponsored skateboarder from Glendora, just outside LA, who got into surfing after moving to San Clemente in middle school.
Unfortunate knee injuries between the ages of 15 and 22 kept him away from skating and surfing. Around the same time, a barber friend showed him how to handle scissors and a comb. During COVID, he started cutting hair for the crew at the …Lost factory.
Coincidentally, they were behind on orders and he ended up being offered a job. “I started doing deliveries, then ended up managing the factory for a bit, got into airbrushing — it was a little bit of everything.”
Maze began taking shape under Matt Biolos’ roof. “It came about organically while I was working at Lost,” Jake says.
If autonomy has become the last true luxury, why spend your life building someone else’s company when you can risk building your own? “A big thing for me was wanting to feel like I can provide for my family and still be doing what I love to do,” Jake says.
The blueprint is similar to that of brands like Rage and Octopus, or, in a different product category, Epokhe and Ritual Vision. Keep the operation small enough to remain legit, surround yourself with an eclectic and interesting crew, give them a platform, and reinvest a good chunk of the profits into the best type of advertisement there is: quality surf films.
Andrew “Droid” Doheny was the brand’s first believer. “He was the first person riding my pads. He’d give me Slob Craft surfboards, and we’d basically trade.”
Jake then started supporting talented local groms with product and pointing lenses at them. “The funds weren’t there to pay the biggest names, so it happened with people I actually knew.”
Born in San Clemente, Maze follows the lineage of the garage brands that came before it with a touch of the inevitable post-modern obsession with nostalgia. But it’s hard not to when you’re starting a grassroots traction brand in the spiritual home of surfboard traction.
Where Paths Collide is Maze’s web screen debut, introducing both the brand and the collective determined to push it forward. “I’m not trying to overly push anything. I just want to keep making movies, showcase underground talent, and build it that way.”
Like the brands that inspired it and the ones still waiting on their own upside-down beer crates, a new generation may not realise it’s living through the beginning of something, not the end.
If you’re an IRL kinda fella, come meet Jake and the rest of the Maze team for their film premiere at Shoots in Oceanside, CA, this September 18.
Creed McTaggart Has Officially Made It Big Time
Drops signature BONG range with accompanying surf edit, made for sipping sangria in the tropics.
Rage founder Toby Cregan has made another vid, Big Time, to celebrate the release of longtime BONG rider Creed McTaggart’s signature clothing capsule of the same name.
Think: post-Y2K Australian surf rat meets nu-metal skate shop, several jugs deep into sangria somewhere in the tropics.
“We are living in the Big Time; chasing a dream, glitz and glamour, popping off at the tippy-top with a cocktail in-hand — luxury, cash, fame and fortune,” says Creed. “The Big Time is for all of us, a menagerie of clothes to feel elite, proud and loud in.”
On the edit front:
The intro and outro tracks were recorded by Cheap Gloomer, Creed’s solo band, with some of his vocals layered over the middle track Big Time with Russell W.
The surfing, performed aboard a small fleet of Serpent Sleds and marketplace-procured Dahlbergs is similarly extra, exorbitant and on fleek.
Which is the point.
Whether it’s tall poppy syndrome or the outsized influence of famous dorks like Zuck, Musk and Jobs — men who proudly own five identical grey T-shirts so they can eliminate one decision from their morning before doing a fat line of NASCRAQ and sowing ruin across society writ large — far too many men now dress as though paying spiritual homage to billionaire tech bros: dull, pedestrian and spiritually bankrupt.
Creed proposes another path.
The WQS Is So Fucking Back!
Why a dozen past and future CTers are about to compete at a random European beach break.
The ASP/WSL World Qualifying Series was arguably our sport, if not our entire culture’s, most beautiful tradition, and may it rest in peace.
In the last year it ran, 2019, the men’s tour held 62 stops in 21 different countries (42 stops, 18 countries for the gals). Any surfer, from anywhere, could get into any event if their seed was high enough.
This meant throngs of young and often poorly behaved surfers would breifly invade random coastal towns around the world. It resulted in some of the best and worst times of people’s lives. On one hand, you had to confront the cruel reality of spending two months’ worth of surf camp wages to lose first fucking heat in shit waves to someone with a style that makes the act of riding a wave look like a war crime.
On the other hand, and particularly in hindsight, you got to travel to a new place, stay with friends, surf, and enjoy life irresponsibly before eventually realizing you’re not gonna beat that war crimes surfer and having to get a real, and way less fun, job.
The WQS died when the WSL switched to a three-tier system after COVID in 2021. But now, it’s back — kind of.
We are about to witness the first-ever CS 6000 International in Pantín, out there on the northwestern corner of Spain, in a land called Galicia. And the heat draw is, frankly, fucked up. Check it out here — and note that surfers are seeded as far as the Round of 64.
You’ve got these former (and if they’re here, hopeful future CT surfers): Sophie McCulloch, India Robinson, Teresa Bonvalot, Ian Gentil, Deivid Silva, Ian Gouveia, Edgard Groggia, Frederico Morais, Maxime Huscenot, and Jackson Bunch.
Like Jackson, Dimitri Poulos of Surf100 fame will be there. And Levi Slawson, Sam Piter, Shion Crawford, Sierra Kerr, and Sky Brown, who you’ve seen in Stab High. And an entire field of Europe’s best competitive surfers — which includes a lot of handy surfers you may or may not know, but we’ll shout out João Mendonça’s SEOTY edit here.
So, how does this work? There are five CS events in 2026, and surfers keep four results. But they can also surf in QS 6000 International Events and, if they get a big result, have the points count as one of their four CS results. For context, winning a CS gets you 10,000 points. Second is 7800, and third is 6085. A third is still a massive result, so you can see the appeal of showing up at QS 6000. Sierra Kerr even turned down a Fiji wildcard to be here.
There will be five QS 6000 International events this year. Pantin, Matosinhos, Saquarema, Cloud 9, and Taiwan. CS surfers can only use one QS 6000 International result in their CS tally — so if you get a good result in one, there’s really no point in doing the rest. And, international surfers who are not yet on the CS can have the points they collect in the International events count toward their home region’s ranking to get on the CS next year.
What does this mean? Say Hayden Rogers wins. He can choose to use those 6000 points for his CS ranking, or his North American QS ranking. Given that he already has a big result under his belt from the US Open, the CS is an obvious choice.
For the international surfers, the appeal of a Euro trip is made juicier by another CS 6000 International starting the week after, three and a half hours away at Matosinhos, in the north of Portugal. Some might even go full Euro lord and stay for the Challenger, which runs in early October.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. I recently ran into Afonso Antunes, a well-mannered kid, second-generation pro surfer, and former event winner in Pantìn. “Our only 6000 events in Europe are open to International surfers, which isn’t the case in any other region,” he told me. “That’s not ideal, but obviously, the goal is to compete on the CT one day — and you have to beat all these guys anyway to do that.”
As Mikey C can tell you, making a QS heat is hard. It’s even harder when Jackson Bunch is in your heat, which is the case for the poor bastards in Heat 1 of the Round of 144.
Now, are you meant to care about this enough to devote some of your precious and finite attention to it? Especially at the same time that a (probably false alarm, statistically speaking) Code Red swell is on its way to Fiji while the comp is on?
Well, I’ve never surfed Cloudbreak, but if I were to bend over and touch my toes right now, it’d result in a small puddle of salt water from a beachie that kicked my ass this morning.
There can be something nice about watching good surfers in waves that hit a little closer to home.
It starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday.
Victor Bernardo And Wife Hospitalised After Serious Car Accident
The couple remain in hospital as they begin their long road to recovery.
Support Victor and Johnni’s Long Road to Recovery
Victor Bernardo and his wife Johnni were involved in a serious car accident on Sunday, August 17.
The news came from Logan “Chucky” Dulien, a close friend of Victor’s who has also collaborated with the Brazilian on the Snapt series.
On Instagram, he wrote:
Please keep @victorbernard0 and his wife @jbuff9 in your prayers . On Sunday night they were in a very serious car accident that easily could have been fatal but by the grace of god are still with us . Victor was airlifted to the hospital and his wife Johnni was taken in by ambulance . They are currently both still in the hospital preparing Victor for surgery and doing there best to improve his wife’s condition . It’s going to be a very long and expensive road to recovery but Im confident the surf community will rally together to support and uplift them on the challenging journey ahead . for now just put out positive thoughts , love , prayers and healing energy for them both
Below Logan’s post followed a roll call of the surfing world, with elite surfers, filmmakers, and friends sending their love and well wishes.
Speaking to O Globo, Victor’s manager, Mike Townsend, said Victor and Johnni were travelling south on California’s Interstate 5, returning from a trip to Catalina Island, when their vehicle collided with a truck around 10:45 PM. No further details of the accident were divulged, but some images of the car the couple were travelling in were shared.
Due to the severity of their injuries, Victor was airlifted to an emergency trauma centre, while Johnni was taken by ambulance. They are both now in the ICU.
Victor suffered a leg fracture and a severe wound above the knee. Initially, doctors fitted an external frame to stabilise the limb. It was later removed, a development that, according to Townsend, may point to a more favourable recovery.
Before one of the surgeries, performed last Wednesday, the doctor treating the Brazilian made a reference to his return to surfing.
“Let’s get this guy back in the water,” he told Townsend, who later relayed the comment to O Globo.
Johnni was also seriously injured. She suffered internal bleeding in the abdomen and facial fractures, both of which required surgery. Yet even injured, Johnni managed to call Townsend and others close to the couple from the scene of the accident, alerting them to what had happened.
Victor and Johnni will undergo more surgeries in the months ahead, along with medication and rehabilitation. For now, they remain in hospital, with no discharge date in sight.
A fundraiser was created to help alleviate the couple’s financial burden during their journey to recovery. “Any amount of financial support in covering their living expenses (rent, car payments, meals, cat food, and medical procedures) would be extremely appreciated during this difficult time,” the accompanying text reads.
Our thoughts are with Victor and Johnni, and we wish them both a full recovery.
JJF vs An Empty Caribbean Point
"I love surfing." - John Florence
If you were a miserable person, you’d hate John Florence right about now.
Seemingly every week, the 3x world champ Starlinks out a new dispatch from paradise. The plot goes as follows: John John is in a deep blue, beautiful part of one of the five oceans, and something on the gorgeous catamaran breaks down, which JJF looks like he enjoys fixing.
Then, he has a fresh caught poke lunch with his wife and little son, slips on some premium surf gear manufactured by a company that he owns a controlling stake in, and proceeds to surf one of the funnest waves you’ve ever seen with nobody else in frame.
This week on the my-life-sucks program, JJF and fam slip away to a more remote section of the Caribbean known as the Antillas Mayores. When he arrives, it looks flat. But, since nothing wrong can ever happen to this man, a wave that is a maddening cross between small Bluff and fun-sized Barra appears out of nowhere — right before John eats “seven pieces of cornbread” and gets barreled, does searing turns, lands full-rotes, and puts Clay Marzo out of his misery on the ender. All in eyeshot of his adoring wife and child, with no other signs of life in sight.
However, if you were a well-adjusted person, you’d be happy for John Florence. He’s built this Edenic niche brick by brick (and taken us along for the ride). Thanks for the weekly installment.
What Does Winning At “The Best Wave On Earth” Make You?
Mikey C and Stace G break down the Fiji data and warm-up footage.
“When it all comes together,” John John Florence said, “I think it’s the best wave in the world.”
Few waves have been so indefatigably glazed by the surfing public as much as Cloudbreak. But, it’s worthy. The 8,919 square-meter underwater reef is a geographic/bathymetric/oceanic miracle where, year-round, storms from the Southern Ocean send swell energy from thousands of feet deep into six feet of water along a tapered underwater point.
The result? A 500-meter+ wave with multiple tube-and-turn sections from The Ledge to Shishkabobs. The only shame is that it took this long for the CT to have Cloudbreak as a tour spot for the foreseeable future.
When asked if Cloudbreak should be on Tour, world champ Caroline Marks put it this way: “I think it’s the best wave in the world,” Caroline Marks confirmed. “So, yeah, I think it should be a mainstay on tour.”
In this weeks The Drop pod, Stab’s Editor-in-Chief and Quiksilver’s team manager, Stace Galbraith, go over what storylines there are to watch for to prep for upcoming CT event, with the waiting period starting in two days (hint, there’s swell). If you haven’t seen these podcast videos before, the fellas tap one videographer to go down and film the CT warm-up sessions. If you’ve got cash (BetOnline) or ego (Fantasy) on the line, this is probably the single best vid you could watch.
Yago Dora & The Goofy Advantage
One of the highlights of the warm-up clips is just how damn good Yago Dora is at Restaurants. If you don’t know, Restaurants — which some surfers claim is funner than Macaronis — is the back-up location for the CT if Cloudbreak’s too big or wobbly. Either way, gonna be a fun week.
The stats tell us that Goofs reign supreme in Fiji, and by quite a margin. Since 2000, 14 CT events have taken place at Cloudbreak. In that time, over 65% of Regular v. Goofy match-ups have been won with the right foot forward.
With defending World Champ Yago sitting in 3rd place behind regular-footer Leo Fioravanti, it’s a good statistical opportunity for Yago to leapfrog. Fellow goofy Italo, however, is sitting in first place. But, if the waves are good, history tells us that Yago will likely have the nod.
Backside Turn Discrimination
One of the other regular-goofy tensions at play here that Stace and Mikey point out is the difficulty in making backside turn surfing stand apart. If the Grateful Dead’s project was having their whole catalog all be “all just one song”, Mikey C argues that backside surfing sometimes blends into being “all just one turn.” Stace disagrees, kind of. Hear the nuanced debate above.
Joao Chianca’s Masterclass
If the waves are solid, there are few Regulars more up-to-the-task than João Chianca. João has long been a favorite of Mikey’s and Stace’s (all of us, really) and the boys note just how much of a stand-out he was in these warm-up clips, practically manhandling 10-foot Cloudy.
Erin Brooks Title Run
Will we see the second instance of back-to-back victories in 2026 (Carissa won New Zealand and El Salvador b2b)? Erin Brooks is fresh off her win at Teahupo’o and has reportedly been winning the warm-up days. Let’s not forget that she’s already won this event (as a wildcard, no less) in 2024. Bad day to pull Erin Brooks in the draw (sorry, Soph).
Good day to throw her in your betting or fantasy roster however.
More insights above.
I Asked Jon Pyzel What Wax He Uses
And learned about his life, the licensee model, eco-board bullshit, and more.
June 2026, Ericeira, Portugal.
I walk into 58 Surf Shop. Jon Pyzel’s not there yet, but he will be. Soon. Beers are flowing. Something of an open-air podcast studio waits for his arrival. He and I will sit there and chat. A small crowd has gathered to witness this and engage with the man himself afterwards.
Jon arrives. Beers still flowing. Ok, let’s do this… except, the audio starts fucking up. In production, it’s always the audio fucking up.
Despite hardly being able to hear each other, I learned a lot about Jon in those forty minutes. The biggest takeaway? Sounds dumb, or perhaps just obvious, but the guy just fucking loves surfing.
He moved to Hawaii pretty young to spend more time in the water. Started painting houses to make money. Switched to fixing boards because it was more fun than painting houses. Eventually got his hands on some polyurethane that needed to be shaped instead of repaired. Built boards that win World Titles, boards that win SITD, boards that force the Merriam-Webster team to modify their definition of power surfing. Now runs one of the world’s largest board businesses (as a B-Corp) and still skips the weekly Zoom meeting whenever there are waves.
Respect.
After we chatted, Jon spent hours talking to everyone who’d shown up. Smiling, handshaking, offering insights and opinions, and seeming to genuinely enjoy it. A rare breed.
Hit above for a glimpse into the life of the man behind your favorite (John wins our audience survey every year) surfer’s favorite surfboards.
Shoutout to the crew at Polen Surfboards, who build Pyzel’s boards in Europe, for pulling it together.
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