Yadin Nicol floats upon a cushion of air, North Point, WA

The surfer pictured in this exhilarating image is the 28-year-old Santa Babs-based surfer Yadin Nicol. Although based in the US for family and professional reasons, Yadin longs to return to the south-west of Australia where he grew up; specifically, the town of Gracetown, home to North Point, pictured here. “North Point, frick, it’s my favourite place in the world. I think about coming over the hill and seeing the ocean and then going around the corner and just looking into the right. And when it’s good, seeing these perfect freight-training right barrels going into the middle of the bay,” he says. “The whole place is a surfer’s dream scenario. North Point itself has three different phases. When it’s small you can surf on the inside ledge right off the point. You can get a turn off and get a shit-ton of speed for an air. When it gets a bit bigger you take off on the end section and it’s the same as the inside ledge except it’s a bit bowlier. The sections are more mongo. And then when it’s even bigger it breaks outside of those two spots and freight-trains all the way from out the back and into the channel. Three vibes. It’s pretty cool.” If it’s the air you seek, Yadin says the perfect conditions are “when it’s four-to-six foot out the back and you’re catching the corner four-footers into a south-west wind. You get big-arse sections with fluffy landings.” Any bigger, says Yadin, and the waves “barrel out and are way to gnarly to do airs on.” The board, if you’re interested in matters of hardware, is a Channel Islands Rookie, 5’10” x 18 5/8” x 2 1/4”.