No Contest: Margaret River Cancellations, Shark Hysteria, Pathetic Aussie Impersonations And Jay Davies’ Tube Fests

In case you’ve been residing under a WiFi-less rock the past week, the Margaret River Pro was canned, due to oversized fish and a few nibbles.

Sure, gives the series’ title a new meaning, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to serve you a platter of contest-adjacent morsels from West Oz. In fact, it’s one of our favourite episodes yet – ironically enough.

Margaret River is the third stop of the World Tour and the third consecutive one on Australian turf. Homesickness is setting in for some, imports are testing out their newly acquired Aussie accents and Jordy’s concerned border patrol will be on his back.

Admittedly, some accents – and we’re looking at you, Seabass, need some refining – we suggest are few more weeks on the red dirt will do the trick. 

Despite salmon in transit and sharks in pursuit, we managed to score an abundance of waves along the swell-rich and set up-riddled Margie’s coast.

While North Point intermittently fired during Round 1, it it also delivered during the warm-ups and days prior to the competition kicking off.

A few of the tour also lucked into classic air-wind and jump sessions, at one of the world’s most beloved high-performance bowls, Cobbles, which unfortunately allures more than those desperate for an end ramp – where the first shark attack occurred.  

Jay Davies, WA born and raised and Honest Ale co-founder, was kind enough to show us the ropes: where to grab a quick ‘cino, a feed, plus the best establishment post surf to nestle into an Honest ale. More importantly though, how to sneak away from the masses and chip into a couple crystal blue tubes.

Before paddling out for a four-hour session, Jay let us into his headspace on the issue of sharks: “They’ve always been here. If you’re scared of sharks, don’t go surfing. And if you start thinking of sharks, go the fuck in.”

Even after lucking into enough tunnels to make you bang your head against the wall, it’s still tough for Jay to drive away from near-perfect, uncrowded waves, despite what could be lurking underneath. 

But, for surfers with less grit, the Westpac helicopter acts as a solid pair of eyes in the sky.

“In the southwest, it’s more remote, so it’s the only helicopter there,” Dave Delroy-Carr, one of the Westpac chopper pilots and Margie’s wildcard told us. “we sound the siren and most people get out of the water. If they stay in the water though, it’s up to them.”

And surveying the surfers in town for the comp, there are mixed opinions when it comes to surfing solo in West Oz. 

“Yes, if you’re trying to get in touch with nature. No, if you wanna live”. Were Sage Erickson’s words of wisdom.

That may be the end of the tour’s Down Under leg for 2018, but it’s far from the end of our tour-adjacent piggybacking with Red Bull. There’s some well-deserved downtime between the next stop, but thankfully there’s lesser chance of oversized fish calling it off over there.

That’s right we’re hitting Brazil with cams in hand.

You know the deal, hit us with your questions and just maybe they’ll be intriguing enough to make the cut.  

In the meantime, we’ll let you be the judge of whether the West really is Best.