How To Dominate Cloudbreak On Your First Trip

Surf edits come and go; some are forgettable, some are jammed with a flurry of memorable elements. This one is the latter. Harry Bryant is one of Stab’s great hopes for the future of surfing; Not only is he a catlike jumper and mongoose-speed barreller, but he’s also #blessed with the good fortune of a sense of humour – often a rarity in today’s Athlete mould.

Which brings us to Rust, his newest short film, which features catlike jumps around Byron Bay and Thirroul (where he recently moved), as well as mongoose-speed barrels at freight train Cloudbreak. Most impressive? It was his first-ever time rifling the Fijian reef pass.

“I think I will be going there for the next five years!” Haz tells me, when I remark that he looks unreasonably experienced out there. “Fiji is so sick, I’ll be going back there a lot now I think. When we went, the WA contest was on, so the swell was pretty under-the-radar. We went last minute and stayed on land because the resorts were all booked out. We were in this massive share house with a bunch of locals. It was a really cool experience, it felt like we got the real Fiji. 

“The first day looked the best, and we said if we score waves that day, then anything else we get after that is a bonus. But then it just got better, and better and better, for five days. It was crazy. It was so uncrowded the whole time I was out there, so many waves went unridden. There were a few big wash-throughs on the biggest waves, which would clear everything out. We were pretty much out there all day, we’d get up in the dark and spend all day out there, we were so cooked at night.”

And what about what might be the best claim of all time, which closes a wildly impressive Cloudbreak barrel? (laughs) “That was good… that was my very first wave of that session, before anyone else was out there. It happened so quick. I dropped my mate Jimbo at the tower to film, and I didn’t even know if he was in the tower or not yet, but the claim’s funny because it’s kinda far away, but literally looks like I’m locking eyes straight down the barrel of his lens, when really I had no idea if he was in the tower yet. I’m glad I didn’t do something really outrageous, thinking no one was watching.”