Clay Marzo Opts Against The Neoprene In Cold Mexican Tunnels

Marzo clips are always welcome. The man analyses a barrel unlike any other. And it’s no secret Baja lit up over the past two weeks–if you don’t believe us, consult Instagram and the consistent self-righteous naming of spots, followed by a tag and the caption “we gotta go this weekend.” But in California, if you stayed home you were satisfied, if you headed south, you surfed with everyone you knew from home, and didn’t hear a lick of Spanish in the water. Unless you were in Ensenada, then all you did was get burned by drop knee bodyboarders who looked back and with disdain saying fucking gringos. Clay however stuck to the beachies of Rosarito, and although the water was a brisk Clay opted out of the wetsuit and into the barrel. 

“Brah, I can trunk it,” he said to the collected crew as we stared at 6-8’ offshore wind-groomed tubes on what would become the day of the year at an undisclosed Baja California beachbreak.

“Clay, it’s northern Baja in mid-November and the water is like 59-degrees…you’re tripping!” was the reply as we zipped up our 4/3mm fullsuits with a hot, dry wind whipping up sand and debris.

He gave in and began pulling on and squirming into a new wetsuit his brother Cheyne Magnusson got for him. Clay Marzo was in a fullsuit for the first…ever? Who knows.

“Brah, I can’t paddle. So sluggish.”

The next session, Clay declared his intent to don boardies and boardies only, quickly changed, and ran up the beach untethered from that pesky neoprene.

And that’s when the magic happened. With just him and his brother at an empty, firing beachbreak the Clay show began. Showing no signs of hypothermia, Clay was alive and electric, paddling this way and that, and taming a lineup that looked like Hossegor on steroids.

After an hour and a half and the sun already behind offshore islands, Clay came in, admitted to being frozen to the core, and cracked an ice cold Tecate. “Brah, I told you I could trunk it!”