Shipstern Bluff is not a wave that most people see and think, “yeah, that looks like my kind of wave.” When it gets huge there, the footage is a little like a surfing horror film. There are a select few people on Earth who can hang, and for a long time, that select few were mostly bodyboarders. It’s surprising just how many slabby waves like Shippies were first ridden by spongers.
If we’re being honest, almost every heavy slab in Australia — think Cyclops, et al— was first sussed out by a guy who didn’t stand up.
“To tell you the truth, boogie boarders found ‘em all,” said Justin “Jughead” Allport to Kimball Taylor a few years back. “They left us going hunting all the spots, looking on Google and stuff. Most of the time we’d find out that boogie boarders had already been there for awhile. That, umm, I know it sounds sad.”
Now, though, surfers have figured out how to surf waves that used to be thought of as basically unsurfable. And one of the best to document that is Tim Bonython, a guy who spends most of his time bouncing around the planet looking for the biggest waves he can.
“Shipstern in all its glory,” Bonython wrote. “Featuring the new hottest slab surfer on the planet, Max McGuigan. Plus see Dylan Longbottom‘s daughter Summa go to the next level catching some of the biggest waves of her life. Also watching Nathan Florence and the locals tame the Shippies step that it’s so famous for.”
