Surfing
As Australia’s Gold Coast came alive with a run of hall of fame back-to-back swells, we asked three-time world champ and hometown hero Mick Fanning to break it all down for us.
In late April of this year, as the WSL Championship Tour was doing business on Australia’s south and west coasts, the more northern Gold Coast came alive, and Simon ‘Shagga’ Saffigna, legendary longtime friend and filmer for Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson and Dean’ Dingo’ Morrison, was there to capture all of the action.
When the dust had settled, we rang Fanning to get the down low. After a marathon stint of waves, you'd forgive a surfer for sounding a little low on energy, but when Fanning answered our call, he was full of life and happy to have a chat. So happy, in fact, that we turned the conversation into the soundtrack for the edit above, and we think you'll agree it explains the crazy visuals perfectly.
From the incredible waves to the wild wipeouts and the celebrated surfers in the water to the sheer volume of humans in general, Fanning was candid and engaging. Once you've soaked up the action above, we hope you enjoy the full conversation below as well.
Mick! How are you mate? Tell us all about this recent run of swell.
I’m great! It's been fun. It's probably just that the whole world's here that everyone's been freaking out. We had a couple of swells at the start of the year that had really high expectations, then nothing really happened, whereas this one we’re more like, let’s just wake up and see what it does. We had two or three days right at the start that were just dreamy. No wind and as picture-perfect as it gets, so that was nice, just going surfing and not having to deal with wind or rips or anything like that, and pretty much all the boys were out, and the girls too. It was cool!
It wasn't a cyclone, it was back-to-back swells, right?
It definitely wasn't a cyclone, it was just low-pressure systems in the Pacific that had the perfect angle on 'em, hung around for two weeks and went through a whole bunch of different moods. At the start, it was really dreamy and picturesque, and all the focus was on Snapper, then it went really windy for a few days, so you had to try and get down the point a little bit. All of a sudden, the wind backed off, and the swell started coming back up again, and the bank through from Rainbow Bay down to Greenmount was as pristine as it gets, ruler-straight, and that's where you saw some 10 to 15 second long tubes.
I was going to ask you to break the bank down, because there were a lot of wipeouts behind the rock, and it seemed down through Greenmount was the pick of it.
At the start, the bank behind the rock was up there with as good as I’ve ever seen it. High tide, low tide, it didn’t matter, it was amazing. They were pumping sand the whole time, and as the southerly kicked in, it just started dragging sand all the way down the point, and it groomed that for the second half of the swell, which was really nice.
Have you got the sand pumping guys on speed dial? Do you get the inside intel?
I’ve got the button at home! [Laughs.] Not really, but any time we get a south swell, and there’s sand over on the southern side of the river, they’ll just hit the button, and it’s on!
This looked like a big, thick swell, and some of the beatings behind the rock were crazy. Was there backwash, or are people just trying to sit deeper now to get the jump on the crowd?
It’s funny, it wasn't that thick of a swell, but the bank was holding the swell a little bit more. It wasn't really capping out the back where it usually does. Everything lined up really nicely. There was a reverse rip for those first few days, so people were getting sucked around the rock a lot deeper than normal, but I think it’s more that everyone's trying to make the impossible to get their clip, and, y’know, not every moment's a good one!
How has the crowd been? Has it reached max capacity, or does it still seem to get crazier?
Oh man, it's Snapper! It doesn't matter if it's one-foot or six-foot, it's always crowded and that’s just part and parcel of the deal. If you don't like the crowd, then I'm sorry, it's not going away, you just have to deal with it.
All these years later you, Joel Parkinson and Dean ‘Dingo’ Morrison still seem to get your share. That's not bad, is it?
Yeah, no one's kicked us out from behind the rock just yet! I guess if us three are out, no one else is really getting waves, though, because we're so competitive with each other. No, there's some good kids who that are in the lineup. You know, probably Nick ‘Vasa’ Vasicek gets the best ones because he will just sit and wait for an hour just for that perfect set. Then you've got Mitch Parkinson and a few of the younger kids coming through, some real young kids who are starting to have a good dig behind the rock too, which is really cool. Not to mention Quincy Simmons, the Flying Squirrel! She got a one crazy one, and for her age group, she’s probably one the hardest chargers out there, boys and the girls.
Tell us about Kelly Slater. Is he another surfer who gets his share of waves and fadings, or does he have special GOAT privileges?
He sits in the lineup just like everyone else, and I think everyone's pretty stoked to see him out there. You always wonder what he's going to do, but he's always really respectful. When the GOAT starts paddling for a wave, people look on in amazement, going, ‘Oh, wow, he's here,’ and they pull back. It’s always good to see different faces and see different people really enjoying the waves that we've got.
What about Mark ‘Occy’ Occhilupo?
Ah mate, Occ is fitter than he’s ever been, it's so good to see. He's one person who will never miss a day, it's incredible. For the age, he's at, and how well he's still surfing, it’s awesome. In the last two years, I feel he's just got better and better again, so yeah, it's epic to have The Occ out there.
You, Joel and Dingo have always been really different characters, but is it fair to say that as you get older, that is getting more exaggerated?
Oh, we're, we're all very different. But, in saying that we're all the same, you know, we froth out over good waves. We're all on different paths and, in different chapters of our lives, but when the waves are on, we all come together and just try and beat each other, and the competitive juices start flowing again.
Could you run us through a perfect wave from this swell, from takeoff to kick out? What are you looking for, and what happens?
There’s a few different waves you wanna look for. Obviously, the dream are the ones that Vasa and Dean Harrington got from behind the rock; those big, thick ones that are real throaty through that first part. And then sort of the next tier down is the one where you get barrelled behind the rock, but then it will set up through Little Marley, and you can get barrelled for, you know, 10, 15 seconds.
How good is it to have Simon ‘Shagga’ Safigna still on the tools still filming you three guys?
We've actually got a thread with the four of us, and it's hilarious. It's good to have the A-Team back together, although it doesn't matter how long we’ve been apart, we still all talk the exact same crap to each other.
What’s next for Mick Fanning? Are you surfed out for now, or have you still got your froth on?
I'm all good. I'm actually going on a boat trip, so that was just a fitness test, and now I’m hoping the body holds up for another two weeks.
Who’s on the trip with you?
Just a mate’s trip! The joys of doing what I want these days, it’s great.
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