That lid looks good. Photo: Cestari//WSL
By any number of standards, 2024 was a pretty tough year to be a surfer. I mean, between increasingly crowded global lineups, horrible shark attacks seeming to happen every other week, and a proliferation of irritating Insta clips of gazillionaire wannabes like Ivanka Trump getting locked-in at the Surf Ranch, you couldn’t blame an authentic “surfer for life” for feeling less-than-inspired in the waning days of the year that was. I say “bah humbug” to that. Simply because if one stops focusing solely on the negative left-hand column, and turns an even precursory glance to the positive right-hand column, it’s abundantly clear that surfing in 2024 had plenty to be grateful for. To set you up for a fantastic 2025 and keep you stoked on the year ahead, here’s 10 things surfers should be grateful for.
HELMETS
Hard to believe it took this long. Yet this year it seems that more and more surfers have finally wised-up, choosing to don protective headgear specifically designed for surfing, not only at killer spots like Pipeline, but at many other of the world’s high-risk waves. Considering that head trauma has probably contributed to more surfing fatalities than any other factor, I’d say that’s a healthy trend. Plus, this time around (recall that Tom Carroll won the Pipe Masters while wearing a lid, way back in ‘91), they look really cool.
KAI AND RIDGE LENNY
There’s a lot of great surfing podcasts out there, but it’s just so much fun watching “Lenny Bros,” a brand-new entry in the genre, wherein a pair of good-natured brothers from Maui, one who charges Peahi, and the other who just happens to the greatest all-around surfer in the world today, provide the ultimate “insiders” perspective on all sorts of compelling wave-riding topics — without ever sounding like ultimate insiders. The affable, unassuming younger bro, Ridge, proving to be the perfect counterpoint to Kai’s preternaturally cool Argonaut aura.
MODELS
And no, I’m not talking about those. What I am pointing to is the surfboard industry’s current trend of offering their customers specific model surfboards to choose from. While this standardizing of the surfboard market has killed much of the mythology that has long defined custom surfboard making, it has replaced it with something almost as good: the opportunity, historically unavailable to even the most experienced surfers, to walk out of a surf shop with exactly the board you want.
SURF CULTURE CELEBRATION
While so far as surfing’s future is concerned, the aforementioned Ivanka Insta-abomination could be seen as a harbinger of doom, there are still plenty of genuinely stoked surfers out there organizing, obtaining funding for, and putting on events solely for the purpose of celebrating all aspects of today’s surf culture. From Porto, Portugal’s “Norte Surf Fest,” to the “Florida Surf Film Festival,” to SurfXSurfwest (a hardcore surf music jamboree held every summer at a popular Seattle watering hole), 2024 offered more ways than ever to gather with hundreds of your surfing brothers and sisters and, for once, feel really good about it.
BEN GRAVY AND DYLAN GRAVES
Who knew that watching surfers riding weird waves and ferry wakes could be so entertaining? But what really makes these two popular vloggers stand out is the sense of fun and camaraderie they inject into a medium that often takes itself much too seriously. This, and how through their inherent good natures and open-mindedness, they not only spread the good vibe, but get it tossed right back at them from the locals at the various quirky spots they profile. Good luck pulling that miracle off at five-star breaks Snapper Rocks or Desert Point.
OFFSHORE WINDS
Unless you’re one of the 0000.01 percent of surfers in the world whose closeout alley-oops require side-shore wind, you regularly yearn for wind that blows off the land and straight into the wave face. And for a member of that majority, 2024 was a great year, as a wide array of global surf spots seemed blessed with more than their share of that blessed direction. Hurricane wrap-around affect in the U.S. Northeast, low-pressure spinners that lit up beaches in England and even Italy, all around the world, offshores ruled!
“SHOTGUN,” WITH JODIE PRENDERGAST AND TAJ RICHMOND
As portrayed in the McTavish Surfboards-produced short film “Shotgun,” not only are these two the most adorable surfing couple in the world, but Josie, one of the most stylish surfers you’ll ever see, and Taj, one of the very best, relatively unknown surfers I’ve ever seen, display such exemplary technique on such a wide variety of boards, that love-fest aside, it doubles as the best instructional video to be released in years. If after watching this, you don’t surf better tomorrow…well, I feel sorry for you.
YOUR SURF TRIP
It used to be that surfaris were reserved for the hardest of the hard core, those hardy souls who, faced with a complete lack of global surf travel infrastructure, were required to sacrifice so many of life’s amenities — financial security, personal relationships, pets — in order to take off for the far side of the world in search of exotic new waves. And hey, that’s great, if that’s your thing. But if it isn’t, and you’re still keen to travel for surf, a quick scroll through Google today will provide a bucket-list full of surf charters/surf camps/surf schools, catering to just about every skill level, schedule, and economic status.
WETSUITS
It’s estimated that the region known as “the tropics” covers approximately 40 percent of the planet’s total surface area. Sure, and don’t forget to bring the sunscreen. But this also means that 60 percent of the surfing world exists outside the tropics, which means that when you paddle out, you’re most probably wearing a wetsuit. And in 2024, you were given many more great wetsuit options than ever before, with more flexible materials, innovative designs, and a whole bunch of new, smaller companies keeping the industry giants on their toes. So, if you live between 23.5 latitude N and 23.5 latitude S, hey, lucky you. But if not, then hey, lucky you.
RETURN OF THE SUPER-GROMS
And this time they’re girls! Specifically, Caity Simmer and Erin Brooks. Simmers, 19 years-old and all of 5’2″, not only clinching the 2024 world title, but blowing up the internet with her amazing barrel-riding heroics at an undisclosed horizontal hurricane spot in the Cape Verde Islands, one of the greatest displays of tube-riding technique ever seen — by man or woman. And Brooks, the equally-diminutive 17-year-old goofy-foot who, aside from absolutely charging some of the world’s gnarliest waves and having won contests in everything from wave-pool airshows to barrel-fests in Fiji, just won this year’s Vans Pipeline Masters. The performances of young female surfers like these were the most exciting thing about surfing in 2024, and, to paraphrase Caity, after she won her 2024 WCT Pipe Masters crown, it’s about f-ckin’ time.
