IT'S NOT POSSIBLE.

This was the overwhelming sentiment I received after broaching the idea of me riding“The Right”A wave regarded as one of, if not the most dangerous and violent waves on the planet. My goal was to ride the wave on my bodyboard in the jackstance or dropknee position. A wave I had stared at in awe on both video and in person, but something that had never been attempted by myself or anyone, ever.

By rights I should not have even been considering what I was, the last four years before this moment arose I'd watched my father die, lost three close friends, watched my brother have his life ripped in half, losing his fiancé in a horrific car accident at the hands of another driver whilst I was in the middle of 18 months of immense pain enduring a spinal injury to my neck and a severe medication reaction that would follow. Irrespective of these life challenges, I could not get this wave, or the idea of riding one, out of my head. To know what that experience was like was all I wanted. Out of all the people on the planet that ride a body board in the manner that I do, I am one of a select few in the world that could attempt this, All my life experience growing up and being tested and beaten by the cold water of the southern and Indian oceans prepared me for what would happen if things went wrong, which when you are skimming down a 15-20 foot wave, balancing on a small piece of foam with no fins on the bottom for traction, the chance of coming off and getting ones "ass handed to them" is very high..

That moment seen here was (now amusingly) done riding a prototype board with a huge defect in the form of a kink at a critical point in the board where the nose rocker meets the hull, a result from the shapers first attempt at creating a pronounced nose rocker gone wrong, whom id then asked to please finish, so I could test the addition of fishing sinkers into the carbon graphite rod, used for reinforcing the core of the board in the ocean, designed to assist with momentum of my boards which were being stopped by pieces of water whilst riding bigger and bigger waves.

I was to wait for the shaper to figure out how to craft the nose rocker correctly, and returned to bury myself in university work when a gigantic blob of swell that was to contain this wave and moment, showed up on swell forecasting models, with a rare, spare spot on a JetSki available, all of a sudden, possibly putting me in the line up with the opportunity I had dreamed of, right in front of my face.

The university work I was buried in, was the final year of a Bachelor of Architecture degree that had I promised my father in his last two weeks of life, I would finish. One I was committed to fulfilling, One that required my complete attention. Id surfed once in 6 months still in the final stages of rehabilitating my neck, and that once, was to test the board in knee high waves at Duranbah beach on the Gold Coast of Australia after flying over to shape the boards.

Regardless, there was not much hesitation to say yes. The moment you see here, shot by close friend Chris Gurney, featured on the cover of the second last issue of the Iconic Riptide bodyboard magazine, is the culmination of holding a dream so close to ones chest, and a refusal to be influenced by others opinion or to concede that this dream is anything other than, completely possible.

Never give up on your dreams.