Art is whatever you can get away with - Marshall McLuhan.

And it looks like KS will get away with surfing the waves of a lifetime at Cloudbreak, boycotting Round 1 and still showing up to the East Cape in time for Round 2, which could be many days hence. Prepare for a long period of hunkering down, sports fans, whilst a lackadaisical South Atlantic slowly brews a storm to bring this event home.

Still, Round 1 has finished and after an almost two months break it was patently obvious, even over the webcast, who had come to play, as they say. What became even more patently obvious is that last years pruning was barely a start towards what should be the eventual goal: a Top 16. Heat after heat featured surfing that was miles away from what should be the best of the best. No-one involved in Professional Surfing should be under any illusions about the ability of the Sport to draw a decent purse when its first two rounds - basically the bulk of the contest by weight of time - are so tepid, inconsistent and full of what Derek Hynd calls: "hackneyed, controlled, over-coached, join-the-dot, repetitious surfing". When life-long tragics like myself find themselves dozing off the Sport has a problem.

The rot started in Heat 1 with Cory Lopez. Now Cory has figs the size of grapefruits, no doubt, but that wide stanced, stiff-legged style would scare a dog out of a butchers shop. I could tell by then and after about the seventeeth time someone said "guinea pig heat" that it was gunna be a long, long night, even with the help of a fully stocked beer fridge...I started wondering if there might be any prescription painkillers left in the first aid kit. Just an Oxy or two to lull the critical faculties somewhat.

But there were highlights, few and far between as they were in the funky, fun looking head high waves. Fanning's turns sizzled like a drop of beer on a barbie plate. Dusty Payne finally got out of the bizarre performance slump he'd been in, and proved in the post-heat interview why longevity as a Pro Surfer will be important to him. He won't be making a play for Oxford anytime soon.

But it was Jordy first and foremost, and daylight second, who lifted this day of Pro Surfing out of the foetid swamp of a lugubrious mediocrity. He was...whimsical, like one of those gazelles you see kicking their heels out on the savannah in a pure joy of movement. He'd lost that predatory, ponderous look which occasionally constrains his surfing. He looked like he didn't have a care in the world. Spontaneous, radical, fluid, powerful and stylish. It forced me to radically rethink my position on the concept: Jordy Smith. It was the perfect Round 1 heat performance. When the judges closed their eyes to go to sleep that night the neurons that were firing to embed the days surfing into long term memory were composed solely of his surfing. It was a World Title worthy performance and whether that statement has resonance at the business end of the year or not, a run has to start somewhere. That's a simple fact.

Forecasters sometimes refer to a 'fully developed sea state'. It refers to the maximum wave energy that can be imparted to a sea by a certain wind speed blowing for enough time. Following Jordy's heat I was in possession of what might be termed a fully developed beer buzz. It suddenly seemed a great idea to grab my very good friend J and duck across to the next door paddock to see if we could have some fun with the local bull, which was bellowing under a full moon.

The creaking clutch of the gate seemed to alarm the bull and he briefly turned tail and fled up the hill. We pursued him, up past a clump of ghostly banksia trees which were silhouetted by a doleful full moon. The ground was rocky and muddy and slippery in thongs. The bull stopped and turned to face his pursuers. We were separated by around twenty yards of rough and rocky hill-slope, with the banksia trees at least that distance behind us. The bull raised his nose to the air, sniffed it lustily, then put his head down and charged us. We both went scrambling for the trees, my mate slipped and fell on the rocks, but the bull was after me. I leaped into the tree and scrambled for my life with the impact of the bull hitting the tree in a sickening thud an instant after I hit the tree.

"Holy fuck", I screamed. The bull was scratching his horns on the tree and ripping his hooves into the roots. I could see my mate crawling away into the next clump of trees. Down the hill, I could see the lights of my house, and the faint glow of the computer screen still playing the live pro surfing from South Africa. A pretty little mess. And not exactly conducive to an incisive coverage. I missed the next few heats. You understand why.

The next morning I found my notes a garbled mess. Something about Sean Holmes updating his look, that he no longer looked like Boy George circa Karma Chameleon. That the nemesis, as they call him, was running out of opponents: No Irons, no Slater.

And something about GT...he was missing. It didn't seem right. Nothing seems right about this contest so far. Nothing that is except the Parko and Jordy victories.

Even J-Dub's surfing seemed conservative and lacking in flair and risk. When is he going to bring it into a heat? By 'it' I mean the surfing he lays down in the video clips.

The surf locally justified the decision to stay home from South Africa. Overhead pointbreak, brushed by an all day offshore. Something strange happened out there, sports fans, which I will now relay to you. A large seabird started to circle me in the water. Big and brown with a mean, hooked beak and a scowling bestial air about it. It was circling me, stalking me. When I called it's bluff and paddled towards it I could see it was injured. So I shepherded the bird through the break and somehow got it to shore. The thing - a Southern Giant Petrel - was fricking enormous. About the size of a large goose, with a wingspan like a condor. I found some poor unfortunate's towel on the beach and threw it over the bird, wrestling it into the car while it snorted, grunted, growled and made all kinds of ungodly noises.

When I got it to the Seabird rescue centre I asked the carer what they ate. "Oh mostly other birds. They harass them until their exhausted and land on them, drown them, turn them over and eat their guts out." "Jeez, nice piece of work", I said. "Yeah", she said, "they call them the vulture of the seas".

This thing was a long, long way from it's home territory deep in the roaring forties and screaming fifties. Riding the same storms that bring J-Bay to life. I left my name and number. As I walked out I looked back at the bird and the carer. She had written on a whiteboard: Southern Giant Petrel and next to it, was giving him a name. I watched her write it.

K.E.L.L.Y. 

I freaking kid you not.