25 years of pure stoke at the Noosa Festival of Surfing
The Noosa Festival of Surfing - otherwise known as 8 days of pure stoke - begins in a couple of days. This year the festival is celebrating it's 25th anniversary, or as it's being called '25 years of pure stoke'.
Yep, they're a happy mob up in Noosa.
The 2016 festival is more diverse than ever, expanding its age divisions, adding disciplines, and sharing the...um, stoke with surfers of all ages. Finlessboards, longboards, shortboards, paddle and standup boards will be ridden dawn to dusk, with proceedings beginning this Friday, March 4.
The festival will commence with the Noosa Heads Surf Club Waterman Weekend, uniting the old foes of surfies and clubbies in a display of talents. The Noosa Heads Surf Club has always been a cornerstone of Noosa’s aquatic community, and a longstanding supporter of the festival. Waterman Weekend celebrates the diversity of ocean goers who share the same joy and love of the water, however they might interpret it. Friday evening will also host a Celebrity Ironman event, pitting lifesavers and surfboard riders against each other in a display of their talents. The nippers will also have their time to shine, presenting a display of their skills and showing us the potential of the next generation.
The Halse Lodge Backpackers’ Challenge returns again in 2016, former pro-surfer and Noosa surf coach Merrick Davis giving a selection of our backpacking guests a crash course before they are unleashed on the waves of First Point. The event is a tag-team challenge, a true demonstration that surfing is for everyone, whatever their ability. Halse Lodge will also host a celebratory after-party on the Sunday evening, keeping the liquid stoke flowing beyond the sand and sunset.
Surfers don't get old, they just get bigger boards, or so the saying goes, and long-standing festival sponsor, World Surfaris is honouring the silver surfers of the senior divisions. The World Surfaris Men’s 55s, 60s, and 65s divisions is a twofold salute to gentlemen nearing retirement. Not only do these divisions prove that surfing has no age limit, but World Surfaris recognizes that many of their best customers are of a certain age. You don't need to give up the dreams of tropical surf adventure just because there’s a little snow on the old summit, and World Surfari’s bespoke packages cater to all ages and all abilities. The World Surfari crew will be shouting a drink for these competitors on Monday night.
The McTavish Trim Invitational is new this year, presented by ‘The Mayor of Noosa’ and living legend, Bob McTavish. Some of the best trimmers in the world will be invited to stand and deliver in this unique event where the less you do the more you score! The McTrim is all about distance covered, from break to beach, with a laser measuring system employed to calculate the length of ride. Wave reading, style, finesse and, of course, a whole heap of trim must be employed in order to clock up the longest ride possible from surf to sand. No big manoeuvres, just good, old-fashioned shooting down the line.
The Old Mal is a fond favourite of the Laguna Real Estate Festival of Surfing, but this year welcomes back Gordon & Smith as presenting sponsor. The brand was founded way back in the late 1950s and has been a benchmark for surfboard design for many of those years. In tribute to Larry Gordon, co-founder of the brand, who passed away early this year, the event includes G&S team riders Dane Wilson and Ricky Cunningham, riding models from the 1960s, including a classic, restored Bobby Brown Stringerless board.
The G&S Old Mal is open to all, but all equipment must be verified as pre-1968. Surfers are invariably riding boards older than themselves, but experience and talent allows them to make the most of these heavy, unforgiving boards. Judging employs the traditional criteria, turning First Point into a flashback to the halcyon days of longboarding.
Dogs, kids, grandparents, clubbies, loggers and body bashers – the Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing really is a celebration of stoke for everyone.
Comments
Sponsored by a real estate agent, go figure :-D
sounds like a good ol fossil fest!
Ha ha!- a little snow on the old summit.
And a little extra land-fill at the base;)
Sounds like a fun week unless you're a frothing, snarling local then it would be your worst nightmare.
Just happened to be in Noosa this weekend last year, it was my first time back in there for nearly 20/years, always kept trucking North in recent times. I could have cried, couldn't get into Noosa Junction let alone Hastings St. And National Park, well, couldn't get a park at 6am on a Tuesday morning. Spent a lot of time there as a young fella, no need to go back for another 20 years I'd reckon.
....when you come back in 20 years, there will be one big super city that will stretch from Byron right up to Noosa, with one big super council full of numb-nuts controlling all us sheep.
It is time for someone to have a Non Festival of Surfing.
no judges , no sponsors , no tents , no coloured vests .
no visitors or tourists, no traffic , no scuzz bags free camping and washing their fry pans in the public shower.
Just rock up from home and go surfing , a simple good morning to the crew at that time and take your turn.......
You missed it many-rivers, it was on last week at Snapper , except for the last sentence of course.
The good news is that every small town along the coast will be alleviated of a few of their biggest dickheads for a week or so while they make a bee line to Noosa and a few of the old fossil legends will have there egos stroked enough to soothe there aches and pains.
...life is a revolving door, we all have a turn of being a mid 20's frother, and then we all have a turn of being a longboarding fossil. Those old fossils of today were exploring deep dark indo, living on bananas & rice living in huts surfing perfect uncrowded exotic waves back in their day. Now the new breed of young surfers snap go-pro selfies of themselves pulling into 3ft closeouts at their local beachie, & post to instagrub & twatter ..... Yea the younger crew are really livin' the dream hey.
And have the photos to prove it!
Spot on Paully:)
Sounds good many-rivers, but I think that dream was lost about 15 years ago.
Even the semi-secret point just North of Noosa had 500 4WD's
last weekend, each packed with surfers chasing a swell that was broadcast
on national social media. Crazy times.
clubbies and surfers sharing a lineup, not sure what to make of that
Same Sid, recently showed my wife Noosa, a place of many a fond memory. Did one lap of Hastings St, couldn't get past a crawl let alone find a parking spot (mid-week, no school holidays) drove back to Noosa Junction, smashed a Laksa and drove away.
That'll do me.
Try living here Zen: More sheep than New Zealand in Noosa and they're all gonna be out with their bells on for this gig.
famous proverb ....you are not stuck in the traffic ... you are the traffic.
Make sure everyone is wearing their leggies
I hate it too,Waterman weekend...what a wank...really get to test their waterman skills in sub half foot waves.And what is Merrick Davis thinking?
so we have surfing backpackers, old boys on there mals, bearded hipsters, and probably pussy one foot surf , hmmm seems like everything i try to avoid when going surfing in one spot , but if that gets you stoked and you can find a park you will be in heaven
.....what a shame about the swell forecast, the festival will have to pick between ankle-high inconsistent waves at first point (nice and glassy but tiny), waist high side-shore closeouts down at the groyne, or shoulder high choppy messy peaks over at Sunshine Beach. Would have been nice to get the cyclone swell this week instead of last week hey.
Latest forecast data has a nice bump through the second half of next week that would be perfect for First Point. Ideal weather system too - strengthening E'ly flow just to the north. I reckon they're gonna score great waves. First few days will be a little small but it could very well be unreal Wed-Sat.
At half an hour up the road that's made me pretty much certainty sick on Thursday next week ...to vintage board gig should be awsome!
maybe nostalgia isn't what it used to be....
Alot of haters. ....could be worse hey...I for one am sure happy to be waking up on the sunny coast in the morning. ...just saying
Alot of haters. ....could be worse hey...I for one am sure happy to be waking up on the sunny coast in the morning. ...just saying ....far more apealing to me than being at snapper for the WSL Rd1 this month.....Might even get a chance to share a beer with a surfing ,pioneering living ledgend or two....
That would make you a hater reffo for disagreeing with the haters?
Yawn...
" ditto "
Swellnet is becoming trollnet
Not there yet C2A. With the departure recently of the sites biggest troll, it's left a kind of troll power vacuum which a couple have tried to move in and fill.
They won't last long.
Yeah , I don't think Heffo is ever going to reach the level of that Uplift guy as far as trolling goes and going the hater on those that don't like the way that Noosa has degenerated over the years is a very piss poor and lazy reaction.
In your own words Heffo "disagreed" with you. That's hating is it?
You're trying to join two very distant dots while attempting to be clever, and then failing at both.
Yes i was reffering to you as boring hako ooo hako
Yeah I know you were, I just get annoyed at the use of hater or troll when someone disagrees with someone , or the put down of say keyboard kahuna, I only used the word hater to throw it back at him, I could have used the more traditional name of wanker, but he's not a wanker because he has a different view of the world to me, same as I'm not a hater cause I reckon Noosa is a shithole.
Any way I think a good time will be had by all who go to the Noosa festival and there should be enough cocaine to go around in the VIP lounge for all the old fossil legends to be quite affable and chatty to anybody who forces themselves upon them.
Really curly ,boring, "yawn" sounds a bit arrogant to me mate , call me a dickhead and be done with it :-), but boring, that's o so droll.
Models have pulled back a bit on that Coral Sea development but it looks like it'll still be enough to provide some small waves for the event for most of next week.
I suppose that's the good thing about longboard comps - size isn't anywhere near as much as a prerequisite as it is for shortboard comps.
Having practiced the fine art of surfing at various levels of inproficiency and occasional humiliation for going on 60 years, one tends to gain a perspective on its good and bad. The skin cancers, cesspool ears, creaky backs and dodgy shoulders are the bad, the satisfaction of still getting out there and catching the occasional passable wave is the good - even if it might not be a triple overhead monster that some of the keyboard kahunas on this site would have you believe they regularly catch before breakfast.
Every day this week I've walked down the corner to my very average local, paddled out in some even more average north-eastern wind slop and caught my share of dribblers on a mal - it's even a McTavish mal, horror of horrors! Still, I was catching more than the too cool for school types floundering about on their little potato chips. I walked home satisfied that I've spent time in the water, maybe said hello to a few of the other fossils who still get out there, checked out the Eurotrash backpacker chicks in their bikinis and come to the conclusion that the world's not such a bad place, despite Donald Trump and reality television.
I've been to a couple of the Noosa festivals where I've talked to legends like Greg Noll and the late Donald Takayama - and, oh, the stories they could tell. Noosa, in or out of festival mode, is what it is and if you don't like it don't even think about it - you can be sure nobody there is thinking about you. Maybe when you keyboard kahunas make it on the world tour or get invited to the Eddie, someone will be bothered listening - then you can tell Clyde Aikau he should be in the nursing home, not out in mega Waimea. After all, he's 66.
Sing it loud Zuma! And here's a recent clip of Clyde providing back up.
"Much Aloha."
Ha, good one, Stu! I go to Hawaii once a year, usually in their summer south shore season, and cruise around Waikiki and adjacent spots - Pops, way out from the Sheraton, is a favourite - and you see all ages out there have a good time of it. Grandpas with little grandkids sitting on the front of their monster mals, hipster types surfing with their dogs and even ducks, beautiful young women who can surf circles around most of us blow-in tourists. As long as you take your time and turn, it's not a drama - and when it gets over head high it's about as much fun as you can have standing up. No one cares how old, young, fat or skinny you are and the old guy Hawaiians just kill it. But it's a heritage thing over there - here, over 40 you're supposed to be playing lawn bowls. Maybe the keyboard kahunas should try telling Kelly Slater that in the next week or so.