It's hard to think of what, in ten year's time, 2023 will be remembered for. The return of pre-COVID crowds to Indo? The disappearance of ELO? Maybe Filipe Toledo winning his second world title in a canter?

None are particularly memorable, I'm really clutching here, however despite the surf world lacking a landmark moment it wasn't as if we went without. Surfing is simply too big, too popular, too ingratiated in popular culture to avoid the headlines for long.

Using a mix of metrics - pageviews, comments, unquantifiable excitement - here are the top stories on Swellnet for 2023.

Bill Sharp And The 100ft Wave

“Cortes has, in a way, become a part of me,” admits Bill Sharp. “It's been a part of me since the late-eighties, when Flame and I literally looked at a nautical chart and just wondered what was going on out there.”

Three decades after first visiting Cortes Bank, Sharp's guiding star leads him over the horizon again when, back in January, he spied an incoming monster swell meeting a day of slack winds near the bank. With mere days to organise troops, boats, and must-haves such as rescue equipment, Sharp commandeered a squadron for one more mission west.

The story includes great photos and an equally impressive video from Tucker Wooding.

Legrope War Lost At The Pass

"After successfully snaring a set wave unencumbered I watch a dude on a fish who, after making a good fist of stylishly climbing and dropping, get stuffed by a log babe. They kicked out beside me and the dude looked very exasperated, ready to dish out a lecture on etiquette.

"The babe eyeballed him and in the most deadpan voice said, “Sorry, I thought you were my boyfriend”.

"How do you respond to that?"

A mix of factors makes The Pass Ground Zero in the ongoing stoush between those who advocate for leggies and those who happily eschew them. A wave that accomodates both boards long and short, an on-land culture that celebrates the individual over the tribe, with warm water for year-round beginners and a healthy dose of backpackers trying their hand at this surfing thing too. All make for a writhing crowd that runs the full gamut of surfcraft, surf experience, and personal politics, and the local ER can attest to the outcome.

Despite that, and also despite Byron Shire Council Voting To Ban Surfing Without A Leggie, the formula of the indivdual wins out at The Pass, as this observation piece by Steve makes clear.

The Graj Match

"Accepted history says that this was the fourth expedition into the wave that was to become known as G-Land, and only the third time it’d been surfed.

"However, unbeknownst to every person on that trip, one person - the youngest of them all in fact - harboured a secret. Not only did they keep that secret to themselves while on the trip, but they held onto it for most of the last five decades, only sharing it publicly last year."

Intriguing, eh? Ostensibly this story was about the now duelling origin stories of who discovered the wave at Grajagan, but it was also a tale of how surfing histories are told and just how relaible they are.

It was also an opportunity to run shit hot shots of G'Land like this one by Jack McCoy.

Jack Frost Joins The Bite Club

"I ended up calling down some people just when I got to the shore. They were elderly and I didn't want to startle them. I'm like, "I'm okay, but I've been attacked by a shark.""

On the 24th July, around 8am, keen-eyed cam watchers noticed something on our Boaties surf cam. A big spray of water, much splashing about, and then...nothing. Didn't take long to find out it'd captured a shark attack and a few days later Swellnet spoke to the victim, 24-year old Jack Frost from Ballina, who was out there surfing by himself - though not alone.

A laconic conversation followed only topped by another a week later with Jack's dad and which appeared in the weekend Flyer:

"Jack's been a waterman since he was in his Mumma’s womb, and he got the sense of the ocean very early on. His Nan and Pop are gone but his grandad was a waterman and he'd be proud as fuck. His other grandma and family are from Kingy, and they’re just as proud and happy he’s alive. He’s greatly loved by all his family. 

"Though he surfs like an animal he’s as modest as they come. I'm surprised Stu got a word outta him; the tight-lipped little bastard would even tell me where he was getting all the good crays down south."

The Tide Giveth (And The Tide Taketh Away)

Yeah the surf is often smaller at low tide, bigger at high. It's a phenomenon that's been observed and accepted for eons. Yet this year, while making a return to his home state, Craig saw an exagerrated version of the same thing happening on South Australia's Mid Coast and went in search of answers.

Lab coats out, egg heads on.

The Father Of The House

The Father of the House. It's an honorific used in many institutions: print-making, parliament, to denote the oldest or longest-serving member. The person holding the title is expected to use their experience to mentor and guide those who are new to the field. With fifty years of shaping experience behind him, plus having trained many generations of surfboard shapers, it's a title that can also be bestowed on Murray Bourton.

This was one of the longer bio pieces we've run on Swellnet but it couldn't have been any other way. Muzz began his surfing life down at Port Campbell, spent his youth roaming the NSW North Coast, settled on the Goldy, saw every iteration of design from the shortboard onwards, and all the while roamed the rolling frontiers of the surfing world. Plus Muzz loves to chat!

In all there was a lot of ground to cover, and truth be told we could very easily have doubled the word count, tripled it even. Despite the sense of incompletion I feel we got the best of Muzz, and there was also a few laughs along the way.

Everyone Everywhere All At Once

"Surfing is often sold to the masses under a pseudo-wellness umbrella which waxes lyrical about the physical, mental, and spiritual power of "saltwater therapy" while spending time "immersed" in the natural environment. Images of smiley happy people laughing their way through joyous sessions in bright sunlight and sparkling blue water are de rigueur from the WSL's corporate headquarters down to the local gal on the socials. 

"Surfing and surf lineups, particularly crowded surfing lineups, are very rarely like that. They're competitive, and difficult, and hostile, and often very dangerous, usually because of the crowd."

I could have grabbed any of the articles Dan Dobbin penned for us this year, all are thoughtful and well-received, however this one, a lamentation about crowding in the surf, posed a few questions that are usually glossed over in the rush to damn the congregation.

Kirra Klassic Defends Decision To Hold Mixed Division

Among eleven separate categories, a suburban surf contest holds a mixed division - men and women surfing together - for a newly-created 'high performance longboarding' category and the whole thing becomes a minefield - an example of gender relations in the 2020s.

Why did the organisers not expect this?
Why did the women not broach it with them privately?

An intersection of upended tradition, social media outrage tactics, charity, and righteousness, the whole matter was best watched from a distance without engaging too much lest the viewer despair at the state of play. When the weekend came and the division surfed in onshore two feet waves, one had to wonder if it was worth it. I hope it was, just so the undiginified affair never happens again.

Power To The Pool

"Wavepool critics have long drawn criticism on the topic of energy consumption, broadly arguing that using man-made energy to create something that Mother Nature provides for free is wasteful. Pre-emptively declining to decide on the validity of this argument, it’s difficult to appropriately interrogate it without knowing how much energy an artificial wave actually requires. Thankfully that unknown can now be known, hopefully allowing more meaningful conclusions to be drawn.

"So then, how much is it?"

Big waves may be measured in increments of fear, but since Kelly let loose his vision, pool waves have been measured in dollars.

However, that's not all. Following the release of Wavegarden's South Korean pool data, they can also be measured in kilowatt hours - i.e how much energy is used to create them - and that's just what Detective Dan Lansell-Kenny did in this article.

Hainan Island: Awakening In The Chinese Tropics

"This article is not about how I got to this island, it’s more about why I made it my home. You see, I come from Italy, the outskirts of the outskirts of the surfing world, and yet I still grew up surfing overpopulated lineups where you earned your (sporadic) waves through devotion, silence, and shear intimidation.

"In 2010 life brought me here. While working at ASP (the precursor to the WSL) and ISA events, I counted the number of pointbreaks - 13 in about 200 km of exposed coastline - divided it by the number of surfers - about 20 back then - then promptly quit my job as Chief Editor of SurfNews Magazine."

One of the great things that happened this year, was the semi-regular correspondence from Nik Zanella who sometimes wrote about Chinese surf art, sometimes about Chinese surf history, and other times filed more straight ahead pieces such as this one on the surf frontier in southern China.