Three weeks ago I received an email from a colleague titled ‘Shipsterns Rescue Ski Yarn’, the contents of which zapped my brain’s snooze button immediately off.
Since moving to the (mostly) soft-as-a-two-minute-egg, sand-bottomed points of the Byron Bay, I’ve craved the shitty rip bowls, local enforcers, and wind-whipped south swells native to my Sydney homeland — just to remind myself surfing is not strictly limited to Krooky-knockoffs slipping around on soft tops throwing shakas.
Rather than calling the shrink, I figured this pathogenic jadedness might best be treated by an old-school flogging. Less than two weeks later, my consultation was booked at Shippies.
The Hassetts [legendary Tasmanian family] very kindly offered up a place to stay while a 16-second S swell began ripping up the Tasman. “The buoy readings are looking solid,” young Noah explained as I greeted him in Ford Raptor at Hobart Airport.
By this time I had already clocked Laurie Towner, Torren Martyn, Dylan Longbottom, Kael Walsh, Dav Fox, Dan Ross, Laura Enever and Soli Bailey at oversize luggage and realized I was soon to be in a Tim Bonython Swell Chasers clip.
I carefully placed another feather in the Fallen Broken Street wide-brim.
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At sparrows (4:00AM), we sip coffee instant and begin the mission in. We pass Port Arthur, the site where Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others in the deadliest massacre in modern Australian history, and hear untold, macabre details. “They were all headshots” says Noah, “but he shot from the hip!”. Afterward we discuss the death squeal of the native Tassie Devil — the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world — and how they generate the strongest bites per unit of body mass of any predatory land mammal.
As it is outside, the humour inside the car is dark.
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The 11km walk-in takes two hours carrying boards. Breezy on the way down. Brutal on the way back. The first thing we see once after arriving at the rocks is a man getting washed over the pinballs dragging a buckled board.
I squeeze into tiiick rubber and scurry over to the dark side of the bluff.
At rock bottom of the pecking order with 31 (I counted) locals, Daves and pros superior to me, the only scraps left over were lethal inside ledges with no chip in and those unmistakable evil steps waiting immediately below. Obviously, a more seasoned Dave might have descended them with less fuss or fanfare. But after several floggings I concluded enough was enough, and retired to the channel.
The show from the sidelines was spectacular anyway.
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Experiencing that same event, from a very different frame of reference, was OG Southern Lord Marti Paradisis, who’s made a career surfing this wave. The Surf Safety Initiative (SSI) was launched following Harry Hollmer Cross’s near-fatal wipeout last season, which catalyzed the crew to invest in proper safety training and conduct emergency drills. The introduction of the jet ski as a safety tool came later in the process.
The SSI is modeled off what Peter Conroy established with the Irish Tow Surfing Club many moons ago, and has seen them acquire a jet ski for major swells at Shippys as a last resort safety measure for first aid emergencies.
We chatted with Marti to learn more.
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Stab: Let’s take it from the top – can you tell me how you were introduced to Shipsterns?
Marty Paradisis: Shippies’ history is debatable in a lot of people’s eyes. But for me, it all came about by meeting Andrew Campbell. I stumbled upon Andrew and my neighbour Polly watching some tape of it back in the day. I would’ve been 15 or 16 at the time and it was all very hush-hush. I remember them saying, “Listen, come in, check it out, but don’t tell anyone about it”. I remember watching the footage and thinking ‘these are the craziest waves I’ve seen in my life”. I can’t even really put a gauge on how big it was. I mean, back then it might’ve only been 8-to-10-foot Shippies, but in my eyes, looking at 8-to-10-foot Shippies for the first time was just on another level. The steps, the thickness of the lip, the bluff in the background, all that stuff was just mind blowing.
So that was my introduction to it. Then maybe a year or two later I went out in the tinny with them. I didn’t surf it the first time, I just sat in the channel. I wanted to feel the spit of a set on my face. I’d never been to Hawaii before at that time but I always used to always watch the spit at Pipe and just go, ‘wow, that’s the craziest shit ever’. I just wanted to feel that. So that’s what I did.
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Cambo ended up injuring himself, and the surf was pretty short lived, so we peeled out. Around that time all my mates started getting an interest for surfing Shippies too. We just couldn’t believe we had something this special in our backyard.
Rarely did we go by boat in the early days. The majority of the time we’d be walking in as a crew and hanging out on the rocks. Surf forecasting was pretty hit-and-miss back then, so we took a lot of punts and got skunked often. To us, it was all about the mission. We were in this fresh zone. Even the walking track to Shippies is beautiful in itself, regardless of whether there are waves or not. So we were just in appreciation of just what was transpiring at the time, being in a fresh place and pushing each other to try and get barreled at this Mecca.
Over the years that just grew organically. We all wanted a good one. That was our focus. Like ‘Alright, firstly, let’s catch a wave’. Next, ‘Who’s been pitted out there before?’, ‘Who’s had one that’s had a step?’ We were just levelling up with all these little challenges. Each little step felt like a huge step back then because it was all so new. Then things fell into place with sponsors and that kind of stuff. We started getting photos in mags, and with it came this new kind of opportunity.
When did you realize you could make a career out of surfing?
I shouldn’t have been a pro surfer. I grew up in the northern suburbs, nowhere near the beach. I started surfing late at around 13 years old, and it feels like BANG! All of a sudden I had a sponsor, and then I’m in a magazine, and then I get a cover shot and it’s like, fuck, how’s all this happened so quickly?
It was a dream and we were just rolling with it. We were lucky. Our best friends were photographers, filmers and surfers. The dynamic was perfect, and we were all focused in this one direction, and we weren’t really sidetracked by anything else. Shippies became our lives.
Is it fair to say you wouldn’t have had a pro surfing career without Shippies?
Without a doubt. There were probably four or five crew that made enough money to get by, and for the majority of them, it was really only for a few short years. I was lucky enough to get a bit more runway out of it. Super, super lucky. And in saying that, all it really came down to was being in the right place, at the right time. The big wave slab scene had just taken off. People were frothing on Shippies, the mags, surfers from all around the world. Everyone wanted a piece of it.
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Shipsterns has to be one of the world’s most photogenic waves. Not always because of its beauty, sometimes because of its ugliness. You don’t even have to surf to appreciate it. You see plenty of coffee table books where it’s just water moving in interesting ways, and the first time you see Shippies it just arrests you. How, if at all, does the Shippies surf community differ from others that you’ve come across?
I’d struggle to answer that because I guess I haven’t spent enough time in other places to get a true gauge on how their community works. I’ve surfed many spots around the world where I’ve struggled to get a wave because it’s so intense and the locals are gnarly. But in Tassie we’ve grown up sort of being at the arse end of the world. In reality, people didn’t want to know about us before Shippies. We’d go to the state surfing comps and just get written off by people.
For so long Tassie was just looked at as a shithole. But we appreciated it. We knew it had so many good qualities, so it was their loss. We’ve sort of come from pretty humble beginnings I’d say, but we’ve always been rich in good vibes, good times, appreciating nature and stepping up during challenging circumstances. That’s been our main focus over the years, is figuring out ways to protect that culture. I guess the other thing is as a surf community, Shippies is pretty fresh. We’ve only been around for the last 20 years, whereas the majority of other surfing communities around the world have been around for 60 years or more.
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Do you feel like because it is a younger culture, you almost have a duty to establish the founding principles? Like, what are the values we uphold and what are we not going to accept?
100%. We definitely have a responsibility to help pave the way for the next generation. In surf culture, I feel this just comes naturally. When your young you look up to the older crew and take mental notes on how things go down.You don’t want outside influences to come in and push it in a direction that’s not going to be healthy. It can be hard to sit back and say, ‘the way you guys are doing it isn’t right, do it this way’. But I guess that comes with spending the time there and knowing the place better than most. When you live in a place and are passionate about it, I think you’re naturally going to make better decisions than someone who isn’t as invested.
So I guess that’s why we’ve sort of put things in place as we do. I mean 10 years ago, I used to be quite vocal out in the lineup, but it didn’t really work for me mentally. I’d pull someone into place or something like that, but I would feel terrible afterwards like, ‘I should have done it differently’ or ‘did I take it too far?’. Whereas these days I sort of take a bit more of a step back and let it play out a bit. I might say a few words but only when I felt the time was right. I’ve realized you can only do so much and the rest is just wasted energy.
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Tell me about the Shipsterns Safety Initiative. How did it come about?
The SSI needed to happen. We have been so lucky over the years that nothing more serious has gone down. The amount of times that we’ve surfed it on stupid days, when it’s been huge but the wind and swell has been the wrong direction… it’s actually a miracle we haven’t lost anyone. Having said that, there’s been some really serious wipeouts, and last year we came really close to our first death out there and it sent a shockwave through the community. That was the moment we went, ‘Okay, let’s fucking stop talking about it and actually make it happen’. Guys like Richie Hassett and Robert Boost have really brought this thing to life.
And how does the SSI work?
The ski is there as a last resort. It’s a tool that gives us a fighting chance of saving someone’s life if shit really hits the fan. And that’s it. That’s all it is. I don’t think it should be perceived as anything more than that. We don’t want people to think, ‘Oh now they’ve got a rescue team, we should go down and send it now.’ Cos that’s not how it works. We really want to drill this point home because Our biggest fear is that people that wouldn’t probably normally come down are like, ‘if I hit my head and if I get rolled through the rocks or get a two wave hold down and come up unconscious, it’s all good. They’re going to pick me up’. And there’s a very real potential for that to happen.
The other thing I’d say is, this isn’t a short term solution. This is something we intend to keep for over a lifetime. We want it to be there for the next generation. And so obviously, if anyone that does want to donate money, it’s really appreciated.
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How has the approach to surfing changed over the years in terms of risk-taking and exploration, in your experience? I feel like surf forecasting has killed that spirit of adventure a little.
Totally, no one’s prepared to take risks anymore. A lot of it comes down to surf forecasting too. It’s given so many people opportunities to score waves without doing the work. I swear some people just get called up by Swellnet and Surfline and get told where to go. Swear to God. Back in the day you’d look at the surf forecast, make an assumption of what you thought was going to happen and you’d pull the trigger. Then you were taking notes as you go, like ‘okay, next time the forecast is looking a bit bigger, I’m going to hit that’. But people don’t need to learn anymore because it’s given to ’em on a platter. It’s pretty uncontroversial swell hype is contributing to a crowd problem. And you just see it more and more.
I think that’s another thing that’s changed over the years. For me, when I got into surfing, the exploration side of things was our North Star. My most fulfilling experiences were seeing new places, looking at maps, and then rolling the dice and trying to score it. But now it’s like a big swell goes up the Tasman – Cloudbreak. Big swell comes to Tas – Shippies. Swell hits the southeast – Depot. No one is willing to go exploring anymore and it does feel a little lazy.
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What’s the bizness model of the SSI?
To put it simply, we have the ski on an interest free loan that we are chipping away at as fast as we can. Short term, we need to pay for the ski and the cost of running it, plus buy all the first aid supplies and equipment. Long term, it’ll be used for the same purpose but we will obviously need to keep the equipment up to date, replace used items, service and maintain it. That’s where all the money goes. There’s not a single cent that goes into the SSI that doesn’t go back into the initiative. No one is getting paid to run safety. Richie sat on that ski all day yesterday like a fucking volunteer clubbie, purely out of good-will. The guy works full-time for the Unions and he donates his whole weekend to making sure people are safe. That’s not always going to be the case. There’s going to be days where we can’t get the ski there for whatever reason – maybe everyone wants to surf or no one wants to take it down or it’s been up on the rocks and it’s getting fixed. But we do have a backpack that all the first aid equipment fits in, and any surfer that’s a member of Surfing Tas can take it down to Shippies by boat or ski.
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I suppose we are going to distill it down into DOs + DONTs at Shippies, what’s the 101 shit you should know before coming down?
DON’T bring attitude into the lineup. DON’T trash the place and leave your rubbish behind. DON’T disrespect the locals + DON’T take anything for granted.
DO enjoy the place for what it is. DO appreciate not only the wave but the area and surroundings. DO make sure you back yourself in heavy waves. DO understand that it is a small lineup and the majority of the time it’s fickle and inconsistent, so consider that before you drop it in the group thread.
I think what you guys have created is worth celebrating. It’s like, ‘Look at this case study of big wave surfing, which is inherently dangerous and look at this community who’ve gone to the effort to try and make it safer given a lot more people are surfing it’. Hopefully there’s a way of softening it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s jaded dudes going ‘fuck off’ because that’s not it.
Exactly, it never has. The only time there’s been drama is when people have paddled out, nudged the locals, gotten too hungry and spoiled the fun for everyone. I’m still tripping on how well it played out yesterday. To have that many people behaving so respectfully was really cool.
I’d say something that stuck with me from yesterday is that as a new guy visiting, in a swell event, during a long-period swell, in a very small lineup, is that the combination of big waves, crowds and being at the bottom of the pecking order is fucking lethal. The only waves you can go are the scraps, and because you’re eating scraps you get hungry, so you go these stupid ones and get fucking nuked. Like honestly, not worth it in the slightest if it’s that busy.
Exactly, just sit and watch and pick your time. There is always a window where the crowd starts to thin, that’s your best bet.
Post-note: If you would like to support the SSI, you can donate here.
The post Marti Paradisis On The New Shipsterns Safety Initiative + The Laziness Of Bandwagoning Swell Carnivals appeared first on Stab Mag.